About Market Development Funds
Market Development Funds (MDF) lets you budget partner marketing funds, allocate them to partner accounts, route fund requests and marketing activities through approval, collect expense claims with proof of performance, and reimburse partners - all inside your portal.
This module is in beta. It is marked BETA in the Setup navigation. Beta features may change between releases, so pilot it with a small group of partners before committing your whole channel programme to it.
Where It Lives
Go to Setup > Partner Management > Market Development Funds.
If the entry is not there, one of the access requirements below is not met.
What You Need
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|
| An MDF licence | Contact your Magentrix representative if your organization is not licensed for Market Development Funds. |
| The Partner product | MDF is part of the partner portal. It does not appear on portals without it. |
| Administrator, or the Manage MDF permission | System administrators always have access. Other internal users need the Enable MDF Management Access permission on their role. See Who Can Access Market Development Funds. |
| Elevated access for the first activation | Turning the module on provisions the MDF entities and their lookups to your Account, Contact and Lead records, which needs more than ordinary administrator access. See Setting Up Market Development Funds. |
How the Module Is Organized
Once activated, MDF presents seven tabs:
How the Money Works
Four figures describe every allocation, and the difference between them is the thing to understand first:
- Allocated - the budget you assigned to this partner.
- Committed - approved but not yet paid.
- Spent - actually reimbursed.
- Available - what the partner can still request.
Committed and spent are separate pots and money moves from one to the other, rather than being counted in both. See Understanding MDF Balances.
The Typical Flow
- You create a fund program and allocate budget to partner accounts.
- A partner submits a fund request containing one or more marketing activities.
- The request is auto-approved if it is under your threshold, or routed through your approval chain.
- On approval, the amount becomes committed.
- The partner runs the activity and submits a claim with proof of performance.
- You verify the proof and reimburse. The amount moves from committed to spent.
This Is Not the Older MDF Module
Your portal may also contain an earlier Marketing Development Fund module, documented separately. This is a different, newer module with its own setup, data and screens. Documentation for the earlier module remains available and is unaffected.
Where to Go Next
Setting Up Market Development Funds >>