Channels
Channels is where you connect the marketing vendors you buy traffic from or send messages through — an ad network, a tracker, an email or SMS platform — so Routy can pull what they report: spend, impressions, clicks and sends, per campaign, per day.
Routy already knows what your traffic earned. Channels is what tells it what that traffic cost and how many people it reached.
What a connection is
A connection is one of your accounts at one vendor, connected to Routy. If you run three ad accounts at the same vendor, that's three connections — each with its own schedule, its own currency, its own timezone and its own numbers.
Inside a connection, the things that carry numbers are listed under Campaigns. What a vendor calls them varies: campaigns, ad groups, zones, lists, flows, segments. Routy shows the vendor's own word for it.
A channel is not a traffic source. A traffic source is your own site, app or list — where your traffic comes from. A channel is a vendor you buy from or send through. They sit at opposite ends of the same journey, and Routy tracks them separately.
Where things live
There is no browsable "all vendors" page beyond Add channel, and no page per vendor — everything you have with a vendor shows up in the connections list, filtered by channel.
The happy path
- Open Channels and click Add.
- Pick your vendor's tile.
- Prove who you are at that vendor. Depending on the vendor this is either a short form (paste an API key or token) or a Continue to {vendor} button that sends you to the vendor's own sign-in page.
- Choose which of your accounts at that vendor to connect. If your credentials reach exactly one connectable account, Routy skips this and connects it for you.
- You land on the new connection. It syncs on a schedule from then on.
Status
Every connection has one of three statuses.
Status is not the same thing as Health. A connection can read Connected and still not be syncing, because the credentials behind it were rejected — that shows up as Credentials rejected in the Health column, and it's the one thing on this feature that always needs you.
Health
The list shows a health signal per connection, taken from its last run.
Partial runs and vendor throttling never show as bad health, because they aren't — see below.
Partial sync is normal
A run marked Partial — some dates pending is not a failure and not data loss. A vendor often serves some of the days we asked for and refuses the rest, usually because it's rate-limiting us. Routy keeps the days it got and puts the missing days back in the queue; the next run picks them up.
The screen says so directly: "Some dates did not land. They are requested again on the next run; nothing is lost."
You don't need to do anything, and you don't need to sync manually. Only a persistent one — the same dates still missing after several runs — is worth escalating.
The same goes for Vendor unavailable — retrying automatically: the vendor throttled us or was down, and it retries by itself.
Dates are in the connection's timezone
Every date against a campaign — the day a cost or a click belongs to — is expressed in the timezone of your account at that vendor, not yours and not UTC. Each connection states which timezone that is, and repeats it above its campaign and metrics tables.
This matters because it's usually not your own. If your ad account is set to Los Angeles time and you're in Tel Aviv, that account's "27 July" starts around 10:00 on your 27 July and ends around 10:00 on your 28 July.
Routy deliberately does not convert these dates. Converting them would change what the number means — the vendor totalled that spend against its day, and shifting the label would split one day's spend across two. So Routy's channel numbers line up exactly with the vendor's own dashboard, and the edges of a day will differ from your revenue reports.
A dash is not a zero
Some vendors don't report cost at all — analytics and search-console style vendors know about clicks and impressions but have no idea what anything cost.
So Routy distinguishes two different things:
- A dash (—) — the vendor didn't report that value for that row. Unknown, not zero.
- 0.00 — the vendor did report it, and it was genuinely zero.
Never read a dash as "free". When no row in a metrics table reports cost, the table says so outright: "This vendor does not report cost."
The same reading applies to every column, and to the totals row: a dash means "not reported" or "can't be totalled", never "zero".
Your connection quota
Your plan includes a set number of channel connections. Going over it stops the connect flow with a message telling you where you stand — "You have used 5 of 5 channel connections on your plan."
To free a slot, disconnect a connection you no longer need, or change your plan. The quota counts connections — vendor accounts — not vendors. Three accounts at one vendor is three connections. Disabling a connection does not free a slot; disconnecting does.
Common questions
"I connected but there are no campaigns yet"
The first sync hasn't finished. New connections read Waiting for first sync. Give it one scheduled run, or open the connection and use Sync now.
"The vendor rejected my credentials"
Routy checks credentials with the vendor before saving anything, so a rejection means the vendor said no just now. Check that you copied the whole key (they're long and easy to truncate), that it's from the right account, and that it hasn't been rotated or revoked. If the vendor has separate reporting permissions, make sure the key has them.
"That account is already connected"
A vendor account can only be connected once. Look for it in your connections list rather than creating a second one.
"My numbers don't match the vendor's dashboard"
Check the date boundary first — see the timezone section above. Then check the range: the most recent day is often still being filled in, and vendors routinely restate the last day or two.
When to escalate
- The same dates stay pending across several runs of Partial — some dates pending.
- A connection still shows Credentials rejected after you've re-entered credentials that work on the vendor's own site.
- Repeated Sync failed with no message you can act on.
- Metrics are empty for a range where the vendor's own dashboard clearly shows activity.
- Numbers differ from the vendor's dashboard by more than a day boundary's worth.