Vendors and Payouts

Selling on behalf of others, what a vendor can see, and how what they are owed is worked out.

Vendor Management. For a shop selling on behalf of other people: a gallery with artists, a shop with consignors, a marketplace with sellers.

What a Vendor Is

A vendor owns some of your products. When one of theirs sells, the sale is recorded against them, and what they are owed accumulates.

A product belongs to one vendor, or to none, in which case it is yours.

What a Vendor Can See

Vendors get their own sign-in, separate from your staff admin. They see their own products, their own sales and what they are owed.

They do not see your other vendors, your margins on anything else, or your customers beyond what is needed to fulfil their own orders.

That boundary is the point of the system. A vendor with access to your admin would see every other vendor's figures.

Commission

Each vendor has a commission rate, which decides the split between you and them on their sales.

Agree it in writing outside the shop as well. The rate here is a calculation, not a contract, and the two should say the same thing.

Payouts

Vendor Payouts records what has been paid and what is outstanding.

The shop calculates what is owed from orders that were actually paid, not merely placed. That matters: paying a vendor for an order whose payment later failed means recovering money from somebody who has already spent it.

The same applies to refunds. An order refunded after a payout has been made leaves you owed money by the vendor, which is a conversation rather than an automatic adjustment.

The Vendor Report

Shows what each vendor sold in a period and what is owed, which is what you work from at payout time.

Export it and keep the file. A vendor querying a payment six months later is much easier to answer with the figures you actually used than with a report you have to recreate.

Adding a Vendor

Create the vendor, set their commission, give them their sign-in, and assign their products. Products can be assigned in bulk from the product list rather than one at a time.

A vendor who is going to add their own products needs that permission deliberately, and their products are worth reviewing before they go live, because they are on your shop under your name.