Managing multi vendors

What is a marketplace or dropshipment. Who are vendors?

There are 3 entities in a marketplace transaction. The merchant (you), the customer and the vendor/seller who actually manufactures and ships the products to the customer.

There are two types of Vendors identified in ShipTurtle.

1. Dropshipper – customer is buying from the merchant
   • In this case the customer invoice is made by the Merchant. Once the order is received, the merchant needs to make the invoice and send it to the vendor. The vendor will print this invoice, pack it with the product and ship it to the customer.
   • The vendor will raise a separate invoice to the merchant for the goods sold
2. Marketplace – customer is buying from the vendor
   • In this case the customer invoice is made by the Vendor. Once the order is received, the merchant will make his invoice, pack the product and ship it to the customer
   • The merchant will later raise a separate invoice to the vendor for the commission on the product

The article below will share the basics of configuring your store to handle Multi vendors. Make sure you have completed your basic setup first. https://www.shipturtle.com/knowledge-base/ -> Setup

Step 1: Configure your Multi Vendor Store settings – Vendor Rights

1. Select the option “Enable Multi Vendor” under your Multi Vendor Settings page. Doing this will start splitting your orders as per different Vendors.
2. Configure global access rights for your Vendors with regards to Shipping, Invoicing, Products, Order Routing and Commissions.
   • Shipping – Configure rights for whether a vendor can add his own Shipping partners and generate labels
   • Invoicing – Configure rights for whether a vendor can generate invoices and manage taxes
   • Product – Configure rights on which Product information a vendor can edit – quantity, listing, dimensions or tax
   • Order Routing – Configure whether orders are received by vendors with or without Confirmation by merchants.
     Note – If “Require Order confirmation” is ticked, vendors will not see incoming orders in “New orders” tab but only see them once they are confirmed by the merchant.

Step 2: Configure your Multi Vendor Store settings – Commissions

1. Commissions can be set at a Global, Vendor, Category or Product level and configured to handle discounts and shipping.
2. Commissions can also be configured to handle discounts and Shipping charges taken from the customer.

See our “Managing Commissions Help” for a detailed guide with examples – https://www.shipturtle.com/knowledge-base/managing-product-commissions-and-payments/

Step 3: Complete information for your vendors

1. Go to Vendors -> Vendors List. You will see a list of all Vendors attached to your products on Shopify. You can also see a snapshot of their Number of Products, Open Orders and Settings
2. Click on edit on any row to change settings for that vendor
3. You will now see a list of Tabs which hold the settings for that Vendor.
   • Select whether the vendor is a “Dropshipper” or “Marketplace Vendor”
   • Enter the Company and Billing & Invoice details for the Vendor. If the vendor is a dropshipper, Invoices will be generated with the Merchant’s details.
   • Add / Edit warehouse details attached with the vendor. Your shipments can only be from these warehouses.
   • Review the Products attached with the Vendor. All details are picked from your store listing.
   • Go to Vendor settings and review his permissions. They are default set to the Global settings you defined in Step 1. You can override them for any Vendor.

Step 4: Add users in your Vendors to give them access to their Vendor dashboard

1. Once you are fully setup, you can create user(s) for the Vendor and give them access to their dashboard by going into Settings -> Users and Permissions

Step 5: Process orders

1. While most orders can be directly routed to vendors for fulfilment and tracking, there are certain cases where the Merchant might want to process the order partially before routing it onwards. In all such cases the Merchant can toggle the options under Multi vendor Settings -> Order Routing.
   • Invoice generation – In certain countries, the Merchant will want to generate the invoice before routing the order since customer invoices are in Merchant’s name.
   • Shipping label generation – If the merchant wants to mandate his own shipping partner for pickup
   • Order correction – If there are chances of errors in order like Tax missing, address correction etc.
2. Click “Confirm” once done. The order will now be visible to the Vendor for fulfilling. An email will also go from ShipTurtle automatically with order details, shipping label and invoice if generated.

Read more about Processing Orders at Processing Orders in Shipturtle
Read more about Shipping Orders at Shipping Orders in Shipturtle