Marketplace and vendors: how it works

GrandNode can run as a single store or as a marketplace where independent sellers, called vendors, offer their products next to yours. There is no separate marketplace edition or plugin: vendors are part of the core. The store owner manages vendors in the admin panel, and each vendor works in its own panel at /vendor, where it sees only its own products, the order lines that belong to it, and its own reviews and reports. This article explains the model; the rest of this section shows each screen step by step.

Who does what

Vendors own products

Every product has a Vendor field. In the admin panel you pick it on the product's General tab; a product created in the vendor panel is assigned to that vendor automatically and the vendor cannot change it. A product with no vendor belongs to the store owner. The vendor assignment decides:

• who can see and edit the product in the vendor panel (a vendor never sees another vendor's products, not even by guessing a URL);
• whose sales reports, bestsellers and low-stock list the product counts in;
• which vendor page on the storefront lists the product, and which vendor name is shown on the product page when Show vendor on product details page is on.

One order, many vendors

The customer does not check out once per vendor. The cart can hold products from any number of vendors plus the store owner's own products, and checkout creates one order with one payment. Each order line remembers the vendor of its product and the commission the store takes on it (the vendor's Commission percentage at the time of the order).

In the demo data, order 3 contains products from several sellers. The store owner sees the whole order in Sales → Orders. Nordic Craft Collective sees the same order in its vendor panel, but only with its own line (the Hand Thrown Ceramic Vase), the price, quantity, commission and total of that line, and no order totals, payment method or other vendors' products.

What a vendor can and cannot see

• Orders: only orders that contain at least one of its items, and inside them only its own items.
• Shipments: only shipments it created, containing only its items. Each vendor ships its own part of an order.
• Merchandise returns: only returns of its own items.
• Customers: no customer list. The vendor sees customer emails on its orders and in the Customer reports, limited to customers who bought its products.
• Configuration: nothing. Payment, shipping, tax, stores, languages, categories and settings stay with the store owner.

Payment and commission

Customers pay the store, not the vendor, through the payment methods the store owner configured. GrandNode records the commission per order line so you can settle with vendors, but it does not pay vendors out automatically. How and when you transfer the vendor's share is up to your own process or an integration.

Typical setup, in order

1. Review the vendor settings: whether customers can apply, whether vendors may edit their profile, and the review rules. See Vendor settings.
2. Create vendors yourself or let customers apply, then activate them. See Create, approve and activate vendors.
3. Assign existing products to vendors, or let vendors add their own in the vendor panel. See Managing products as a vendor.
4. Vendors sign in at /vendor and handle their orders and shipments. See A tour of the vendor panel and Orders, shipments and returns.

Related

• Customers: customer accounts, customer groups (including the Vendors group) and permissions.
• Vendor profile, reviews and the vendor page