Sellers (or vendors) are the core entity of MultiMerch. This section describes the general structure of seller accounts and provides some information on creating and managing sellers in MultiMerch.
Seller account basics
Seller accounts in MultiMerch are built on top of OpenCart’s default customer system. This means a few things.
First, a seller is always a customer, but the customer can have or not have a seller account associated with him. This removes the need for a second set of credentials and for a separate authentication system – both customers and sellers log into the store using OpenCart’s standard login page.
Second, the sellers don’t have access to OpenCart’s administration area. All parts of seller accounts are located in front store and the whole seller system is completely independent of OpenCart’s administration.
Third, since seller accounts are located in the front store, they’re completely templatable and can be styled using OpenCart’s custom themes. For more information about using MultiMerch with a custom theme, see Custom Themes with MultiMerch.
MultiMerch Seller Fields
In addition to the OpenCart’s standard buyer fields like names and addresses, MultiMerch introduces a set of its own properties specifically for seller accounts.
Seller nickname is used to identify the seller throughout the store instead of the full name. This appears in various areas both in the store front and in the admin area including seller information on the product page, customer’s orders, private messages and in other places.
SEO keyword (or seller slug) is the seller’s nickname that will be displayed in the links if SEO-friendly URLs are enabled in OpenCart. It usually (but not necessarily) consists of alphanumeric symbols in contrast to seller’s display nickname that can include spaces, diacritics and other Unicode characters.
Seller group is the group the seller belongs to. For more information about seller groups check MultiMerch Seller Groups.
Product validation setting defines whether manual product approval is enabled for this seller specifically. Note that disabling this setting globally doesn’t change the seller-specific setting.
Description, company, country, region/state is the generic information that will be displayed on the seller’s profile page in the store.
Paypal is the seller’s PayPal address that will be used for receiving PayPal payouts from the store.
Seller avatar is the image that will be displayed on the seller profile page along with the rest of information. Seller avatars are also used on various pages throughout the store – product page, seller lists and other places.
Seller status defines whether the seller’s account is enabled, disabled or deleted.
Additionally, it’s possible to define seller-specific commission rates that will get applied to the selected seller only. For more information on commissions, check MultiMerch Fee Structure.
Creating a seller account
Depending on your setup, you will either let your users create their seller accounts themselves or create them manually through the administration area.
Front office seller account creation
This is the standard way of creating seller accounts in MultiMerch.
Since MultiMerch uses OpenCart’s customer accounts as a base, your sellers will first need to sign up in your store using the standard registration process. When this is done, the customers will be able to fill out their seller profile information and apply for a seller account.
Depending on your settings, the newly created seller accounts will either get approved automatically or will be disabled until approved manually by the store owner.
Creating seller accounts through the administration area
In some cases, you as the store owner may want to create a seller account manually.
This is done through the Admin > MultiMerch > Sellers > Create interface. Here you’ll be able to either choose an existing customer account and create a seller profile for a specific customer or create a completely new account with its own set of credentials.
Managing sellers in your store
MultiMerch provides a user-friendly interface for managing sellers in your store that is located under Admin > MultiMerch > Sellers.
You can view, sort and filter seller accounts by different fields using our DataTables integration. The whole system is built using Ajax requests so all sorting and filtering happens instantly without you having to wait for a page to reload.
The seller list displays various information about the seller like the basic data, earnings and products as well current balance and seller status. For a detailed information, you can click the seller name to view the associated customer account data or use the “Edit seller” page to change seller-specific information or status.
Disabling or deleting seller accounts
Seller account deletion is performed through the same interface that is used to manage sellers. For security purposes, MultiMerch doesn’t delete the associated customer account when deleting a seller – only the MultiMerch seller-specific data is removed. When this happens, the customer will be able to create a new seller account using the same credentials.
It is also possible to temporarily or permanently disable the seller account by changing the seller status to disabled. In this case, the customer will not be able to recreate the seller account or access the seller-specific functions.
Video Tutorial
BuildMyEcommerce have created a set of video tutorials for MultiMerch. This video covers creating a MultiMerch seller account through the front office using MultiMerch 5 on a clean OpenCart installation with a default theme.
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