Vendor Payments and Commission Rates

Introduction

Onport can fully automate your payment workflow for dropship stores and multi-vendor marketplaces using our custom commission and automated payment setups. Get in touch with us if you have more complex requirements, we have additional options such as our landed costs feature or Custom Commissions API.

Decide your commission structure

❗️Read this article first to understand how the commission structure works within Onport. 

Using price-lists

If you are not using commission rates, you can use Onport to maintain the cost prices for your items. If you only have a few items to maintain cost prices for, you might want to just update the cost price under the settings page for the variant or right on the variant list.

Updating cost prices in bulk If you have more items, you can use a CSV import/export to update items in bulk. This is usually needed for in-house items, or if you didn't want to set up an inventory feed. You can also update other fields, such as the vendor SKU, and weight.

1. From your inventory list, click the Cost Price button. You might want to filter the list by vendor or any other filter if you only want to upload cost prices for a particular set of products.
2. In the popup, click Export cost prices. This will email you a list of the current SKUs and cost prices. It might take a minute to arrive.
3. Edit the CSV file, changing the cost prices for any items. Once you're done, save the CSV file and upload it.

Payment methods

Onport provides different methods for paying your vendors. You can turn on / off the payments methods from Setup > Payment methods. When you first start using Onport, some methods are created already for you. Just remove the ones you don't want and add any which are missing.

When adding a payment method, click on New Payment Method and add the Name and Source. This will be shown when either you (via your merchant dashboard) or your vendor (via the dropship portal) select the payment method.

Automated vendor payments

Invoicing vendors is fully automated. They are raised as items are shipped and the payment due will be visible in the payment report. This is automated and you'll be notified if anything goes wrong (e.g. if you sell an item for a vendor but didn't set a commission rate).

You can settle payments automatically if you use Stripe, Wise, or Paypal. To do this, scroll down to Automating Dropship Vendor Payments under the Prices tab, and select "Stripe/Wise/Paypal/Custom Only".
You will have the option to schedule automated payments daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. You can also choose to delay payment if needed by editing the "Pay after returns period" tab.

Notes: 
- Be aware that there will be two separate transactions happening. One is the payment for customers that happens through Shopify (Onport has nothing to do with this transaction and the payment processing fee). The second is the payment to vendors from the selected account (e.g. Stripe) that will include the payment account fees as well.
- When making payments to Stripe accounts based in different regions (e.g. US to CA, EU to AUS, and so on), these can only be made using a credit card set in Integrations > Stripe. This is a Stripe limitation that will prevent Stripe Balance payments from being made successfully.

IMPORTANT: valid credentials must be set for one of these methods in the Integrations section for this to work. Please review our resources on each of these payment methods for more detail on how to set them up correctly in Onport.

You can choose to delay the payments by a set number of days. For example, you may want to delay the payment until the returns period has ended to avoid complications in returning vendor funds back to the customer for returns or refunds. When choosing this option, the date considered for payment is the number of days selected after the shipping date, not the date that the order has been placed. 

Other payment methods (manual)

All other payment methods are handled manually via the payment report in Onport. For example, you can add a payment method for "cheque". Your vendors can then select this and use the form to enter additional details you might need.

Invoices will still be raised automatically so you can track payments. You'll need to make the actual payment manually via cheque for example, and then mark the payments as complete in Onport. The payment report will help with this. You can use the references field to ensure you can reconcile payments later with your external system.