How To: Allow Customers to Become Vendors

Important

Vendors are available only in Multi-Vendor.

Step 1. Allow Customers to Apply for a Vendor Account

1.1. In the Administration panel, go to Settings → Vendors.

1.2. Tick the Allow users to apply for vendor account checkbox.

1.3. Allow automatic creation of vendor’s administrator accounts for approved vendors, if necessary.

1.4. If you want users to accept your terms and conditions before they can apply for a vendor account, tick the Applying vendors must agree to the terms & conditions checkbox.

Note

The text of the terms and conditions is stored the language variable called vendor_terms_n_conditions_content. Learn how to work with language variables.

If you allow users to apply for vendor accounts, you can also make them accept terms and conditions.

1.5. Click the Save button.

Step 3. Approve the Application

3.1. Go to Vendors → Vendors.

3.2. Find the vendor account you want to activate. The vendor accounts that haven’t been activated or disabled yet have the New status.

3.3. Change the status of the desired account to Active or Pending.

Find the vendor account you want to activate and change its status to Pending or Active.

Hint

Active and pending vendors can access the administration panel and manage their products. However, customers won’t be able to see pending vendors and their products on the storefront. Learn more about vendor statuses.

Once you set the status to Active or Pending, the new vendor will receive an email notification, and vendor’s administrators will be able to log in to vendor’s administration panel. The content of the notification depends on what you did in step 1.3:

  • If you allowed automatic creation of a vendor’s administrator account, the email notification will include the account details and the login URL for vendor’s administration panel.

  • If you didn’t allow automatic creation of a vendor’s administrator account, the new vendor will simply be notified that the application for a vendor account has been approved.

    You’ll have to create a vendor’s administrator account manually. When you create the account, you can choose whether or not to send an email notification with login credentials and URL.