The Vendors Extension can be purchased here.


The Deal Vendors Extension for the Social Deals Engine allows you to turn your Deals site into a multi-vendor Deals marketplace. Now anyone can sign up on Your Deals site and create their own Deals and Special Offers using this powerful one of a kind Extension. You can assign existing Deals to Vendors, or they can add and edit their own. The Vendor Deals will also be listed on your normal Deals site, like your own Deals. So you can sell your own Deals alongside those of your Vendors. You have complete control over what commissions a vendor receives for each deal they create. You even have the ability to manually add new commissions and edit existing ones.


Installing the Vendors Extension


After you purchased and downloaded the plugin, you can use the WordPress standard method to install it.

  1. The installation of the plugin is just like any other plugin installation for WordPress. Login to your WordPress site and go to Plugins > Add New.
  2. At the Install Plugins Page click on Upload from the top navigation and then click on browse.
  3. Go to the location on your computer where you saved the downloaded plugin zip file and upload this zipped file. You need to unzip the file first to get the plugin zip file.
  4. Now click on Install Now.
  5. Wait until WordPress has uploaded the file. If it's done click on Activate Plugin.
  6. Now you should see a message 'Plugin activated' at the top of the window.


After you successfully installed the Vendors Extension go to Deals > Settings and click on the Extensions Tab of the settings page.  There you will find the settings for the Vendors Extension.


Vendor Settings


Enable Vendor Registration

Check this box if you want to enable vendor registration for any user.


Auto Approval

Check this box if you want auto publish for all deals created by vendors.


Commission Rate
Enter the commission rate for vendors which will be used as a default value while vendors register and when you create a new vendor manually. The value you enter is in percentage. (Example: if you enter 50, than the commission for vendors will be 50% as standard). You can change that for each vendor you create.


Vendors Email Settings


Go to Deals > Settings and click on Emails Tab of the settings page.


Vendor Sale Email Notification


Vendor Email Subject
Enter the subject line for the vendor sale notification email. Available template tags are:

  • {site_name} - displays the site name
  • {deal_title} - displays the deal title
  • {amount} - displays the commission amount
  • {rate} - displays the commission rate
  • {voucher_code} - displays the voucher code

Vendor Email Body
Enter the vendor email that is sent after completion of a purchase. HTML is accepted. Available template tags:

  • {site_name} - displays the site name
  • {deal_title} - displays the deal title
  • {amount} - displays the commission amount
  • {rate} - displays the commission rate
  • {voucher_code} - displays the voucher code

Note : {voucher_code} shortcode only avaiable when Vouchers extension is activated.

Managing Vendors


Go to Deals > Vendors to add and edit your vendors. You can add new vendors using the form on the left and your existing vendors will appear on the right – you can simply click on any of them to edit their details. You can add/edit the following details for each vendor:


Vendors Manages


Name
This is the name of the vendor as it appears on the site.


Slug
This will be the URL slug that is needed to access the vendor’s products on your site. You can leave this blank and WordPress will generate it for you automatically based on the name that you inputted.

Parent
Select parent vendor if vendor belong to sub vendor.


Description
This will be the description of the vendor.

Vendor admins
Use this field to assign some of your site’s users to the vendor. Any users set as vendor admins will be able to add/edit deals for that vendor as well as edit certain of the vendor’s details. This field is optional – if you do not specify any vendor admins then only you will be able to add/edit deals for them.

NOTE: There is no vendor user role with this extension, user roles aren’t used. This offers more flexibility in the long run.


Commission
This is the default percentage of the deal sale price that the vendor will receive. You can override this setting on each deal.


PayPal email address
This is the email address of the vendor’s PayPal account. This is used in the CSV export of commissions that you can import into PayPal’s Mass Payments tool. If you do not want to use PayPal then you leave this field blank.


Metabox Settings


Vendor Metabox Settings


Vendor Commission
Enter the percentage of the sale price that  will go to each deal vendor. If no value is entered then the vendor's default commission will be used.

Disable Vendor Box
Check this box, if you don't want to show the vendor box for this deal.

Assign vendors to deal


Once you have added at least one vendor, you will be able to assign them to deals. You can do this by editing the deal and selecting the vendor from the ‘Deal Vendors’ box on the right. You can select more than one vendor for each deal, but remember that if you do this then they will each receive the same commission percentage.


Vendor assign to Deal


Displaying Vendors


Vendor shop page


Vendor pages on the site will automatically be available from URLs structured like this (assuming you have pretty permalinks activated):  http://www.example.com/dealsvendors/vendor-slug – these URLs will be publicly  available and show only the vendor’s deals along with their name and  description. If you would like to change these URLs to be more suitable  for your store you can add the following code to your theme’s  functions.php file:

add_filter( 'sde_vendors_vendor_slug', 'change_vendor_url_slug' );




function change_vendor_url_slug( $slug ) {
$slug = 'new_url'; 
return $slug;
}

 

 Once you have added that code you must re-save your site’s permalinks by going to Settings > Permalinks and clicking the ‘Save Changes’ button. That will change the vendor  page URLs to look like this: http://www.example.com/new_url/vendor-slug – just change the ‘new_url’ text to be whatever you need it to be.


There is also a ‘SDE Vendors’ widget that you can use to display a specific vendor’s information (name,  description and deals page URL) or the current vendor’s information.  If you choose to display the current vendor’s information then the  widget will only display on vendor product listing and single pages and  it will show the information of the vendor whose deal(s) are  currently being viewed – if you choose this option the widget will not  display on any other pages.

Vendor Single Product Widget


Vendor deals will still be visible on your normal shop pages like  every other deal – this will mean customers can browse through deals from all vendors in one place, but they will also have the  option of looking at one specific vendor’s deals.

Calculating Commissions


You can set commission percentages in three places:

  1. The ‘Vendor Commission’ field on each deal
  2. The ‘Vendor Commission’ field on each vendor
  3. The Default Commission Rate


Important: When a deal is purchased the commission is worked out in the following order of priority: Deal commission followed by vendor commission and finally the Default Commission Rate.


The commission priority dictates that, for example, if you have a default commission percentage specified for a vendor as well as a commission percentage set for the deal, then the commission set for the deal will be used to calculate the amount the vendor earns. Similarly the vendor commission setting will override the default commission percentage set in the extension settings. Remember that if no commission percentages are specified anywhere then a default of 50% will be applied.

Managing Commissions


Commissions Manages


You can manage your commissions by going to the Commissions menu item. You will only be able to add commissions after you have added at least one vendor to your store. Here you will be able to add new commissions and edit existing ones. To add a commission simply click the ‘Add New’ button and to edit one click on the title of the commission. When adding/editing a commission you have the following fields available:

  • Deal: The deal that this commission applies to.
  • Vendor: The vendor who will receive this commission.
  • Amount: The amount of money (in your store’s currency) that was earned by the vendor.
  • Order ID: The Oder ID that this commission belongs to.

Edit Commissions


Commissions Edited


When you are editing a commission that was created by an order you will also see a link to the order edit screen straight from the commission page.


In the box on the right you can also specify whether this commission is paid or unpaid.


Paying Commissions


You can pay commissions using whatever system you like, but if you use PayPal’s Mass Payments tool then you can export a CSV that can be imported into their system to handle all of your payments. To export this CSV (it will include unpaid commissions only) go to the Commissions page and click on ‘Export unpaid commissions (CSV)’ button. This will automatically download a CSV file that you can import into PayPal’s Mass Payments tool. This CSV may be compatible with other payment gateways, but that is not guaranteed.


Using the ‘Bulk Action’ drop down you can also mark all commissions as paid by selecting the ‘Mark all commissions as paid’ option. This will ensure that you don’t re-export commissions that have already been paid.

Linking Commissions to Orders


Vendor’s commissions are linked to the order from which they were created. When you cancel or refund an order, all of the commissions that it generated will automatically be moved to the trash.

Self-management for Vendors


Regardless of their roles (e.g. Admin, Subscriber, or Customer), all vendor admins are able to add and edit their own deal as well as edit relevant settings for their vendor profile. To do this, vendors have very limited access to the WordPress dashboard – they only have access to the following pages:

    • Deals listing page
    • Add new deal page

Please review our Self-Management for Vendors documentation for a full explanation of the vendor user interface and experience.

Reporting


This kind of system requires some form of reporting for both store owners and the vendors themselves. To access the reports for store owners go to Deals > Reports and click on the Deal Vendors tab. Here you will have access to different kinds of reports:


  • All sales made by vendors with a graph visualizing the current month’s sales (mimics the built-in Sales Overview report)


Vendor Overview Reports


  • Monthly sales reports for individual vendors showing number of sales and amount earned (mimics the built-in Deal Sales report)

Vendor Sales Report



Displaying User's Commission Statistics


The [sde_vendors_commission] short code can be used to display a list of deals that the currently-logged in user receives commissions for, including the total sale count for each and to display all paid and unpaid commissions for the currently logged-in user.

This short code will display three tables: one for items, one for paid commissions, and one for unpaid commissions. See the screenshot below:

Vendor Commissions Statastics


Things to Remember


When a deal is purchased the commission is worked out in the following order of priority
  • Deal commission followed by vendor commission and finally the default commission rate.
  • If no commission percentage is set anywhere then the default of 50% will be used to calculate commissions.
  • Even though vendors have limited WordPress dashboard access they will not be able to edit anything other than their own deals, media and details.
  • All deals that vendors add are, by default, required to be reviewed by site owners before they are published. You can change this in the Vendors settings under Deals > Settings > Extensions.

Frequently Asked Questions


Q: How are coupons handled in commission calculations?

A: By default coupons are ignored and commissions are calculated on the cost of the deal.