Sellers

Overview

Your marketplace can have multiple sellers who list and sell their own products or services. This page covers how to configure the seller experience, from onboarding to payouts.

Seller Onboarding Flow

When someone wants to sell on your marketplace, they go through this process:

Seller Approval Settings

Choose how new sellers are approved to sell on your marketplace:

Listing Moderation

Control how new listings from sellers are published:

Whatever you choose here, the listings themselves are reviewed and managed on the Listings tab, where you can approve, reject or unpublish them one at a time or a batch at a time.

What happens when a seller edits an approved listing

With Manual Review on, editing the title, price, tags, stock, variants or custom fields of an approved listing never sends it back for review. Only changes to the description, photos or location do - and you decide whether they should at all:

• Also Re-approve Edited Listings on (default): the listing goes back to Pending Reviewand is hidden from buyers until you approve it again. You get the usual "listing re-submitted" email.
• Off: only brand-new listings need approval. Edits to an already-approved listing go live immediately and the listing never disappears. Pick this if you mainly want to vet new sellers and content, not police every wording change.

The toggle sits under Require Listing Approval in Store Settings → Sellers & Buyers and only appears while that setting is on.

Listing Statuses

Whichever way you decide, the seller hears about it by email, and when you rejected or unpublished you can add a reason that goes into that email so they know what to change. Deciding on several of one seller's listings at once sends them one email covering the batch rather than one per listing. You do all of this on the Listings tab.

Requiring Payout Setup Before Listings Go Live

By default a seller can publish listings and make sales before they have finished their Stripe payout setup. Their earnings are tracked and paid out as soon as they complete it. That keeps the first listing easy, which suits marketplaces that are still building up their supply.

If you would rather know who is selling before anything is sold, turn on Require Payout Setup Before Listings Go Live in Store Settings → Sellers & Buyers. Sellers can still sign up and prepare listings. When a seller who has not finished the Stripe setup publishes one, it is saved and marked Waiting for payout setup, and it goes live on its own the moment Stripe confirms their account. Stripe's setup includes an identity check, so with this on, every new listing comes from a seller Stripe has verified.

• Good for: high-value or regulated goods, and owners who do not want to hold sales in their own Stripe balance for sellers who never finish the setup.
• Listings that are already live are not affected. The setting applies when a listing is published from then on. A seller who is already live keeps their listings, and their next one waits.
• Sellers you manage yourself are exempt, and so is anything you publish as the owner.
• With Require Listing Approval also on, a held listing enters your review queue once the seller is verified. Payout setup comes first, then your approval.
• Turning the setting off releases any listings that were waiting, right away.
• The toggle needs Stripe Connect to be set up on the Payment tab. Without it there is no payout setup for a seller to complete.

The seller sees a notice on My Listings with a button to set up payouts, and you see the held listings under Drafts on the Listings tab, marked Waiting for seller's payout setup. Pair it with an automatic ID Verified badge so buyers can see it too.

Restricting Links in Listings

By default, sellers can add links inside a listing's description. If you'd rather keep buyers on your marketplace - and stop sellers from pointing them to their own website, Etsy, or other stores - turn on Don't Allow Links in Listings under Store Settings → Sellers & Buyers → Seller Approval.

When this setting is on:

• The "Add link" button is removed from the listing description editor, so sellers can't insert clickable links.
• On save, the listing title and description are also checked for typed-out web addresses (for example www.myshop.com or myshop.etsy.com). If one is found, the listing isn't saved and the seller is asked to remove it - so the rule can't be worked around by pasting a URL as plain text.
• The message sellers see is shown in your marketplace's language.

Seller Dashboard

Once approved, sellers access their dashboard to manage their business:

How Sellers Create Listings

Sellers create listings from their dashboard using the form you've configured. The fields they see depend on your Listing Form settings.

Formatting the description

The description field has a small toolbar: bold, italic, underline, bullet and numbered lists, a link (unless you have turned links off), and a table. The table is meant for specifications - a label in the left column and the value on the right, such as "Material" and "Oak". Sellers press Tab to move between cells, and while the cursor is inside a table the toolbar switches to add row, add column, delete row, delete column and delete table. The left column renders in bold on the product page so it reads as a spec sheet.

Tables and lists pasted from Word or Google Docs keep their structure. Font colours, font families and font sizes are deliberately not offered: descriptions render inside your theme, and per-seller colours and fonts would break the look of your marketplace.

As the marketplace owner, you can also duplicate any listing straight from the Store Settings → Listings tab. You land on the copy's edit form with a “Listing duplicated - review title + URL, then save” banner and an editable Listing URL field, pre-filled with a clean slug. You can set the public link once here: it's checked for uniqueness in your store (you'll see “URL already taken” if it clashes) and then locked on the first save, so shared links stay stable afterwards. Duplicated URLs no longer carry a “copy” fragment - only the title keeps the “(Copy)” marker so you can tell duplicates apart in the dashboard.

Commission & Payments

When a sale is made, the payment is automatically split between you and the seller:

How Payouts Work

• Automatic splits: Stripe Connect handles the payment split automatically
• Direct deposits: Sellers receive payouts directly to their bank account
• Your earnings: Commission is deposited to your Stripe account
• Payout timing: Follows Stripe's standard schedule — a new account's first payout is held ~7-14 days for review, then payouts arrive on a rolling basis (about 2 business days in the US). Managed by Stripe, not set in Prometora.

Seller Profiles

Public seller profiles build trust and let buyers browse a seller's listings, reviews, and story — each seller's personalized storefront. Profile pages have their own docs page covering visible sections and their order, custom profile URLs (vanity slugs), buyer-visible profile fields, and search-engine indexing.

Custom Signup & Seller Fields

You can define your own fields on the seller signup form (and on the seller dashboard) to collect any information you need — KYC details, payout info, niche eligibility, internal notes, anything. Each field has three configuration dials that decide where it's captured, who can see it, and whether it gates the seller's ability to publish.

Common patterns:

• Internal score — admin-only, captured at signup, used to rank or filter sellers in the admin table
• Vetted niche category — admin-only with approval gate, so sellers can't go live until you confirm they fit your marketplace
• Display tagline — visible to seller, captured on first listing, surfaces on their public profile
• VAT / tax ID — visible at signup, required for European stores

Buyer & Seller Terminology

The default "Buyer" and "Seller" labels don't fit every marketplace. A coaching marketplace might prefer Athlete and Coach; a rental marketplace might prefer Guest and Host. Set custom labels in Store Settings → Buyer & Seller and they replace the defaults across the public storefront.

Leave any field blank to keep the default translated label. The override only applies on surfaces where the role label is rendered as plain text — places like email subjects, system pages, and admin tools still use the default terminology.

Managing Sellers as Admin

As the marketplace owner, you can manage all sellers from your admin dashboard:

• View all sellers: See list of all sellers with their status
• Approve/reject applications: Review pending seller requests
• Suspend sellers: Temporarily disable a seller's account
• View seller listings: See all listings from a specific seller
• Moderate listings: Approve, reject, or unpublish listings

The Status Column: Listings & Payouts

Each seller row shows two status badges, one for each question you actually ask about a seller. The Listings badge answers "can they sell right now?": Can post, Awaiting approval, Suspended, or Can't post when the seller has no subscription plan or has run out of listing tokens. When your store runs seller subscription plans, the seller's plan name and remaining tokens appear right under their name.

The Payouts badge answers "can they get paid?": Payouts not set up, Stripe onboarding pending, or Stripe connected. If a seller has made sales before finishing payout onboarding, their earnings are parked safely and the badge shows the amount waiting, so you know exactly who to nudge. A payout-status filter (including "Earnings waiting") pulls up those sellers in one click. The seller detail view shows the same two badges.

Log In as a Seller or Buyer

Sometimes the fastest way to help someone is to see exactly what they see. The "Log in as" button on each row in Seller Management (and Buyer Management) signs you in to your storefront as that user in a new tab - their dashboard, their listings, their orders, their messages. Perfect for walking a less technical seller through a setup step over the phone, since storefront accounts use magic-link sign-in and have no password to share.

• Transparent: every session is recorded in the Support sessions log under Seller Management, and you can optionally send the user an email notice when a session starts (tick "Notify by email" in the confirm dialog).
• Clearly marked: a banner sits at the top of every page while you're logged in as someone else, with an "End session" button. Sessions expire automatically after 60 minutes.
• Safe: the user's own login is never touched - no password resets, no interrupted sessions on their devices. Ending your session simply returns your browser to whatever you were signed in as before.

Some actions stay disabled while you're logged in as another user: checkout and payments (you'd be spending their money), seller subscription changes, and Stripe payout onboarding - identity verification (KYC) must be completed by the seller in person under Stripe's terms, so that one step is always theirs to finish. The one exception is your sandbox: nothing there is real, so a sandbox support session can check out, change plans and run Stripe test onboarding as the test account.

Common Questions

• Can my sellers see when I did this? Every session is in the Support sessions log, so you can always show them exactly what happened - and if you tick "Notify by email" when starting the session, they get an email notice too.
• Can I complete Stripe onboarding for them? Not from a support session. Stripe requires the account holder to verify their own identity, so that step is blocked here. Use the Connect Stripe link on the seller in Managed Sellers instead: open it with the seller on the phone or in person, they read out their details and the SMS code Stripe sends them, and the account is theirs.
• Who on my team can use this? Anyone with the Seller & Buyer Management permission - the same permission that controls the rest of this tab.

Change a Seller's Login Email

Sellers sign in with a magic link sent to their email address, so that address is their login. You can change it from Seller Management: open the seller (the eye icon), and in the Account section click Change next to Login email. Confirm, and the account moves to the new address.

Two situations call for it:

• A typo at signup. Correct the address instead of deleting and recreating the seller, which would lose their listings and Stripe account.
• Handing over an account you set up. If you created a seller under your own address to set everything up for them, put their real address in when you are done. From then on they sign in themselves.

What happens on the change:

• Listings, orders, messages, reviews and Stripe payouts stay on the account. Nothing is re-created.
• Sign-in links go only to the new address. Any session still open on the old address is signed out, and a Google or Facebook login linked to the old holder is removed.
• The new address receives a notice with a link to the seller dashboard. The previous address also gets a short notice by default; untick Also notify the previous address for a typo fix or when the old address is your own. That notice never reveals the new address.
• The contact email on the seller's Stripe account is updated too, so Stripe's own messages reach the seller. Stripe's verified identity (name, ID number, bank account) is untouched.
• If another account on your marketplace already uses the new address, the change is refused and the message tells you which account holds it.

The change requires the Seller & Buyer Management permission, the same as "Log in as". It is recorded on the seller, and both notices appear in the Email Log as Login email changed.

Reference IDs

Every seller and every listing has a short reference ID (for example #7CE66C3), shown as a small badge next to the name. You'll see it in Seller Management, the seller detail view, and Seller Listings, and each seller also sees it on their own dashboard and listings. Click a badge to copy the full ID to your clipboard.

Reference IDs are only shown to sellers and marketplace owners. They never appear on buyer-facing pages such as public listings, storefront cards, or the checkout.

• Search by ID: The search box on Seller Management and Seller Listings matches the reference ID, so you can jump straight to a specific seller or listing.
• Short vs. full: The badge shows a short code for readability; clicking copies the full ID, which is what you'll want when looking a record up directly.
• Stable: An ID never changes, so it's a reliable way to refer to a seller or listing in a support or complaint case.

"Become a Seller" Button

Buyers can upgrade to seller status using the "Become a Seller" button in the navigation. The button respects your approval settings:

• Auto-approve off: Buyer is immediately upgraded to an active seller
• Manual approval on: Buyer sees a pending state and must wait for admin approval before creating listings

Buyer Management

The Sellers & Buyers tab in Store Settings includes a Buyer Management section where you can search, filter, and manage buyers on your marketplace.

Features

• Search buyers: Find buyers by name or email
• Filter by status: View all, active, or banned buyers
• Stats overview: See total, active, and banned buyer counts at a glance
• Ban/unban buyers: Restrict or restore buyer access with a single click

Buyer Banning

When you ban a buyer, you can select a reason from predefined options (fraudulent activity, repeated chargebacks, abusive behavior, policy violation, spam, or custom reason). The banned buyer:

• Receives an email notification explaining they've been restricted (with the reason if provided)
• Cannot sign in to the marketplace (blocked on all auth methods: password, magic link, social login)
• Can be unbanned at any time, restoring full access