Collect Sales Tax at Checkout with Stripe Tax
This one is optional and off by default. Most marketplaces don't collect sales tax themselves, and if that's you, nothing changes. Prices stay as they are, and sellers remain responsible for any tax on their own sales.
Some marketplaces do have to collect, for example a US marketplace that has passed a state's sales threshold and registered there. For them the rate has to be right for every buyer, down to county and city, which is not realistic by hand.
If you are registered to collect, switch on Collect sales tax with Stripe Tax under Payments → Commission & Fees. Stripe Tax then picks the rate per order from the buyer's delivery address (or billing address when nothing ships) and adds it as its own line on top of the price. Buyers outside the places you are registered in see no tax. The tax lands on your Stripe balance for you to remit and is never part of a seller's payout, so sellers are paid exactly as before.
Tax added on top at checkout, kept by the store
Ship to Miami, FL 33101
State plus county rate, picked by Stripe Tax from the address.
Seller payout
Price minus your commission, as before. No tax in it.
Your Stripe balance
$8.96 sales tax, ready to remit. Reported in Stripe Tax.
Refund
The tax goes back to the buyer and Stripe records the reversal.
Sales emails and the Orders tab show the tax as its own row, the order export has a tax column, Total Revenue leaves it out, and the seller's receipt notes that the store collected it. It applies to purchases (Buy now, cart, custom offers, approved purchases), not to bookings. Setup takes about ten minutes, and the docs walk through the three steps with a mock screen for each. Stripe charges its own Stripe Tax fee per taxed order to your Stripe account. Business and above. Not sure whether you need to collect? That depends on where you and your buyers are and how much you sell, so check with a tax adviser before switching it on. Stripe Tax docs
High-Value Orders: Hold the Label, Charge the Fee Only Above an Amount
A £2,400 item should not leave in the same standard parcel as a £20 one. Some marketplaces want to check the order or add insurance first, and want the buyer to pay for that protection only on the orders that need it.
The order value limit under Shipping → Label rules now has a second mode. Next to refusing the label, you can hold the label for you. The seller books it as usual, but the label goes to you with the parcel number and a link to the order. You check or insure the parcel and press Send to seller. And the buyer service fee gets an Only charge on orders above amount, for example 3% only on orders above £500. Below the amount buyers see no fee line anywhere.
Order value limit set to £500
Under the limit
Order of £180
- 1Seller clicks Create label
- 2Label is made through your carrier
- 3Seller prints it and ships
Above: Refuse the label
Order of £2,400
- 1Seller is told to ship another way
- 2You or the seller book an insured service
- 3Seller enters the tracking number
Above: Hold the label for you
Order of £2,400
- 1Seller clicks Create label
- 2The label is emailed to you, not the seller
- 3You check or insure the parcel
- 4You press Send to seller
The seller is told before booking that this label goes to the store first. While a label is held they can't mark the order shipped or switch courier, and their shipping deadline waits until you release it. If you decide not to ship, refund the order from the same page and the label never reaches the seller. Both amounts are counted per seller on the listed prices, so the same number can drive the fee and the label rule. Business and above. Order value limit docs · Buyer fee docs
Sellers Can Issue Invoices Instead of Receipts
A receipt is fine for most customers. But a VAT-registered coach, or a teacher whose school pays the bill, needs a proper numbered invoice with their own business details on it, and until now they had to make one by hand after every booking.
Sellers can now turn on Issue invoices instead of receipts in their own settings. They add their VAT number, company number and the VAT rate included in their prices, and pick a number prefix and starting number. From then on their paid bookings get a numbered invoice: same PDF, same email, same buttons, now titled Invoice, with the seller as the invoicing party and the VAT included shown as Net / VAT / Total. Prices and checkout do not change.
Seller turns it on once, every paid booking gets a numbered invoice
VAT number
Company number
VAT rate included in your prices (%)
Invoice number prefix
Next invoice number
Invoice
INV-1001
Billed to
Riverside Primary School
Provided by
Bright Voices Coaching Ltd
VAT GB123456789
It's off by default and per seller, so nothing changes for anyone who doesn't switch it on. It needs a business name and address, bookings paid before the switch get their number the first time they're downloaded, and test-mode bookings get TEST- numbers from a separate counter so the real sequence has no gaps. As the owner you see each seller's invoice details read-only. Shown on stores with a bookable listing type. Invoices docs
Pay-per-Listing Credits, and Listings That Follow the Plan
On a classifieds-style marketplace, plenty of sellers want to post one advert, not sign up for a monthly plan. And when a seller does stop paying, their adverts used to stay live until someone took them down by hand.
Both are part of Seller Plans, a Business plan feature. Listing credits let sellers pay as they go. You define packs under Seller Plans → Listing credits, each with a name, a number of credits and a price, and sellers buy one through Stripe Checkout with no plan needed. Credits never expire, survive plan changes and cancellations, and each listing type can cost a different number of credits. Next to it, Unpublish listings when a seller's plan ends takes a seller's published listings offline once they are left without a plan, and puts them back exactly as they were when they pick a plan again.
Seller → Plan page
Listing credits
Balance: 3 creditsOne listing
1 credit
£5
Five listings
5 credits
£20
Twenty listings
20 credits
£60
No plan needed. Credits never expire.
Email to the seller
Your listings are offline
Your plan has ended, so these 4 listings were taken offline. Choose a plan or buy credits and they come back as they were.
Both are off by default. Plan tokens are spent first, then purchased credits, and you see each seller's balance under Managed Sellers. Listings that you or the seller unpublished by hand are never touched, and a seller holding credits keeps their listings online. Past-due changes nothing; listings come down once the subscription is actually cancelled or unpaid. Credits use the same Stripe account and webhook as paid plans, and the Seller Plans webhook now sets itself up in one click. Business and above. Listing credits docs · Plan-end docs
Show Buyers the Full Price, Fee and Shipping Included
A buyer service fee or a shipping cost that first appears at checkout feels like a surprise, and surprises lose sales. In the UK it is also a legal point. Under the DMCC Act's drip-pricing rules, a fee the buyer can't avoid has to be part of the first price they see.
The listing page now shows a price breakdown above the Buy now button with the item price, your buyer fee with an (i) that explains what it pays for, the shipping cost when your store prices shipping up front, and the total. And with Show the price including the fee on listing cards switched on, every card on the listings page, the homepage and category pages gets a second line under the price, so the first number a buyer sees already includes the fee.
£400 saddle, buyer fee 5% + £1.00, flat shipping £12
Black leather jumping saddle, 17"
£400.00
£421.00 incl. Buyer protection
£400.00
The breakdown shows automatically whenever there's a buyer fee or up-front shipping, so a store with neither looks as before. Shipping shows for flat rates and per-listing prices (“Free” above your free-shipping threshold) and is left out for live carrier rates. The (i) text is yours to write (up to 200 characters) and opens on tap on phones. The price on listing cards is a separate switch, off by default. It counts one item, and is left out on listing types exempt from the fee and below an “Only charge on orders above” amount. Turn it on under Payments → Commission & Fees. Buyer fee docs
More Improvements
Other things shipped this week.
- Each listing type gets a purchase mode, Buy now, Offer only or Enquiry only. Enquiry only drops Buy now, the cart and custom offers, and buyers message the seller instead. Each type can also be exempt from the buyer service fee. Enquiry only and fee exemption docs
- A sticky buy bar on phones (per listing type, off by default) keeps the price and the main action pinned to the bottom of the screen, and a new setting places the purchase area under the price or after the details. Listing page docs
- “Pairs with” lets sellers hand-pick related listings, shown first in the related row with a “Seller's pick” tag (owner toggle, off by default, Pro and above). Pairs with docs
- Storefront search matches every word in any order, and finds a listing by its reference code
- Tracking numbers link to the carrier's tracking page in the shipped email (with a Track your parcel button), on the buyer's order page and in My Sales, for 15 carriers including PostNord, GLS, DPD, DHL, UPS, USPS, Royal Mail and Canada Post
- Ship Order in My Sales is two numbered steps when a carrier is connected (label or drop-off code first, then Mark as Shipped), and the My Sales table fits a phone screen
- Shipmondo labels for dao give the seller a 9-digit code to write on the parcel instead of a label to print, in My Sales, on a printable code page and in their email. The dao shop prints the label. See what sellers get
- The Payment tab shows the total currently held for sellers, your payout schedule and balance, and you're told when a held seller payout fails and why
- Renaming a listing type now moves its listings to the new name. My Listings gets an Other tab for listings whose type no longer exists (with a one-click move), a card/list view toggle, and loads 50 at a time with Show more
- Listing types with a booking calendar take one price option per booking, since the options are alternatives for the same slot. Add-ons on the chosen option can still be combined. Listing form docs
- Listing credit packs can carry a name ("One horse listing"), shown to sellers and on the Stripe receipt
- The footer can use its own logo, separate from the header, and the newsletter block can be left-aligned or centred
- Store time zone can be set on stores without bookings, so order emails stop printing times in UTC
- The Google Search Console field accepts the whole pasted meta tag and keeps just the token
- In your owner sandbox you can turn carrier sandbox mode off and test the real label flow with live carrier credentials (ShipStation excluded)
- The Starter plan is retired for new marketplaces. It left out too much of what a running marketplace needs, so new owners on it kept hitting walls
Bug Fixes
Bug fixes shipped this week.
- Suspended sellers' profiles and listings are hidden on the storefront, like deleted sellers
- Listing images on seller profile pages are square again instead of stretched
- Pricing Table: the badge text saves, the grid reflows on phones, an empty badge is hidden, and the highlight border follows your theme
- Edit HTML keeps a leading <style> block, and text with an & no longer shows up as &
- Shipmondo lists every product on your account (some, like daoHOME, were missing) and picks the nearest service point for parcel-shop products
- The listing form no longer loses the first dropdown pick when the owner edits a listing, and photo controls show on touch devices
- The listing picker no longer closes before you can tap Add on iOS Safari
- The footer newsletter text stays aligned with the input when the block is centred
Don't miss the next release
New features, improvements, and bug fixes shipped every Friday. One email per week.