A store administrator in X-Cart Marketplace with the Multi-Vendor add-on enabled controls vendors starting from the moment of application and has full access to any vendor account. A store administrator can also create new accounts on behalf of vendors, maintain them, and operate under any vendor account if required.

A user who wants to become a new vendor on the marketplace can apply via the vendor registration page available via the "Become a seller" link in the Customer area. When this happens, the store administrator is notified of the new vendor registration:

The administrator also gets an email notification sent to their inbox. (This is enabled by the "Vendor account created" email notification).

The administrator needs to review this application and either approve or reject it.

The administrator can quickly access the list of unapproved vendors by clicking the "Unapproved vendors (N)" link on the Notifications page (Users -> Users List) or find them by their "Unapproved vendor" status using the filter at the top of the user listing page. Unapproved vendors have a regular user profile record in the store's user list with the "Unapproved vendor" mark:

To decide whether a new vendor application should be approved, the administrator may want to review the details of the vendor profile. First, note that a vendor profile contains the information provided by a vendor in the application form. It includes the prospective vendor's email, name, company name, company description, company address, and if required, ship-from address. You can find this information on the tabs of the prospective vendor's user profile.

After reviewing the user profile of the prospective vendor, the administrator needs to approve or reject the application using the buttons Approve vendor / Decline vendor.

If needed, the administrator may re-adjust the new vendor's access information before approval (e.g., change the user's access permissions by changing the role that was assigned to them by default, give the user a non-default membership level, or re-adjust the account settings so the user will be requested to change their password on next login). That, of course, can also be done after the new vendor approval.

Approving or rejecting a vendor application triggers an email notification to the applicant (refer to the "Vendor account approved" or "Vendor account rejected" email notifications).

The store administrator can create user profiles for vendor users via the User List page of the store's Admin area (Users -> User List):

To create a new vendor profile, the administrator needs to do one of the following:

A root store administrator or an administrator with permissions to "Manage administrators" can import vendor accounts into the store.

To understand a CSV file structure for vendor import, we recommended exporting existing vendors following the procedure described here.

To import vendors, use the customers.csv file with the minimal set of fields:

You can also specify the vendor's shipping and billing address info and other profile fields values set in the vendor profile.

A sample file for vendor account import may look like this.

A vendor may request a change of their profile information (for example, if the vendor is selling their business, this must be reflected in the vendor profile details). In such cases, the store administrator can edit the respective vendor account via the User List page of the store's Admin area (Users -> User List):

For details on the management of vendor profile information, see Managing vendor profile information as an administrator

To log in to the Vendor area and use its features, a vendor needs to have the status Enabled. This status is set in the vendor's profile. If the store administrator requires to block a vendor from using the store, they need to reset this status to Disabled.

If a vendor with the Disabled status attempts to log in, they get "Error: Invalid login or password." If they are already logged in and using the store when the administrator disables their account, their user session is terminated, and the vendor gets logged out and cannot log back in again. All vendor-related information is removed from the storefront, including the account, the vendor page, and any products they own. Anyone who attempts to access the vendor page or their products via a previously bookmarked link gets the message "Аccess denied (Unfortunately, you don't have permission to access this page. Please contact the administrator)".

After blocking a vendor, the store administrator can re-enable them to access their vendor area by changing their status to Enabled.

To force a log out of a vendor, terminate the user session of that vendor the same way as that of any other user in the store - by choosing the "Logout this user" option from the Profile actions selector in the vendor's profile:

There can be cases when the store administrator needs to access the Vendor area of a vendor (for example, to see what information is available to the vendor, to help the vendor with a specific task, or to investigate some problem). To sign in to that Vendor area, use the "Log in as this vendor" feature (available via the Profile actions selector in the vendor's profile):

Vendor users are, technically, administrators with limited access. Hence, "Login as this vendor" works the same way as the "Login as this admin" feature. The Vendor area of the selected vendor is opened in a new browser tab; on that tab, the administrator is signed into the Vendor area as the vendor they have chosen:

The current admin's user session gets terminated. To quit using the Vendor area as a vendor, the administrator needs to sign out.

A store administrator may need to use the vendor profile information outside the X-Cart store (for example, if the store owner wants to have this information in a spreadsheet editor or wishes to use it in some other external application). For such cases, consider exporting vendor profile information from the X-Cart store to a CSV file on the User List page of your store's Admin area (Users -> User List):

Suppose you need to discontinue the access of any existing vendor to the marketplace. In that case, the store administrator can remove their user profile on the User List page of your store's Admin area (Users -> User List):

If an existing registered customer wants to become a vendor, the store administrator can convert their customer account to a vendor one. To complete the task:

Related pages: