Dear pholcomb,
Thank you for your questions.
Is there documentation or a description on the workflow of the multi-vendor software?
It works like this: vendors list their products in a separate section of a store, add their logos, and company description. And products from all vendors are sold through a single customer area. The root admin pre-moderates vendors' activity: approves or declines new product entries.
So, vendors create fully featured stores in a common marketplace. Customers see a list of all vendor products, product filters, and a “search by vendor products†field on the vendor page. Customers can still buy vendor products through a common storefront or easily find and buy vendor products from the vendor page as well.
1. Customer purchases 3 items, one from each vendor (3 vendors).
If an order contains products from different vendors, the order is split. Vendors get order notifications which contain their products only. Shipping cost is calculated separately for products of different vendors.
2. Money goes into some store account
All payments are transferred to the main admin account.
3. Store owner pays vendors separately? Or do vendors request money from store owner?
It is up to the store admin how to transfer money to vendors. Admin's income is commissions taken from vendor sales. Commissions can be a percentage or a flat rate and are set up on a per vendor basis.
The root administrator can review the income and expenditure statistics (total, per vendor, per period) and register payouts to vendors under Vendors → Account balance. Please check the following article to learn how to do that:
http://docs.cs-cart.com/4.3.x/user_guide/users/vendors/account_balance.html
If you would like to automate the process of vendor payouts, We would advise considering the Adaptive Payments by PayPal add-on. It is available in our Marketplace:
It works in the following way: suppose that a customer has an order with some products bought from one vendor. When he pays for the order, PayPal automatically sends the money to the vendor, leaving the commission on the account of the store owner.
If a customer has some products from several vendors in his order, PayPal automatically divides the money between the vendors. Also, commissions are sent to your account.
So, you just have to set up your commission to get it from your vendors. To do this, please, go to your store’s administration panel and choose vendors -> vendors in the top left menu. On a vendor editing page, you will be able to enter your commission in the PayPal Adaptive Payments commission field.
For more information about this add-on, please, refer to the following page:
I hope I managed to answer your questions.
Feel free to contact us if any questions arise.
Thank you.