We are trying out all functionalities of cs-cart one by one to see if it suits our project; we see some abnormalities of some default features that may cause potential abuses and human errors, we would like to know if anyone here encounters the same; we start with the Accounting module:
1. The vendor is allowed to request any amount even though there is a negative balance; I think it should be some mechanism to prevent this from happening.
2. There is nowhere to show to the platform admin the balance available of the vendor before approving the withdrawal request in the Accounting, prone to make mistakes.
3. The accounting module does not recognize the reward points offered by the vendor to the user as a cost of sale. The reward points are supposed to be a form discount or rebate from the vendor to the buyer to be used in future orders, and they should be recognized and deducted from the sales income in the Accounting module. The default cs-cart records the payment before the reward points given to users in each order and allows them to request for withdrawal.
4. Accounting module also not taking centralized shipping cost as a cost; on the contrary, it takes it as an income; the Accounting module should deduct the amount from the order. If the vendor provides free shipping while using a centralized shipping method, the vendor borne the cost. The vendor will not take any cost if the free shipping is originated directly from the platform.
Please share if you have encounter the same and have some solutions for these.
Regards
Hello,
Referring to your questions:
1. This is an intended functionality - if administrator does not allow vendors to make withdrawals above their balance, he should reject every withdrawal that exceeds vendor income. Using add-on "Vendor debt payout", you can cause vendor's access to admin panel to be restricted when vendor's debt reaches certain threshold.
2. You can use functionality "Log in as a vendor" (available in upper right corner in latest releases of Multi-Vendor) to check current vendor balance.
3. I just did a test - I placed 600$ order and put 500 points to cover it (so customer in the end paid 100$). After I checked in vendor panel (remember to check everything from vendor's perspective, since they are main users of accounting system), my balance was 100$, not 600$. Please check if you've done everything correctly, or make some screenshots to show how does this situation look in your store.
4. In configuration of add-on "Vendor plans", you can define if shipping costs should be included in vendor commissions.
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask me anything.
Best regards,
Team CS-Cart Poland
Hi, thank you for your reply, kindly advise the following:
1. Is there any solution or option that we can add to the system so that the vendor can only request withdrawal up to the amount available to them to save time and efforts for the platform admin to counter check every withdrawal request? Our objective is to reduce human errors rather than dealing with actions relate to debts caused by this in the later stage.
2. The "Vendor Debt Payout" is an excellent solution to deal with obligations caused by other reasons such as subscription fee not paying on time, etc., and it is an excellent feature to support vendors.
3. I am sorry for not being able to explain the question correctly. I referred to the reward points should be treated as COGS (Cost of Good Sold) to the offering seller and as an income to the accepting seller (Allow payment by points). You are correct in your example that the 500 reward points were captured in the Accounting module, but the balance shown was $100 instead of $600. The Accounting module takes reward points as a cost and not an income to the accepting seller, considering that the reward point used as a payment mode (Allow payment by points). Besides, the reward points should be taxable because it is one of the payment modes in the platform rather than taking it as a form discount without any costing elements. If we take reward points as a pure discount, the seller in your example was forced to accept the reward points even he or she was selling at a loss, and no seller will ever accept Allow payment by points.
4. We have excluded the shipping cost from calculating in the Accounting module in Vendor Plan as per your advice, but there are still no changes from our end; you may see the following screenshot and test it on your end.
5. On the other hand, you may see that the tax was calculated after deducting the reward points, is there any option to make it taxable? I include our calculation for the example of the above order as follows for your comparison and hopes to make our explanation better. You may see that the vendor payout is $10.84 in the illustration, but the payout in the Accounting shown is $16.36; this amount is already higher than the product nett price of $13.55 after the SST.
Thanks a lot for you kind assistance.
Regards.
Hello,
Again, referring to your points:
1. We're currently working on an add-on that will prevent vendors from making a withdrawal over their balance, since one of our customers also reported this problem. I'll update you in this thread when it will be completed and available to purchase.
3. I think CS-Cart assumes that each vendor has his own points system (vendors decide which products are available to purchase with points), and therefore vendors shouldn't be able to withdraw payment made through points. Changing that would probably require rewriting entire system of points.
4. Is this shipping method you've used assigned to the vendor, or it's a global shipping method? Try to change shipping type and see if anything changes in calculations.
Best regards,
Team CS-Cart Poland
Thank you for your reply, good to hear that the add-on will make it available, but CS-Cart should fix it.
CS-Cart cannot assume that each vendor has its reward points system; if not, what is the purpose of the global setting for PER and reward points? Not forgetting, reward points system should be implemented across multi-vendor platform; that's one of the methods for efficiencies in high conversion rate.
The shipping methods that we assigned to vendors are global shipping method. To allow the vendor to set up their shipping method is just an option if the global shipping method cannot satisfy their needs.
In my personal opinion, CS-cart is a sound system for an IT savvy individual vendor who would prefer to start their online business by themselves without networking. It is certainly not a modern and mature software platform to group sellers into one effective and efficient marketplace; simply because it has lots of rooms to improve as a marketplace; that's why the customization demand is high.
We cannot believe that CS-Cart does not take care of a simple security flaw issue and leave room for customization in the user registration password requirement; we never come across any software that needs only one character requirement as a password.
Regards,
Hello,
As we mentioned before, we've made an add-on which allows you to block withdrawals above vendor's balance.
It is available here: https://cs-cart.pl/moduly/narzedzia/limits-for-vendors-accounting-payouts/?sl=en¤cy=USD
Best regards,
Team CS-Cart Poland
