> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.shoppex.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Set up your first reseller program

> Recruit B2B resellers who sell your products under their own brand.

A reseller program is bigger than an affiliate program. Affiliates earn a commission for
referring buyers to *your* shop. **Resellers** sell *your* products through *their own*
storefronts, channels, or APIs, with their own pricing.

This playbook walks through enabling the program, configuring it, inviting your first
reseller, and understanding the two operating modes.

## Affiliate vs. reseller — when to use which

|                          | Affiliate                            | Reseller                                                     |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Where the buyer pays** | Your shop                            | The reseller's own setup                                     |
| **Pricing control**      | Yours (always your shop price)       | Reseller sets their own price                                |
| **Inventory**            | Drawn from your shop directly        | Reseller buys stock wholesale from you, or pulls live        |
| **Buyer relationship**   | Yours (you see the customer)         | Reseller's (they own the relationship)                       |
| **Payouts**              | Percent commission per referred sale | Reseller margin between wholesale price and what they charge |

Affiliates extend your reach. Resellers extend your reach **and** build their own business
on top of your catalog. Different commercial relationships.

## Step 1 — Enable the reseller program

The program is off by default on every shop. Enable it from your dashboard at
**Customers → Resellers** (`/customers/resellers`).

You'll configure:

* **Enabled** — flip on.
* **Default mode** — `AFFILIATE` or `WHOLESALE`. This is the mode applied to new resellers
  unless you override per-reseller. Most starts go with `AFFILIATE` mode first, switch
  individual ones to `WHOLESALE` later as relationships develop.
* **Default commission percent** — for affiliate-mode resellers, what cut of each sale they
  earn.
* **Default wholesale discount percent** — for wholesale-mode resellers, the discount off
  list price they buy at.
* **Minimum payout threshold** — minimum balance before a reseller can request a payout.
* **Require verification** — toggle if you want to manually approve every reseller before
  they can transact.
* **Terms URL** — optional URL to your reseller agreement.

## Step 2 — Invite your first reseller

Resellers join by invitation only — there's no public signup form. From the resellers page:

1. Click **Invite reseller**.
2. Enter the recipient's email.
3. Optionally set an expiry on the invite link (default is a few days).
4. Send.

The invitee receives an email with a link to `/invitations/[token]` on the reseller portal.
They accept, create their reseller-portal login, and they're in.

If you have **Require verification** on, they're in "pending" state until you approve from
your dashboard. Otherwise they're active immediately.

## Step 3 — Understand the two modes

### Affiliate mode

The reseller gets a referral link to your shop. Buyers land on your storefront, pay you
directly. The sale is attributed to the reseller and they earn the configured commission
percent.

This is mechanically the same as the customer-affiliate program (see
[Customers → Affiliates](/merchants/customers/overview#affiliates)), but the reseller
relationship has its own profile, lifecycle (invited, active, suspended, terminated), and
balance.

### Wholesale mode

The reseller buys stock from you at wholesale price, then resells through their own
channel. Two sub-flows:

* **Stock transfers** — you transfer a chunk of inventory (e.g. 100 license keys) to the
  reseller at the wholesale price. The transfer creates an internal invoice for the reseller
  to pay. Once paid, the keys move from your pool to theirs.
* **Auto-fulfillment** — instead of pre-buying stock, the reseller's storefront orders pull
  live from your supplier inventory. The reseller's buyer pays the reseller, the reseller's
  account is charged the wholesale price, and you deliver from your pool. This is the
  "drop-ship" pattern.

Either way, the reseller decides their own retail price; their margin is what they charge
minus the wholesale they paid you.

## Step 4 — Reseller-portal tour

Your reseller logs in at the separate reseller portal (a different URL from your main
dashboard — they don't see your shop's data). Their dashboard has:

* **Overview** — sales, balance, recent activity.
* **Links & Embeds** — referral links and embeddable widgets they drop into their own
  websites with `<script>` tags.
* **Auto-Fulfill (Listings)** — products they've listed, with their pricing.
* **Sales** — their order history.
* **Stock** — inventory they own (wholesale-mode only).
* **Payouts** — request and track payouts to their gateway / wallet.
* **API** — generate API keys scoped to `fulfillments.read/write` and `balance.read`. Used
  when they're building their own integration.

## Step 5 — Manage from your side

Back in your **Customers → Resellers**, each reseller has a row with:

* Current balance, total sales, status (active / pending / suspended / terminated).
* Analytics per reseller — sales count, revenue contributed.
* Mode and commission override per reseller (e.g. one strategic reseller on 35% commission
  while default is 20%).
* Approve / reject pending payout requests.
* Suspend (temporary block from new sales) or terminate (permanent cutoff).

## Common questions

**"Can a customer also be a reseller?"** Yes. The same person can hold a customer account
on your shop *and* a separate reseller relationship — they're distinct profiles linked by
the same email.

**"Can a reseller have multiple stores connected to the same upstream?"** They have one
reseller relationship per shop they're working with. To work with multiple upstream shops,
they're invited separately by each.

**"Stock transfers don't fit my product."** That's normal — physical-inventory style stock
transfers only make sense for limited-pool products like serials/license keys.
File-based products and subscriptions work in auto-fulfillment mode where there's no stock
to transfer.