Setup for BigCommerce vendors

Introduction

This article will guide you through the process of setting up the Mothership Vendor Portal and connecting it to your BigCommerce store. This article is for drop ship suppliers. That's the businesses in the drop shipping partnership who is responsible for carrying inventory and fulfilling orders.

Prerequisites

As part of this tutorial, you'll be connecting your Mothership account to a retail partner. You may have received an email from your retailer inviting you to connect with them on Mothership. That email contains an invite key that you'll need later in the tutorial. Although you can skip the retailer-connection step, you may want to ask your retailer to send you an invite email if you have not already received one.

Getting Started

The first step in the process is to create a Mothership Vendor Portal account by opening your browser, going to https://vendor.mothership.fm/users/register, filling out the form, and then clicking the register button at the bottom.

Review Drop Shipping Tax Policies

Next, you'll be asked to review and acknowledge Mothership's drop shipping and tax policies. There are a couple of important things to remember.

• Mothership does not collect sales tax or VAT on transactions between you and your retailer.
• You should ask for a wholesale, resale, or equivalent certificate from your Retailer.
• Contact your trusted sales tax professional for guidance on your sales tax responsibilities.

Connect to BigCommerce

Instructions for the BigCommerce App Store Reviewer

Please note, the Connect link on the BigCommerce row does not currently work as we do not have an app-store listing nor do we yet have the ability to trigger the install from a link. We get the following error message when we click the Connect link next to BigCommerce.

As such, you'll need to leave the Mothership Vendor portal and install Mothership directly from the listing in the BigCommerce app marketplace.

BigCommerce will ask you to confirm that you want to install Mothership Supplier into your store. Please review the permissions that you are granting Mothership and click the Confirm button when you are finished.

Next

Tell us about your business

After finishing the BigCommerce installation, you should be returned to the Mothership Vendor Portal to complete the onboarding process. Review the information on this page, particularly the currency settings, and then click 'continue' at the bottom.

On the following page, please provide the address for your business and then click 'Continue'.

Configure shipping rates

Next, we're going to configure your shipping rates. Click the Add Country button to create your first set of shipping rates

In Mothership, for each country that you ship to, you're going to define a tiered set of shipping rates - economy, standard, and expedited. Those rates can be fixed rate, price-based, weight-based, per unit rate, or carrier calculated.

Fixed Rate Strategy (formerly Flat Rate):

• Description: Charges a consistent shipping rate for every order, regardless of destination, weight, or subtotal.
• Use Case: Suitable for scenarios where a simple, uniform shipping cost is preferred, such as flat-rate shipping offers.

Price Based Rate Strategy:

• Description: Calculates shipping costs based on the subtotal of line items in the order.
• Use Case: Ideal for applying shipping rates that scale with the total cost of items purchased, accommodating variations in order value.

Weight Based Rate Strategy:

• Description: Computes shipping charges based on the total weight of items in the order.
• Use Case: Useful for determining shipping costs based on the physical weight of products, catering to logistics that depend on weight categories.

Per Unit Rate Strategy:

• Description: Charges a fixed shipping rate per unit of each product ordered.
• Use Case: Beneficial for situations where shipping costs need to reflect the quantity of items purchased, particularly effective for products with varying shipping requirements like surfboards or large items.

Carrier Calculated Rate Strategy:

• Description: Utilizes real-time shipping rates from carriers based on factors like destination, weight, and package dimensions.
• Use Case: Suitable for businesses that want accurate shipping rates directly from carriers like UPS, FedEx, or USPS, ensuring precise shipping costs tailored to specific orders.

During the onboarding, you'll only be asked to set up shipping for one country. You can configure shipping to additional countries after you've finished the onboarding process. Click continue at the bottom when you're ready.

Connect to your retail partner

On the following page, you'll be prompted to enter an invite key.

You can find this key in an invite email sent to you through Mothership from your retail partner (see image below). If you did not receive an invite email, you can either contact your retail partner to have them send you one, or you can skip this step and connect to your retailer later.

After you enter the invite key and click connect, you'll be prompted to configure how you want Mothership to calculate wholesale prices for this retailer. Transactions in Mothership typically work on a sell high, buy low principle. Your retail partner is going to sell your products to their customers at a higher retail price and then turn around and buy the product from you at a lower discounted wholesale price.

About wholesale pricing calculations

Mothership provides a broad set of tools for calculating a wholesale price, but most of our customers just set a default margin. Provided there are no other more specific rules applicable to a product, Mothership is going to discount the retail price of the product by the default margin to calculate the wholesale price. For example, if the retail price of the product is $10.00 and the default margin is 30%, Mothership will calculate the wholesale price to be $7.00.

Since some retail partners can specify how they want the partnership to operate, the following steps may be slightly different. We'll first cover the most common case where the retailer has not configured the structure of the partnership. Then we'll quickly go over the case when the retailer has setup partnership terms.

Connecting to a retailer without partnership terms

Most retailers do not have the ability to configure the terms of the partnership. As such, you need to configure a default margin to use in the wholesale pricing calculations as well as indicate if you want Mothership to recalculate the wholesale price whenever the retail price of the product changes in your ecommerce platform.

Connecting to a retailer with partnership terms

As mentioned before, some retailers can create partnership terms that allow them to specify certain operational aspects of the partnership:

• Required minimum margin - The minimum percentage discount off of the retail price that the retailer expects when purchasing a product from you at the calculated wholesale price. Any product sold to the retailer must be at a wholesale price that reflects a margin greater than or equal to this percentage.
• Wholesale pricing calculation frequency - The retailer can indicate if they want the wholesale price to be recalculated whenever the retail price of your product changes.
• Invoicing method and frequency - The retailer can configure the methods by which they want to be invoiced (e.g. by credit card, payment outside of Mothership, etc) and the frequency at which they want to be billed (e.g. per-order, daily, weekly, etc)

If you are partnering with a retailer who has defined partnership terms, after you enter the invite key you will be asked to review and accept the terms. If you agree to the terms, click the accept button at the bottom. Otherwise, you can skip the step and contact the retailer to see if they will make adjustments.

On the next page, you'll see the required minimum margin or be asked to configure a default minimum margin depending on what the retailer specified. Additionally, you may be asked to configure when Mothership calculates the wholesale price or that choice may be set by the partnership terms.

Once you're ready, click the 'Continue' button at the bottom.

Invoicing your retailer

After you've configured Mothership to calculate wholesale prices for your retailer, you'll need to tell us how and how often you want to invoice the retailer. As mentioned previously, some retailers can specify aspects of the partnership in advance. As such, some invoicing options may not be available depending on the retailer you connect with.

By default, the only invoicing method available is to handle the finances outside of Mothership. However, Mothership can automate the transfer of funds between the retailer and you by charging the retailer's credit card or issuing invoices through a payment service. If you want to automate payments, you can configure an integration with a payment service provider (such as Stripe) after you've completed the onboarding process.

Click Continue at the bottom once you're done making your selections.

Welcome aboard!

Great! You setup your Mothership Vendor Portal Account, connected it to BigCommerce, and connected to your retail partner. For next steps you should check out the following tutorials: