Getting started as a Shopify supplier on Mothership

Onboarding · Estimated time: 15–20 minutes

This guide walks you through everything you need to do to create your supplier account, connect your Shopify store, and get ready for your first order. Follow each step in order.

📋 In this guide

Setup

1. Step 1 — Create your account
2. Step 2 — Review the tax & drop shipping policy
3. Step 3 — Complete your business profile
4. Step 4 — Set up your workspace
5. Step 5 — Connect your Shopify store
6. Step 6 — Set up your shipping rates
7. Step 7 — Set up payments and invoicing
8. Step 8 — Connect to your retail partner
9. Step 9 — Publish your products

Before you go live

• Product Synchronization
• How orders work
• Placing a test order
• Cancellations & refunds

Step 1 — Create your account

Go to portal.mothership.fm/users/register, enter your business name, email, and password, check the box to accept the privacy

policy, and click Register.

Step 2 — Review the tax & drop shipping policy

Mothership does not collect or remit sales tax or VAT. Tax is handled between you and your retailer. The key points:

• Request a wholesaler’s or reseller certificate from your retailer. This documents the transaction as B2B.
• Sales tax is typically collected by the retailer on their sale to the end customer, not by you on your sale to the retailer.
• If you’re unsure about your obligations, consult a tax professional.

Click “I understand one through four above” and continue.

Step 3 — Complete your business profile

1. Enter your business address

Used for shipping calculations.

Click Continue.

2. Set up your notification email addresses

You can add multiple addresses to each field, then separate them with a comma.

Click Continue.

Step 4 — Set up your workspace

1. Select your workspace type

   Select Supplier — you hold inventory and fulfill orders.

2. Set your workspace currency

Choose the currency your pricing is in. All order and product data are in the supplier’s currency.

Click Save and continue.

Step 5 — Connect your Shopify store

There are two starting points. Pick the one that matches your situation:

🔵 Path A — Started on Mothership first

1. Click Connect next to Shopify in the Vendor Portal

You’ll be taken to the Mothership Supplier app page.

2. Click “Install”, sign into Shopify, and select your store

3. Review permissions and click “Install”

4. Click “Connect” on the Shopify status screen to return to Mothership

Your Shopify store is now connected to Mothership.

🟡 Path B — Started on Shopify first

1. Install the Mothership Supplier app using the direct URL

Sign into Shopify if prompted, select your store, and click Add Sales Channel.

2. Click Connect on the Mothership Supplier Sales Channel

This will direct you to the Mothership Portal to create a portal account (see Path A).

Your Shopify store is now connected to Mothership.

If the connection fails for any reason, you can use the Platform Connection Token as a workaround.

Copy the Platform Connection Token an in the Workspaces section on the Vendor Portal, choose Platform connection token and paste it on the field.

Step 6 — Set up your shipping rates

Mothership will ask how you want to calculate shipping for orders placed by your retail partners. This section covers the most common configurations. You can choose the one that best fits your business. If you need something more sophisticated, please select the 4th option and configure the shipping strategy after onboarding.

Shipping calculation methods

Option 1 — Free shipping within the United States

Choose this if you don't want to charge shipping separately, or if you prefer to build the cost of shipping into your wholesale price.

Option 2 — Fixed amount per order within the United States

Charge the same flat amount on every order, regardless of size or weight. Simple and predictable.

Option 3 — Carrier calculated within the United States

Mothership reaches out to a carrier to get real-time rates for each order.

Option 4 — I need a more sophisticated shipping strategy

Choose this if your needs aren't covered by the options above. Mothership supports price-based, weight-based, and per-unit strategies as well. Select this option now and configure your full shipping strategy after you've completed onboarding.

Click Save when done.

Step 7 — Set up payments and invoicing

Choose how and how often you invoice your retailer for orders.

If you’re connected to Shopify, note that your Mothership subscription billing itself goes through Shopify, as this is a Shopify platform requirement.

Step 8 — Connect to your retail partner

1. You’ll be asked how you want to connect to your partner. Choose the option that matches your situation:

Scenario 1 — You are paying for the subscription

Select "Send an email inviting your partner to connect with you on Mothership." Mothership will send your retail partner an email with an invite key and instructions for connecting their account.

Scenario 2 — Your retail partner is paying for the subscription

Select "Enter an invite code you received from your partner." Paste the invite code from the invitation email your partner sent you.

The invitation email looks like this:

Scenario 3 — You're not sure yet or want to connect later

Select "Skip this step." You can complete the rest of setup now and return to this when you're ready.

Click Next and continue.

2. Set your wholesale pricing

Choose a default margin — the percentage discount off your retail price that the retailer pays. Typical drop shipping margins are 20–40%.

You can also choose whether wholesale prices update automatically when your retail price changes or stay fixed until you manually update them.

3. Set your sales report frequency

Next, you'll be asked how often Mothership should generate a sales report for this partnership. The sales report is a periodic summary of orders, fulfillment, invoices, and refund activity. This file is what most suppliers use to generate invoices.

Choose a frequency from the dropdown (e.g. Daily) and click Continue.

Step 9 — Publish your products

Mothership pulls your products from Shopify. To make a product available to your retailer, publish it to the Mothership Supplier sales channel.

1. In Shopify, go to Sales channels → Mothership Supplier

This shows all your products and their status in Mothership.

• “Published” products are products that have been published to the Mothership Supplier sales channel and pass Mothership’s product validation.
• “Not published” products are products that have been published to the Mothership Supplier’s sales channel but have not passed Mothership’s product validation.

2. In the Vendor Portal, go to Products

A green checkmark means the product is ready. A red X means something is missing, typically a description, image, SKU, or weight on one or more variants.

3. Publish the products you want your retailer to see

Unpublished products won’t be visible to your retailer.

Make your selections and click Continue. Your account is now set up.

Product Synchronization

Mothership automatically polls Shopify once per minute for the latest product and order updates.

The supplier can trigger a synchronization for all of your products by clicking the Sync Products button at the top of the Products index page in the Mothership Portal.

Alternatively, you can synchronize a single product by clicking the sync button at the top of the edit product page.

How Orders Work

How orders flow through Mothership

When a customer buys from the retailer’s store, Mothership automatically creates a corresponding order in Mothership and in the supplier’s ecommerce platform. We then update the order in the retailer’s ecommerce platform with the supplier’s order number.

When the supplier fulfills the order, Mothership sends a fulfillment notification back to the retailer’s ecommerce platform, adds the tracking information to the retailer order, and marks the order as fulfilled. Where possible, Mothership triggers a fulfillment notification to be sent from the retailer’s ecommerce platform to the end customer.

The flow:

Mothership generates a sales report (sent to your sales report email) summarizing all orders and refund activity for a given period. Most suppliers use this to generate invoices.

How the financial components of Mothership orders work

Orders work on a sell-high, buy low basis. Your retail partner is going to sell your product to their end-customer at a higher retail price. When an order comes in, the retailer is going to automatically buy that product, through Mothership, at a discounted wholesale price. The retailer’s gross profit is their retail order total minus the wholesale price of the product minus any shipping charge. Your profit is built into the wholesale price and shipping fee.

For example, consider a product that retails for 10.00. As the supplier, you have configured the partnership so the retailer enjoys a 33% margin. As a supplier, you have also configured a flat fee shipping rate of 2.50. The retailer sells the product for 10.00 and charges 3.00 for shipping. When an order comes in for the item, the retailer’s profit works out to:

Retailer Price = 10.00 Retailer Shipping = 3.00 Wholesale Price = 6.70 Supplier Shipping = 2.50

Retailer Gross Profit = Retail Price + Retailer Shipping - Wholesale Price - Supplier Shipping Retailer Gross Profit = 10.00 + 3.00 - 6.70 - 2.50 Retailer Gross Profit = 3.80

Importantly, Mothership can automate payments from the retailer to the supplier via Stripe. When we do that, Mothership charges a 2.5% transaction fee on the transaction (plus whatever fees Stripe levy). This is an optional service and a supplier can choose to invoice the retailer outside of Mothership.

Accepting payments from your retailers

You have two different options when it comes to how you can accept payments from your retailers for orders they place through the platform.

The first is to invoice the retailers yourself on a frequency you establish with the retailer. You can use the sales reports generate by Mothership to help you generate invoices. This option can be great if you have an accounting department and can handle the overhead of issuing and collecting on invoices.

The second is to automate payments through Mothership’s Stripe integration. In this case, Mothership connects to your Stripe account and accepts credit card payments on your behalf. After the retailer puts a card on file, Mothership will charge that card whenever we place an order in your store from that retailer. Mothership will also issue a refund against that charge whenever you trigger a refund in your platform. Mothership charges a 2.5% transaction fee on payments made through Stripe.

Sales Reports

As the supplier, you can configure Mothership to generate sales reports periodically (daily, weekly, or monthly). These sales reports contain a CSVs that describe all of the order, fulfillment, and refund activity that took place during the invoice period. Sales reports can be used to generate invoices to send to your retail partners.

→ See the full Orders guide for details on order statuses, editing, and fulfillment

🧪 Placing a test order

Before going live, confirm that the full order flow works end-to-end.

1. Ask your retailer to place a test order

They add one of your products to their store and submit an order. Use a low-cost or free product for testing.

2. Confirm the order appears in your Mothership dashboard

It should show up within a minute. Check that the product, quantity, shipping address, and shipping rate all look correct.

3.Fullfill the test order

Fulfill the order without sending it out. You want to confirm that the fulfillment and tracking information flows back through Mothership and to the retailer.

4. Cancel the test order once fulfilled

Cancel the order in Shopify once you’ve verified everything looks right.

→ See the full Test Orders guide

❌ Cancellations & refunds

The most common scenarios:

• Cancel before fulfillment — either party can cancel an order in Mothership before it’s been shipped. The retailer is not charged. In this case, we strongly encourage the party initiating the cancellation to reach out to the other party to coordinate the cancellation. Mothership does not have visibility into the supplier’s fulfillment process (so the cancellation request may come too late) and the retailer needs to notify the end-customer of the cancellation as soon as possible.
• Refund after fulfillment — if a return or refund is needed after shipping, this is handled between you and your retailer directly. Mothership records the refund against the order for reporting purposes.
• Who initiates? The retailer typically initiates cancellations and refunds from their side. You’ll be notified via your partner support email (set in Step 4).

→ See the full Cancellations & Refunds guide

Final checklist ✅

• ✅ Created your Mothership Vendor Portal account
• ✅ Agreed to the tax & drop shipping policy
• ✅ Connected your Shopify store
• ✅ Set workspace type, currency, address, and notification emails
• ✅ Configured shipping rates
• ✅ Connected to your retail partner
• ✅ Set up invoicing
• ✅ Published products to Mothership
• ✅ Completed a test order

What’s next?

Set up Shipping Strategies

Managing Account Users

Mothership Workspaces

Sales Reports