Products are the core of all marketplaces, and WC Vendors make it simple and easy for both marketplace admins and vendors to manage their products. Internally speaking, the product author is the owner of the product. That means that both marketplace admins and vendors can have products listed on the marketplace at the same time.
- Vendor product permissions
- Vendor product capabilities
- Vendor products
- Approving vendor products
- Adding a product as an admin
Vendor Product Permissions
You can enable or disable product management as a whole for your marketplace or for individual vendors.
- Navigate to WC Vendors > Settings > Capabilities
- On this screen, you will have various permissions that you can enable or disable for all vendors
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Submit Products | This will enable the ability for vendors to submit products. If vendors cannot submit products check this setting. |
| Edit Live Products | This will determine if a vendor can edit a product that has already been published. |
| Publish Approval | This will determine if products must be approved before they are published to the marketplace. |
| Edit Approved Products | This will determine if a vendor can edit a product that has already been approved and published. |
| Import Products | This enables product exports on the vendor’s frontend dashboard |
| Export Products | This enables product exports on the vendors frontend dashboard |
Vendor Product Capabilities
WC Vendors provides a capability management system to determine what products vendors have access to. These capabilities apply to vendor products during adding, edits and import/export.
- Navigate to WC Vendors > Settings > Capabilities
- Click on the Products subheading.
The following table will outline what the various options will do when enabled. These options are what you want to hide from the users views.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Product Types | This determines what product types are available to a vendor to create. This will also be populated with extension products such as bookings or auctions. |
| Product Type Options | This determines the product type options such as virtual and download. |
| Product Data Tabs | This will determine which product data tabs will be visible on the product edit pages. |
| Featured Product | This will determine if vendors can use featured products on the WordPress admin product edit screen. This does not work on the frontend dashboard |
| Delete Product | This will determine if vendors can delete products. What happens with the product is determined under Trash capabilities. |
| SKU | This will determine if the SKU field is hidden from vendors |
| Taxes | This will determine if tax fields are hidden from vendors. |
Vendor Products
All products on the marketplace can be viewed from the WordPress admin area. From the main WooCommerce products page you can see all products from all vendors and the marketplace. You can filter these products per vendor, category or any other WooCommerce filter you have available. You can see who a product is owned by looking at the Vendor Store column on the main screen.
Approve pending products
If you have required that products must be approved before publishing you can approve these products from the Products screen in the WordPress Admin. All products requiring approval will have their product status set to Pending.
- Navigate to Products > All Products
- Click on Pending
- View / Edit each product and update the status to published to approve the product.
Adding a product as marketplace admin
As the marketplace admin, you have access to the WordPress admin area and all standard features of WordPress and WooCommerce. You can add a product as you would normally in WooCommerce.
You can read the WooCommerce product management docs here.
To add a product you would go to the Products menu and click ‘Add New‘. This will give you the familiar product edit screen. We have created the vendor dashboard Standard product edit template to include all of the same features and settings as the default WooCommerce add product page.
Please Note
WooCommerce extensions are not automatically supported by the vendor dashboard on the front end. This is because we cannot replicate all of the existing actions and filters in the WordPress admin within the vendor dashboard.
Commission product tab
If you would like to create a product commission override you can use this tab to achieve this. If you have WC Vendors Pro installed you will get more commission options.
Shipping
If you are using a supported shipping plugin including WC Vendors Pro then you will get additional shipping options on the shipping tab.
Assign product to the vendor
As outlined in the vendor management article you can assign products to vendors on this screen. You will have the option to change or assign the vendor while adding or editing the product.
