1. Switching it on and finding your way
What the dealer portal is, which plans include it, where it lives, what each tab is for and who can change what. Start here.
Where it is
Settings for this
- Settings → Billing & plan — The Dealer Portal comes with the Professional and Business plans
Who this is for: owners, admins and sales managers: the people who set up the dealer portal and run it. Once orders start arriving, lesson 5 of the Orders course takes over.
The dealer portal gives each business that buys from you (a reseller, a fitter, a store) its own login to your catalogue, at their price, with the stock you actually have. They order, pay, track deliveries and lodge returns there. You set it up once on the Dealer Portal page, and their orders land on the Orders desk with every other order.
Is it switched on?
The dealer portal comes with the Professional and Business plans, and with the free trial. It isn't sold on its own.
On another plan, the sidebar has no Dealer Portal link, and a saved link to the page shows a locked page with a Change plan button. That goes to Settings › Billing & plan.
Where to find it
Sidebar Sell › Dealer Portal (open it). The Preview portal button sits at the top right.
The tabs
| Tab | What's on it | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | What's waiting on you, and how dealers are trading | Anyone who can see sales orders |
| Returns | Return and warranty requests from dealers | Anyone who can see invoices |
| Applications | Businesses that applied through "Become a dealer". A number shows how many are new | Anyone who can see settings |
| Dealers | Your dealer companies. Click one to open it | Anyone who can see settings |
| Groups | Head offices and the stores under them | Anyone who can see settings |
| Users | Every dealer login, across all your dealers | Anyone who can see settings |
| Setup | Everything you set once (below) | Anyone who can see settings |
A tab your role can't open doesn't show.
Dealer orders aren't here. They're worked on the Orders desk, Dealer channel (Sell › Sales › Orders). An old link to a Dealer Portal "Orders" tab goes there.
Setup, screen by screen
Setup has a row of buttons across the top. It opens on Orders & invoicing.
| Setup screen | What it sets | Lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Orders & invoicing | Invoicing, order limits, delivery, payment and drop ship at checkout | 5 |
| Pricing tiers | Each tier's price, its discounts per product group, and its order limits | 3 |
| Guardrails | Products with no price or image, and a minimum margin | 4 |
| Hidden items | Products, categories, brands or suppliers hidden from dealers | 4 |
| Product groups | Groups of products, for discounts and collection cards | 3 and 4 |
| Storefront | The dealer dashboard and Products page: collections, brands, promotions, messages, filters | 4 |
| Features | Optional sections, the AI Quote tab, delivery date emails, stock display, lead times | 7 |
| Resources | Install videos, PDFs, links and articles for dealers | 7 |
| Price notices | Notices about price changes | 7 |
| Sign-up form | The "Become a dealer" form | 6 |
| Support form | The form behind the dealer Support tab | 7 |
| Theme | Brand, colours, logos, fonts and the portal's web address | 2 |
| Usage | Which dealers use the API, feeds and resources | 7 |
Who can change what
Anyone who can see settings can open these screens, but changing them is mostly for an owner, admin or manager:
- Owners, admins and managers only: every Setup screen except the Sign-up form and Support form, inviting dealer logins, and Preview portal.
- Anyone who can change settings: the Sign-up form, the Support form, and approving or declining applications.
So in practice, an owner, admin or manager sets the portal up.
Overview
Waiting on you shows Need an invoice, Invoices to approve, To dispatch and Quote requests, plus Open returns if you can see invoices. Each tile opens the Orders desk, filtered to dealer orders.
If dealer invoices aren't drafted for you yet, a card says Skip a step on in-stock orders and links to Setup › Orders & invoicing (lesson 5).
Dealer trade has 30 days, 90 days and 12 months: Sales ex GST, Orders, Average order, Dealers ordering, Owed by dealers, a chart, Top dealers and Top products.
Preview portal
- Press Preview portal and pick a dealer from the list.
- The portal opens in a new tab, as that dealer: their prices, their stock and their documents.
- A yellow bar across the top says it's a Preview. It's read-only: carts, orders and payments are switched off.
- Press End preview when you're done.
It shows your unpublished theme too, so you can check a change before dealers see it. A preview lasts 8 hours. It needs at least one dealer, so add a test dealer first (lesson 6). Only owners, admins and managers can preview.
What happens by itself
- The Applications tab's number refreshes every couple of minutes.
- Old links to Settings › Dealer portal open the matching tab here.
Where it ends
You know where everything lives. Work through lessons 2 to 7 in order (theme, pricing, what dealers see, checkout, dealers, extras), then lesson 8 takes you live. The setup map lists every screen and the settings outside the Dealer Portal that change it.
Lesson 1 of 8 in Setting up your dealer portal. Next: 2. Your brand and web address: Theme.