Pay your vendors on a schedule.

Why a CS-Cart marketplace needs a payout routine

Multi-Vendor already knows what you owe each seller. The Accounting page adds orders, subtracts commission and refunds, and keeps a balance per vendor. What it does not do is decide when that balance should be paid, keep money back while refunds are still possible, store the seller’s bank details or produce a file your bank can read.

With a few sellers, a monthly export is fine. With 30 or 50, payout day becomes a shift of balance checks, copied IBANs and single transfers, and the usual mistakes follow: paying a vendor for an order that gets refunded next week, paying twice, or paying a bank account that was changed yesterday by someone who should not have changed it.

Vendor Payouts Automation adds the routine around core accounting. It does not keep a second ledger: every payout request is a core withdrawal, so the balance on the Accounting page stays the only number that counts.

One payout cycle, step by step

1. An order comes in. Core accounting adds it to the vendor’s balance, net of commission, and the add-on notes when the order first reaches a hold-start status (Complete by default).
2. The hold period passes (14 days by default). Only then does that order’s money count as available for payout.
3. On the payout day, the payout run creates a request for each vendor who has payout details, has no request waiting and is above the minimum amount. The amount leaves the balance at once, as a pending core withdrawal.
4. You approve requests in the queue. They become a batch, and the add-on saves a copy of each vendor’s payout details at that moment, so a change made afterwards cannot redirect a payout in progress.
5. You download the batch file, pay through your bank or PayPal, and mark the batch paid with your payment reference. The withdrawals become Completed in core Accounting and vendors get a "payout sent" e-mail.

Vendors follow this on a Payouts page next to Accounting: balance, money on hold, amount available, next payout date, history and monthly statements. That page is usually what stops the "when do I get paid?" tickets. If a vendor was skipped, the Vendor balances page gives the reason in the last column, for example Below the minimum payout, No payout details or A request is waiting for approval.

Payout settings worth deciding before you switch it on

Automatic requests are off after installation on purpose. Review the Vendor balances page, ask vendors to enter their details, set up cron, and only then turn them on. The run takes one daily cron call; without cron it also starts at most every 15 minutes while administrators or vendors work in their panels, never on the storefront.

A vendor’s own schedule beats the plan’s, and the plan’s beats the add-on settings. That is how you give a large seller weekly payouts without changing anything for the rest.

Which payment file do you need?

• CSV for all methods: spreadsheets, manual transfers and accounting.
• PayPal Payouts file: one line per PayPal request, for upload in PayPal Business.
• SEPA XML (pain.001.001.03): one payment per bank request with an IBAN, for upload in online banking. It is offered only when the store’s primary currency is EUR. Requests with an account number but no IBAN go in the CSV instead.

What it does not do

It does not send money. There is no direct connection to Stripe Connect, the PayPal Payouts API or Wise; you pay with the file and then mark the batch paid. That is a deliberate first step: you stay the one who releases funds.

All amounts use the store’s primary currency, and refunds after a payout are handled by core accounting: the next payout is smaller, and a negative balance blocks payouts until it is positive again. There is nothing on the storefront.

If you use Direct Customer-to-Vendor Payments or Stripe Connect, the add-on still works, but it only sees what is left in the balance after the checkout split, for example negative commission.

The add-on needs Multi-Vendor. On CS-Cart Standard or Ultimate the installation is refused, because vendor balances do not exist there.

Payout add-on, payment split or spreadsheet?

If your gateway supports marketplace splits and your sellers are happy being paid per order, a split can be simpler. Payouts on a schedule suit marketplaces that want to hold money through the return window, or that pay by bank transfer. The two can coexist.

A typical stack: Advanced Commission Rules decides the commission, this add-on pays out what remains, and Vendor KYC & Verification can hold payouts until a seller is verified. The full list is on the Multi-Vendor add-ons page; you can buy Vendor Payouts Automation on the store.

Versions and requirements

Multi-Vendor 4.17.2 to 4.21.x on PHP 7.2.5 to 8.3, as your CS-Cart version supports. The SEPA file needs the PHP XMLWriter extension, which almost every host has enabled. No core files or core tables are changed: installation adds its own tables, two privileges and four e-mail templates. Uninstalling removes those, and the withdrawals it created stay in core accounting, so balances do not move.