At Local Line, we build great software for food hubs. We support hundreds of thriving food hubs and co-ops across North America including, Argus Farm Stop, Siskiyou Farm Co, and Eat Local Huron, to name a few.
We know manually paying your vendors week after week can be time-consuming and, frankly, annoying. There are so many different exports and spreadsheets to keep track of, as well as banking information, totals, payment terms–the list goes on. A big part of running a food hub successfully is staying on top of administrative tasks, and your time is valuable.
That’s why we’re excited to launch vendor payouts—the ability to pay all your vendors directly from Local Line with the click of a button!
When a vendor connects with your Local Line account, they will share a price list with products that you make visible on your storefront. All shared products will have a blue linked icon in your Products table.
When you receive or log an order, your vendors are automatically notified of their own individual orders from your hub, so they know what products to deliver to you. For example, if I log an order with 10 apples from Vendor A and 10 carrots from Vendor B, both Vendor A and B receive their own order, just for their specific products.
Once the orders have been fulfilled, you can use the Vendor Payout feature to pay all your vendors. To send money to your vendors, click Connections > Vendor Payouts. The totals owed are based on the original price the vendors had on their shared products. For example, if Vendor A charged $4.00/lb for their apples and you added a 30% markup to the product, you would have charged $5.20/lb, but you will pay the vendor $4.00/lb.
In your vendor payouts table, all the vendors, orders, payment status’, transaction status’, and amounts due will be visible. To pay a vendor, select the vendor and press ‘Payout.’ You can bulk-pay vendors by selecting multiple orders at one time. Before payment is sent, you’ll be asked to select your desired bank account to send money from.
The Transaction Status column allows you to monitor the status of your payment. Once a vendor has been paid, the Payment Status in the vendor’s orders table will be marked as ‘Paid.’ Once the vendor receives their payment, the status will automatically change to ‘Funded’.
Note: vendors must be connected to LocalPay in order to use this feature. Hubs do not need to be connected. This means Hubs can continue to use Square or Stripe and still utilize the Vendor Payouts feature.
To export a report on your vendor payments, head to the Orders table. Here you can filter by date, vendor, fulfillment option, and more. Select all the orders you want included and click Export in the top right corner. From the dropdown, select Vendor orders totals (payout).
At a glance, you can see the transaction status, order number, and payout totals.
Stop spending hours each week manually paying your vendors and start saving time by automating your vendor payments in under a minute! Here are just a few of the benefits of using this feature:
The vendor payouts feature is now included in all Local Line accounts. Payments are conducted via ACH, and the vendor will pay a 1% ACH fee on each payment (capped at $50/transaction).
The first step is to connect your vendors to your hub. To invite a new connected vendor, head to Connections and click Invite Vendor at the top right corner. Vendors will then receive an email to set up their accounts with Local Line.
Next, your vendors will need to set up with LocalPay. This can be done under Payments > Payment Gateway Setup. Click Connect in the LocalPay module, and the vendor will be prompted to submit their LocalPay application. After your vendors have been approved, you will be able to start paying digitally through Local Line.
Note: Vendor payouts are only available for connected vendors who are set up with LocalPay. If you have any questions, please reach out to our team at support@localline.ca.
To get set up with vendor payouts, first, you need to connect a bank account to your Local Line account. This can be done under Settings > Vendor Payout Methods. You can add as many different accounts as you’d like.
Once your bank account(s) is connected, you can start to pay your vendors!
Running your food hub on Local Line is easy. Our suite of food hub features, such as shared products, inventory syncing, and now in-app vendor payouts, will increase your efficiency and streamline your workflows.
