Shop Owner Payments Changing - NOW LIVE!

Shop owner Payments Changing

First of all, thank you for your time, patience and understanding as we migrated all of our architecture and implemented InShape 2.0, and as we continue to work out kinks. Its been a huge undertaking that had an effect on all of our systems and we're confident it will make Shapeways even more awesome.

With the majority of the work behind us, we're excited to announce one of the first of many benefits of our new site architecture, which are improvements to shop owner payments. We've created a simpler payment method, designed to make sure shop owners get paid faster for your sales and the details are easier to understand. Payments to shop owners still go out on the 15th of each month, along with a report of all your sales.

What is changing:
Your markup is ready for payment to you as soon as items that you've sold are shipped. That means we are getting rid of the "30 day freeze period" and paying you faster! For example, if your item ships on the 14th you will get paid the markup for that item the very next day on the 15th. If your item ships on the 16th, you will be paid the following month on the 15th. Please be aware that until you earn more than US$30 in markups, no payment will be made.

Additionally, for this month only, we will pay EVERYONE, regardless of whether you met the $30 minimum, in order to clear the books and start fresh.

FAQ's below: (please note, these will be updated on the site by Friday in the FAQ section)
Shop owner Payments
We will pay your accrued shop markups minus the Markup Fee to your PayPal account once a month on the 15th. Generally it will work like this: Your markup is ready for payment to you as soon as the item is shipped, up until 11:59PM UTC on the 14th. So if your item is shipped by the 14th, you will get paid the markup for that item the very next day on the 15th. If it is shipped on the 15th or 16th, you will be paid the following month. If you have US$50.00 of accrued markups on the 16th of March, your payment will be sent out to you by the 15th of April. Thus we will make payments to you a maximum of 32 days after the date they were accrued.

Please be aware that if you earn less than US$30, before the Markup Fee and before VAT (if applicable), then the amount will not be paid, but will accrue to your account until such time as it becomes equal to or greater than US$30.

So what happens when you make a sale?

1. A customer buys an item from your shop and pays for it
2. You get a 'Yippie you sold a model' email and the sale shows up in your My Sales page as a Pending Sale
3. The order goes into production and is shipped
4. Your markup becomes payable and moves in your My Sales page to Confirmed Sales with a payment date of the next 15th of the month
5. The 15th of the month rolls around and all markups in Confirmed Sales are paid to your paypal account in USD, minus the markup fee.
6. Any remaining Pending Sales should get paid the next payment period, provided those items ship by then.

What happens if a customer is unsatisfied?
Shapeways will deal with all customer service. We want to enable you to have great designs and sell them. If an issue in your design is raised by a customer we will inform you and work with you to improve it.
If a customer returns the product or gets a refund, Shapeways will refund the customer and still pay you your markup, but will endeavor to work with you to resolve the issue so it does not happen again. If there are recurring returns and/or refunds on your product, we will reserve the right to remove it from sale until the issue is resolved.

If a customer cancels their order before it has shipped, Shapeways will refund them and not pay your markup. So you would see this in pending sales, but it would not make it to confirmed sales. Once the item is shipped, Shapeways pays you your markup, regardless of whether a customer is unsatisfied with it.

If you have any further questions, or need clarification, please let us know!

Thank you,
Natalia

Note: Along with shop owner payments going out on the 15th, the My Sales page will be back online to restore full visibility into all past sales.

WOW! That's a heck of a risk that you're taking on with paying markup on what could be bad prints.
I hope you're not hurting your financial bottom line by doing so.

Hi Stony,

Thanks for your concern! We never take money from a shop owner after a model has shipped, so there is actually no change to our risk.

The service team will work together with a shop owner if we discover the model is faulty (ie/ thin walls) to fix it for future sales.

How well I know... :laughing: :laughing: I'm always pushing the envelope.

You have with me in the past. I had a FD item that broke in the post - I'm 99% certain you did a charge back on me for that. I also would have very much appreciated someone working with me to help correct the problem - did manage to get some advice on the forum though.

This was it

https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&goto=4857 1&#msg_48571

I hope things are better now

Tom

$50, or $30 as the minimum for payout?

THanks for pointing out that that may be confusing Paul,

You will only get paid if your minimum is at least $30.

The $50 is an arbitrary number as an example, I will edit it to make it clearer.

Best,
Natalia

Hey guys you've all probably seen this email we sent out earlier today with your payments:

Hi Guys,

We'd like to thank you for making the Shapeways marketplace amazing and we are happy to share a few improvements we think you'll be excited about.

We've improved the way we process payments in order to pay you faster for your sales. We are getting rid of the "30 day freeze period" so your markup is ready for payment to you as soon as items that you've sold are shipped. For example, if your item is shipped on the 14th, you will get paid the markup for that item the very next day on the 15th. If your item is shipped on the 15th or 16th, you will be paid the following month on the 15th. Please be aware that until you earn more than US$30 in markups, no payment will be made. Additionally, for this month only, we are paying everyone, regardless of whether you met the $30 minimum, in order to clear the books and start fresh.

With every monthly payment that we deposit into your PayPal account, we will send you an email notification with the total amount paid and a link to a report detailing all items sold.

This link will take you to the improved My Sales Page which gives you a detailed view of your sales history. We are providing absolute transparency into your sales on an item by item basis. We are showing you pending, confirmed and past sales all in one easy place.

With our new data structure, we are able to break each order down into its individual items and thus eliminate any discrepancies.  We now show your exact markup to be earned as soon as each item ships.

We know that many of you already run your business on Shapeways, and this is a huge step towards making that a much better experience.

For more information on specific scenarios and examples, feel free to check out 'How we Pay'  or the Shops FAQ's.

As always, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns,

Best,
Natalia and the whole Shapeways Team


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I also wanted to provide some additional information: As you look through your history on the My Sales page, you may notice some small discrepancies in reporting prior to August 15th. These reflect the payment corrections we made in May and they are now clearly visible as a result of this update in our reporting.

As we move to an item by item invoicing system all information on the My Sales page after August 15th is accurate to the double decimal point and it eliminates any potential rounding errors, or errors caused by splitting and combining of orders.

If you have any more questions, concerns or feedback, the entire service team will be back on Monday.

In the meantime, we're here on the forums for you

Best,
Natalia