Module 07
Vendor Portal
The vendor experience in Marketing Central is purpose-built and appropriately scoped. Vendors can manage their product catalog, receive orders, update fulfillment status, and provide shipping information — without seeing any data outside their own products and orders.
"Vendors can add products, update pricing, manage shipping options, provide order status updates, and supply tracking information. Vendor access is scoped to their own data only."
Vendor Onboarding
Vendors do not self-register. Liberty's admin team adds vendors to the platform and issues credentials. This preserves Liberty's control over which vendors appear in the catalog and ensures that vendor access is always explicitly granted, not self-provisioned.
Discovery identified the following vendors currently fulfilling Liberty Tax marketing orders: Impressions In Print, Awarity, Potato Head, Alwan Printing, 1 Vision, Entripy. Shipping carriers include UPS, FedEx, and USPS. The platform is designed to accommodate additional vendors; onboarding a new vendor is an admin action, not an engineering task.
Admin-Initiated Setup
Liberty's admin creates the vendor account, assigns a category (print, digital, promotional), and configures the vendor's data scope. The vendor receives an invitation email to set up their credentials via Entra External ID. From that point, they access only their assigned products and orders.
Strict Data Isolation
A vendor account has access to exactly and only: products they have submitted (including their approval status), and orders that contain their products. Vendor A cannot see Vendor B's products or fulfillment data under any circumstances. This is enforced at the data layer, not just the UI layer.
Vendor-Level Settings
Each vendor has configurable settings for lead time, production capacity, supported product types, and shipping origin address(es). These settings feed the carrier rate calculation and the estimated delivery date shown to franchisees at checkout.
Product Management
Vendors manage their product catalog directly in Marketing Central. Adding a new product, updating pricing, or adjusting inventory does not require Liberty's team to act as an intermediary — it goes through an approval workflow instead.
Vendor Submits Product
The vendor creates a new product submission: product name, description, specifications (dimensions, materials, print specs), pricing (base price + quantity tiers), available variants (size, paper stock, color options), lead time, and shipping weight/dimensions. Supporting files (spec sheets, sample images) are attached.
Liberty Reviews and Approves
New product submissions enter a marketing review queue. Liberty's team can approve, reject, or request changes to the product details before it appears in the storefront. The vendor is notified of the decision and any required changes. Only approved products are visible to franchisees.
Product Goes Live
Upon approval, the product is published to the storefront catalog under the appropriate campaign and product type taxonomy. Liberty's team assigns the campaign, fund eligibility, and any regional availability rules — the vendor does not control catalog categorization.
Updates and Pricing Changes
Vendors can update product details (pricing, specs, variants) at any time. Pricing changes and material changes go through a Liberty approval step before the update is reflected in the storefront. Minor updates (description edits, photo replacements) may be configured to publish without a review step.
Order Telemetry
Order status updates are the most operationally important function of the vendor portal. The current platform's failure in this area — status updates that are manual, inconsistent, and often missing — is the primary driver of franchisee support volume around orders.
Order Notification
When a franchisee places an order for a vendor's product, the vendor receives immediate notification via their portal and configurable email. The notification includes all necessary production details: item, quantity, customization file (if applicable), shipping address, and required delivery date.
Status Update Workflow
Vendors update order status through the portal interface: Received, In Production, Shipped, Delivered. Each status update is timestamped and immediately visible to the franchisee in their order history. An SLA is associated with each status transition — orders that are late to update generate an alert to Liberty's admin team.
API Integration for High-Volume Vendors
High-volume vendors who have their own order management systems can integrate via Marketing Central's vendor API rather than updating status manually in the portal. Status updates flow from the vendor's system directly into Marketing Central without portal login. The per-vendor integration approach is determined during discovery.
Cancellation Handling
Vendors can flag an order as cancelled (with reason) within the cancellation window. Orders cancelled by the vendor are flagged for Liberty admin review. The franchisee is notified immediately, and any fund reservations tied to the cancelled order are released.
Shipping & Tracking
The vendor portal is the source of both carrier-provided shipping quotes (via API) and vendor-specific fulfillment information. The combination gives franchisees accurate pre-purchase cost estimates and real post-purchase tracking.
Carrier Rate Integration
UPS, FedEx, and USPS provide real-time shipping rate APIs accessible via their public developer programs. Marketing Central queries these APIs at checkout using the product's configured weight and dimensions, the vendor's ship-from location, and the franchisee's ship-to address. The franchisee sees actual carrier rates — not flat-rate estimates that undercount real shipping costs.
Vendor-Quoted Shipping
For products where vendor-provided shipping quotes are more accurate (e.g., bulk print jobs where the vendor has negotiated carrier rates), vendors can supply their own per-product shipping pricing. The checkout surfaces both the carrier rate and the vendor quote where applicable, and Liberty's admin team configures which is used as the basis for the quoted price.
The current platform's shipping estimate failures — where franchisees are quoted one price and charged another — stem from estimated flat-rate shipping that doesn't reflect actual carrier charges. Real-time carrier API integration at checkout means the price shown is the price charged. No more $150 shipping invoices for $30 worth of materials.
Carrier Tracking Numbers
When a vendor marks an order as Shipped, they supply the carrier tracking number. Marketing Central stores this and surfacing it directly in the franchisee's order history with a deep link to the carrier's tracking page. No copying tracking numbers from emails.
Delivery Confirmation
The platform can poll carrier APIs for delivery confirmation on tracked shipments, automatically updating order status to Delivered when the carrier confirms. This means franchisees don't have to check the carrier website separately — the delivery confirmation shows up in their Marketing Central order history.