# Seller management onboarding

The Pismo platform provides seller management APIs for managing digital marketplaces, merchants, receivables schedules, rates and fees, advancements, and settlements. Onboarding steps must be completed in partnership with Pismo using the API endpoints or the UI.

This onboarding guide contains details about each seller management component, as well as which endpoints or methods you use to set them up. For a more detailed planning, implementing, testing, and monitoring guide, refer to [Get started with seller management](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/docs/get-started-with-seller-management).

# Onboard an organization (tenant)

Work with Pismo to onboard your organization and create your first program on the Pismo platform. Once those are in place, you can start creating accounts and customers and calling Pismo API endpoints. For more information about all onboarding tasks, refer to [Pismo platform onboarding](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/docs/pismo-platform-onboarding).

# Create the merchant program

Next, create a merchant program. Use the [Create program](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/reference/createprogrambasedontemplate) endpoint with `type` set to `MERCHANT`. You must create a new program for each country where your clients operate, plus create a new program for each country's additional time zones. If the client's country has multiple currencies, then you also create a new program for each currency.

# Create merchants and associate creditors

The Merchant object represents a business that sells products or services in your marketplace. Each merchant has a schedule and a register of transactions in the Marketplace object.

According to the configured commercial conditions, the system updates receivables schedules with the net amounts due. The system assigns the settlement account as indicated through the creditor created and assigned to the merchants. This step requires configuring the merchant status workflow, which the setup team must configure in accordance with discussions with you, the client.

Use the [Create merchant](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/reference/createmerchant) endpoint to create merchants and their associated creditors. Then use [Link merchant and marketplace](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/reference/postlinkmerchanttomarketplacev1) to add the merchants to your marketplace.

## Associating creditors with merchants

The creditor object represents the owner of a business. It’s associated with a merchant object and includes a bank object, which is the merchant account. For example, a creditor could be the owner of a gas station. The owner provides Pismo with the merchant account information for the business. This account receives money from sales during the settlement process.

If a creditor is not provided during the Merchant creation process, this process creates an account and a new creditor, which is automatically assigned to the new merchant. This assignment ensures all funding transfers to the merchant occur using this creditor account.

# Create marketplaces

Use [Create marketplace](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/reference/postmarketplacesv2) to create a Marketplace object and a scheduler for that Marketplace. You use the Marketplace to group merchants who share the same tax structure and setup. You use the scheduler when you want to split transactions between multiple merchants. You can also set up a calendar schedule to handle settlements for all the merchants that belong to the Marketplace object, and collect rates and fees over the sales performed by those merchants. You can create multiple marketplaces depending on your business needs.

# Link merchants to marketplaces

Once you have merchants and marketplaces set up, you link the merchants to the marketplace using the [Link merchant and marketplace](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/reference/postlinkmerchanttomarketplacev1) endpoint to add merchants to a given marketplace.

# Create processing codes

Processing codes identify and classify operations for accounting purposes. Examples of processing codes for the seller management API include sales operations with or without installments, settlements, transfers, and discounts related to the sale operation. You must inform the Pismo team of the processing codes used for merchant transactions to add them to the merchant transactions filter. Refer to common processing codes in the [Define processing codes](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/docs/step-3-define-processing-codes) step of the [Get started with seller management guide](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/docs/get-started-with-seller-management).

# Configure creditor operations

The seller marketplace rules engine defines the creditor operations used when a merchant transaction occurs. For each creditor, the rules engine determines the days to pay the merchant after a sale, the number of installments, rates and fees to discount and pay the marketplace, other fees, and balance impacts as debit or credit. Use [Create creditor operation](https://developers.pismo.io/pismo-docs/reference/postcreditorsoperations) to configure your rules.

Now that all the configuration and onboarding is complete, you can learn more about day-to-day operations in [Running seller marketplaces](step-4-running-marketplace-operations).