Welcome to a practical Zapier tutorial! In this guide, we'll walk through automating the granting of the transaction right after a provider has paid a lead fee. Granting transaction rights is a key step to implementing a lead fee in a reverse marketplace.
By default, transaction rights are granted manually in Console. With Zapier, you can automate this process. Once the payment is confirmed via Stripe, Zapier triggers the user permission update in Sharetribe, automatically granting the user the right to initiate transactions. This automation saves you time and effort by eliminating manual granting of user permissions.
Let’s dive into the technical setup and streamline your marketplace workflow!
About Zapier
Zapier is a powerful and versatile tool for integrating different tools into your marketplace. You can learn more about Zapier in our introductory article or through this brief video from Zapier.
If you haven’t read the introduction and the action/event Zapier articles, we encourage you to do so to understand better how Zapier works. But if you want to dive straight into action, feel free to read on!
What you need for this tutorial
External accounts
Stripe Payment Page
Set up a Stripe payment page to collect the lead fees. This page will handle the payments before automatically granting the transaction right.
Zapier Account
Create a Zapier account if you don’t already have one. You can sign up at www.zapier.com.
During registration, Zapier may ask which apps you plan to use. You can enter Sharetribe at this point or add it later.
How to set up your marketplace
Lead fees are typically used by reverse marketplaces to charge providers for the ability to contact leads. Your marketplace must be configured in a certain way to support a reverse marketplace and the resulting Zapier automation.
Here is how you should set things up in brief:
Enable restrict transaction rights feature
Ensure that the restrict transaction rights feature is enabled in your Sharetribe marketplace.
Dynamic Parameters Set Up
Add the User_ID and Email Address as dynamic parameters to the transaction rights CTA button. This is crucial to ensure that the correct User ID and email address are fetched during the Zap process so the correct user gets granted the transaction rights.
Marketplace Activity
Your Sharetribe marketplace (test or live) should have at least one user who doesn't have transaction rights so that Zapier can perform the action of granting this right and test whether this works. If you don’t have any recent users, create one now to ensure there’s data for Zapier to process.
With these pieces in place, let's get started!
Getting your Integration API key from Console
You'll need Integration API keys to connect your Sharetribe marketplace to Zapier.
Navigate to Build > Advanced > Applications
Click on "+ Add a new application"
Give the application a descriptive name (like Zapier), and select "Integration API".
Click "Add application".
Important: Copy and paste the Client ID and Client secret to a safe place, like a password manager.
IMPORTANT: Think of the Client ID and Secret as a sort of a password to your marketplace that can be used to access your marketplace data through other services. Note that you won’t be able to ever see the Client secret to this application again in the Console under any circumstances. Make sure you copy it to a secure place. If you lose it, you will need to create a new application.
Creating the Zap, step by step
(Optional) Importing the Zap template
Go to www.zapier.com and log in with your account (or create a free one if you don't already have one)
Open the pre-made Zap for automatically granting the transaction right here.
Click on "Try this Zap."
Step 1: Find the payment in Stripe
First, locate the payment in Stripe that will be used as the trigger for granting the transaction right to a user in Sharetribe.
In the Setup section, select the Stripe as the app
Select "Checkout Session Completed" as the Trigger event
Connect the Stripe account where you set up the lead fee payment page.
Click Continue to move to the Configure section
Select "True" in the would you like to use test mode data for the test sample field.
Click Continue to move to the "Test" section
Test the trigger, and make sure it finds a recent Stripe payment. You can perform a Stripe payment in Test mode (Learn how here).
IMPORTANT: Test payments in Stripe (payments using test credit card credentials and the test checkout page) do not work as triggers in Zapier. This means you will not be able to test the fully automated workflow while Stripe is in Test mode. Only Live mode payments on a live checkout page can trigger a Zap. Nevertheless, you can use Stripe’s test data only if you are finding the record it creates in Zapier manually while testing your Zap.
Step 2: Grant transaction rights
Once the Zap is triggered by Stripe after a successful payment, the next step is to update the corresponding user's permission in Sharetribe, and grant them the transaction right.
In the Setup section, select Sharetribe as the app
Select "Update permissions" as the Action event
Connect your Sharetribe account
Click Continue to move to the Configure tab
Add "Client reference ID" as the User ID.
Select "True" in Permission to initiate transactions. Leave the other options unchecked
Click Continue to move to the "Test" section
Test this action to confirm that Zapier grants the transaction right to the correct user on your marketplace
Final thoughts
Thanks for reading this tutorial about creating a Zap for your Sharetribe marketplace to automatically grant transaction rights to a user after the lead fee is paid!
There is a companion tutorial for automating the revoking of transaction rights after they are used by the provider. Follow our Zapier tutorial to set it up.
You can also learn more about the possibilities to monetize your marketplace with one-time fees or the possibilities to monetize your marketplace with subscriptions.
Feel free to read through other parts of our Zapier guide as well: the Introduction and the article about Events and Actions. We also have tutorials and templates for various different Zaps available, including SMS notifications, digital calendar invites, and more. You can read about all our templates in this article.
Please get in touch with us from your Console or from the bottom right section of this page from the chat widget if you have any questions about this guide, or anything else. We'll be happy to help!