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Commission is what you charge a seller for a sale. It is set as rates, each with the rules for when it applies, and recorded per sale as a commission line that never changes afterwards. Find them under Sellers → Commission rates.

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A rate

A percentage rate can carry a floor and cap per currency — at least 1,atmost1, at most 50 — so a small sale still earns you something and a large one is not commissioned without limit. A fixed rate states its fee per currency, and applies only in currencies it has an amount for.

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The list is the precedence

This is the most important thing to understand, and it is deliberately simple. When a sale happens, Spree walks your enabled rates from the top of the list and takes the first whose rules match. There is no scoring, and no built-in idea that a product rule beats a category rule. What you see in the table is exactly what happens — to change the answer, drag a row up or down. Two consequences:
  • A rate with no rules matches everything. That is how you express your default — and it belongs at the bottom, because anything below it can never be reached.
  • New rates are created at the top, since a new rate is there to say something more specific than what exists.
If nothing matches, no commission is charged. A marketplace with no rate covering a sale charges nothing rather than inventing a default nobody set.

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Rules

Rules narrow when a rate applies. A rate can hold several, and all of them must match; the items listed within one rule are alternatives. So “electronics from these three sellers” is two rules on one rate.

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What the fee is charged on

  • Net of tax, by default. The customer’s VAT is not the seller’s revenue, so commission is charged on the amount excluding it. Switch tax inclusive on to charge on the gross instead.
  • After discounts, always. Commission is charged on what the customer actually paid — a promotion is the seller’s concession.
  • Delivery is optional. Include shipping charges commission on the delivery charge as well as the goods. A fixed fee cannot do this, since charging it again on the parcel would double it.

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Tax on your commission

Your commission is a service you sell to the seller — a separate taxable supply from their sale to the customer. It is taxed at the seller’s location, not the shopper’s: a German marketplace charging a French seller is a cross-border business supply, and where the shopper lives has nothing to do with it. The tax rate is taken from the rate itself if you set one, otherwise from your tax setup using the seller’s address, otherwise from the store’s default commission tax rate.

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What gets recorded

When an order is placed, the matching rate is applied and the result frozen as a commission line — one per item, plus one per delivery where the rate includes it. Every field is a snapshot: editing or deleting the rate later changes nothing already charged. Lines cannot be edited; correcting a charge means recording a reversal, as with any ledger. Sellers see their commission on each earning in their panel.