Selling & hosting on Carp Army

1 Become a business APPROVAL

Business status is reviewed and approved by the Carp Army team — it isn't instant, so apply early.

1. In the app, open Become a Business and complete the application — your business name, category, and contact details.
2. Submit it. The Carp Army team reviews and approves your application before your business account goes live.
3. Once approved, sign in to the Business Dashboard at business.carp.army to access everything in this guide.

2 Set up your storefront

Your storefront is your shop window inside the app — brand it so anglers recognise you.

Business details

1. Go to Store in the dashboard and fill in your brand name, category, business type (company or sole trader), registration and VAT numbers, phone, website, trading address and date established.
2. Write an "About your business" bio and set your typical dispatch speed — buyers see this as a badge (e.g. "⚡ 2-day dispatch").

Branding

1. Upload your logo and a banner (1200×400), and choose your brand colour and shop background.
2. Pick a default product layout (grid or list) and sort order. A live preview shows how your shop looks in the app.
3. Use Preview as buyer to open your public shop page exactly as anglers see it.

3 Connect Stripe (do this first)

You can't publish a product or take a payment until Stripe is connected — so set it up before you list.

1. Open Stripe in the dashboard and start onboarding. You'll be taken to Stripe to enter your business and bank details.
2. Once connected, sales are paid to you automatically, minus the 5% platform fee.
3. Come back any time to open your Stripe dashboard and see incoming transfers.

4 List your products

Create a product

1. Go to Products → Add product. Add your images (the first is the main image), title, description, condition, price, stock, category and a URL slug.
2. To publish you need Stripe connected and at least one image. Not ready? Save as draft.

Variants

If a product comes in options — colours, lengths, test curves — turn on "This product has variants" and define the dimensions. Carp Army builds an SKU matrix so you can set price, stock and barcode for each combination.

Get the listing right with AI

Bulk & promotions

• Bulk CSV import — upload many products at once. It accepts a Shopify export or the native Carp Army template.
• Flash sale — set a temporary sale price and duration on any product, or end it early.
• Product boost — pay to push a product to the top of the marketplace listings for 24, 72 or 168 hours.
• Duplicate — clone an existing product as a draft to save time.

5 Manage stock across channels

Keep one source of truth for stock, even if you sell in more than one place.

Stock Control

1. Open Stock Control to edit stock levels per product and variant.
2. Hit Sync All Now to push your stock out to any linked platforms.
3. Anything at or below 5 units is highlighted as low stock, and you'll see low-stock alerts on your Analytics too.

Channel Allocation

Channel Allocation is where stock management gets powerful. Instead of a single global figure, you split each product's available units across your active channels — and the platform enforces the split, so you cannot oversell on one channel just because stock is available on another.

1. Open Inventory → Channel Allocation and select a product. You'll see a row per active channel: Carp Army Marketplace, Carp Army Live Auctions, eBay, Shopify, WooCommerce, plus a Reserve Buffer.
2. Enter how many units you want available on each channel. The total cannot exceed your on-hand stock — the form tells you if you're trying to over-allocate.
3. Hit Save Allocation. From this point, each channel draws only from its own bucket; a sell-out on eBay has no effect on your Carp Army listing.
4. Use the Reserve Buffer to hold back a safety net — units that no channel can touch until you choose to release them. Useful for last-minute walk-in orders or unexpected bulk requests.

Live locks

When you schedule a Shop Live stream, you can mark a number of units as Live Locked — they're pulled from your Carp Army allocation and held exclusively for the stream. Viewers who buy during the broadcast draw from this locked bucket. Once the stream ends, any unsold locked units are released back to the main allocation automatically. This prevents a surge of orders from your storefront draining products you're actively selling on air.

6 Manage orders

1. Open Orders to see everything that's sold. Orders are tagged by channel — Marketplace, Shop Live or Affiliate — and you can filter by status.
2. When you ship, mark the order Shipped and add a tracking number and carrier (Royal Mail, Evri, DPD, Parcelforce, DHL and more).
3. Print a packing slip per order, or a combined pick list across several orders to speed up dispatch.
4. Need to reach a buyer? Their shipping address and a contact email are on the order. You can also respond to any dispute from here.
5. Export your orders to CSV whenever you need them for your own records.

Order disputes

When a buyer raises a dispute — "item not received", "not as described", "wrong variant" — it appears in Orders → Disputes with a status badge and a 3-business-day response clock.

1. Open the dispute to read the buyer's reason and any photos they've attached.
2. Post your response in the dispute thread — include your shipping evidence, tracking screenshot, or photos of the item before dispatch. The buyer can see your reply and respond.
3. Choose an outcome: Full refund (processes automatically via the original payment method), Partial refund (enter the amount), or Reject (with a written reason the buyer can see).
4. If you don't respond within 3 business days, the dispute auto-resolves in the buyer's favour.

7 Discount codes & cart recovery

Create a discount code

1. Go to Discounts and create a percentage or fixed-£ code.
2. Set a minimum order value, a maximum number of uses and an expiry, then generate the code.
3. Pause, resume or delete codes any time, and watch live usage counts against each one.

Win back abandoned carts

A cart is flagged as abandoned after a shopper adds items but doesn't complete checkout. The Abandoned Carts dashboard shows who left, which products they had, and the total basket value at risk — so you can act before the moment passes.

1. Open Abandoned Carts to see each shopper's name, basket contents, value, and how long ago they left.
2. Select one or more carts and tap Send Code. Pick one of your active discount codes — a push notification and email fires to that shopper instantly, with the code and a direct link back to their basket.
3. If the shopper checks out using the code, the cart row moves to Recovered. Your recovery rate and revenue rescued are tracked directly on the screen.

8 Messages & reviews

• Messages — buyers can ask questions about a product; reply from your inbox and keep an eye on the unread badge.
• Reviews — read your product reviews, see your average rating, and post a public seller reply to any review. A thoughtful reply to a tricky review does a lot for buyer confidence.

9 Analytics & insights

Know what's selling, what's stalling, and how you're performing as a seller.

Overview

Your Overview dashboard shows total revenue, orders, average order value, a revenue-by-day chart, top products, and a payout summary. It also gives you a Seller Performance Score out of 100 — built from dispatch rate, delivery rate, average rating and refund rate — with tips to improve it.

Deeper analytics

• Switch the period (7 / 30 / 90 days) and see your revenue trend and top products with views and ratings.
• Sales by channel shows where your revenue comes from (Marketplace, Shop Live, Affiliate).
• Seasonal performance plots 12 months and highlights your peak — handy for planning stock around the season.
• Export any of it to CSV.

10 Run an Affiliate programme

Let anglers promote your products and pay them only when they drive a sale.

How it works

Any Carp Army Pro member is automatically an affiliate — there's no application to approve. You choose which products are available and at what commission; affiliates tag those products in their posts and captures; when their followers buy, they earn commission and you fulfil the order as normal.

Set it up

1. Open the Affiliates section and toggle affiliate on for the products you want promoted (or Enable All).
2. Set the commission % per product — anywhere from 1% to 50% (the default is 10%).
3. Watch the affiliate leaderboard, clicks-vs-sales, and recent affiliate sales roll in.
4. When an affiliate requests a payout, review it under Payout Requests and approve — the commission transfers straight to their bank via Stripe.

11 Sell live with Shop Live

Stream to anglers and sell in real time. You broadcast from the mobile app; you plan and review from the dashboard.

1. In the dashboard, schedule a stream with a title, description and time. Your followers are notified 15 minutes before you go on.
2. Reserve stock for the stream using a live lock (see Channel Allocation) so you don't oversell.
3. Go live from the mobile app and feature products for viewers to buy — or run an auction — with checkout right inside the stream.
4. Afterwards, open Live Results for the full debrief — covered below.

Live Results — reading the data

Every stream produces a Live Results report in the dashboard. It's not just a vanity scoreboard — each metric tells you something actionable:

• Viewer stats — total unique viewers, peak concurrent, and a minute-by-minute audience chart. A dip means you lost attention at that moment; a spike means something you said or showed worked. Repeat what caused spikes; cut what caused dips.
• Engagement — total likes, comments and chat volume per minute. High chat volume with low sales usually means an engaged audience that wasn't ready to buy; high sales with low chat means a quieter crowd that converted without needing much convincing.
• Gifts received — total coin value sent and breakdown by individual gift type. This is income — it goes straight to your earnings balance.
• Sales — each featured product with units sold, revenue and conversion rate (viewers who bought ÷ peak viewers). Compare against your pre-stream locked stock to see how much you moved.
• Auction results — winning bid, winner name, and current fulfilment status.
• Recording — the full stream, downloadable and shareable as a Reel direct from this screen.

12 Take fishery bookings

If you run a venue, let anglers book and pay for swims in-app. The 5% fee applies; funds arrive in 3–5 business days.

1. In the dashboard's Fishery Bookings section, register your fishery (this is reviewed before it goes live).
2. Add your lakes — each with its own map location (address, GPS or what3words for pinpoint access), photos, and rules.
3. Add swims to each lake with capacity (single/double), price per night, minimum nights, an "open from" date and any per-swim discounts.
4. Turn on online bookings, then manage availability with a calendar — block out dates and closures as needed.
5. Anglers book and pay for overnight swims in-app. You can also offer whole-lake hire for groups. Track it all on the Revenue tab.

13 Register as a bait manufacturer APPROVAL

Bait companies get an extra layer of product detail once verified.

1. Open Bait Manufacturer and submit your application. It moves from Pending to Approved once the team reviews it.
2. Once approved, flag your products as bait and add bait-specific details — type, flavour and size.

14 Payouts, refunds & statements

Getting paid

With Stripe connected, your sales transfer to your bank automatically, minus the 5% fee. You can also request a withdrawal from your balance.

Refunds

1. When a buyer requests a refund, it appears under Refunds.
2. Approve to refund the buyer automatically via their original payment method (your balance adjusts), or reject with a note. Aim to respond within the 3-business-day window.

Statements

Download monthly commission statements as PDFs — gross sales, the 5% commission, your net payout and the transaction count — ready for your accounts. VAT is self-accounted, and there's a note on each statement to remind you.

15 Business Drive

Cloud storage for everything your business needs to look its best — product photography, brand assets, price lists, catalogues.

Business Drive is your on-platform file library, organised by type so you can find and reuse assets across the dashboard without downloading and re-uploading every time.

What to store

• Product images — upload your full photography library and select images directly when creating or editing a product, without leaving the dashboard.
• Brand assets — logos in multiple formats, banner artwork, and colour swatches for consistent branding across your storefront, integrations and embeds.
• Price lists & catalogues — PDFs you can share with wholesale buyers or link from your storefront bio.
• Documents — terms, warranties, care guides, and any files you want to attach to orders or share with customers.

How to use it

1. Open Business Drive and use the folder structure to stay organised — one folder per product range or season works well.
2. Upload files from your device. Supported types: JPEG, PNG, WebP, PDF, CSV, and video (MP4/MOV up to 500 MB).
3. Anywhere in the dashboard that asks for an image — product listings, storefront banner, discount artwork — you'll see a Choose from Drive option alongside the usual upload button.
4. Share a file externally — each file has a permanent URL you can copy and send to a wholesale buyer or embed on your own site.

16 Multi-channel selling & integrations

Carp Army isn't a silo — connect your existing sales channels, shipping accounts and accounting software so everything flows through one dashboard.

Sales channels

When you connect a sales channel, Carp Army becomes the hub: your stock figures push out to that platform, and orders placed there pull back in so you manage everything from one place.

• Shopify — two-way sync via the Shopify API. Products you add in Carp Army push to your Shopify store; Shopify orders pull into your Orders page tagged Shopify. Stock levels update in real time after every sale on either side.
• WooCommerce — same two-way sync via the free Carp Army WooCommerce plugin (available from the Integrations screen). Once the plugin key is in place, connect it in the dashboard and the sync mirrors the Shopify flow.
• eBay — listings push from your Carp Army product catalogue to eBay. eBay orders come back as an eBay-tagged order, ready to ship and mark dispatched from the same Orders page.

Connecting a channel step by step

1. Go to Integrations → Sales Channels and select the platform.
2. Follow the OAuth flow or paste your API credentials — the dashboard guides you through the exact steps per platform.
3. Hit Test Connection to confirm the link is live.
4. Choose which products to sync — push all, push selected, or pull orders only.
5. Set your Channel Allocation (see Stock & channels) so the new channel draws only from its own stock bucket.

Shipping & fulfilment

Once connected, a fulfilled order sends the tracking number back to Carp Army automatically — no manual entry needed.

• Royal Mail Click & Drop, Evri, DPD UK, DHL Express — connect your carrier account; Carp Army pushes orders for label generation and pulls tracking back in.
• ShipStation — for multi-carrier workflows; ingests Carp Army orders alongside all your other channels and routes them through whichever carrier you choose.

Accounting

• Xero & QuickBooks — sales invoices, refunds and payouts sync automatically, so your books are always up to date without manual export-and-import.

Custom webhook

Need to push events into your own warehouse system, CRM or ERP? Set up a custom webhook and Carp Army will POST a signed JSON payload to your endpoint on events like order placed, order shipped, stock low, and refund issued. See Developer Portal & API for the full event list.

17 Developer Portal, API & website embeds

For businesses that want to plug Carp Army into their own site, app or back-end systems.

Developer Portal

Open Developer Portal to manage your API access in one place:

• API keys — generate keys with read-only or read-write scope, label each one by use (e.g. "Warehouse sync", "Website embed"), and revoke any instantly if compromised.
• Webhooks — register one or more endpoint URLs, pick which events each should receive, and hit Send Test to fire a sample payload without waiting for a real event.
• Request log — every API call your keys have made, with HTTP status code, latency, and the full request/response body. Invaluable for debugging a broken integration before opening a support ticket.
• Docs — the full API reference with code examples in cURL, Node and PHP.

API tiers

Webhook events

Subscribe to any of: order.placed · order.shipped · order.cancelled · order.refunded · order.disputed · stock.low · stock.depleted · product.published · product.updated · review.created · affiliate.sale · live.started · live.ended. Each payload is signed — verify the X-CarpArmy-Signature header against your API key to confirm authenticity before processing.

Embed & API

The Embed Builder generates a single <script> tag you paste into any website. Configure it in the builder:

• Feed type — My Captures (ideal for an "Our Results" page on a fishery site), Business Products (a shoppable product carousel on your brand site), or Venue Catches (for a fishery displaying public angler catches).
• Theme — light or dark, with your brand colour applied to links and CTAs automatically.
• Layout — grid (2–4 columns) or carousel. Set a max item count and a refresh interval.

Copy the tag, paste into your site's HTML, and the widget stays live — no manual updates needed.

18 Getting help

• Order Disputes — handle any buyer disputes with a message thread and status updates.
• Report an Issue — reach the Carp Army team directly with bug reports or feedback, attach screenshots, and follow the reply thread.

On the roadmap for businesses: Ad Campaigns and Monthly Sponsor placements. Both appear in your dashboard marked "Coming Soon" and will open up in a future release.