TL;DR: When your item sells we match the marketplace order back to your specific item using two independent identifiers, record the sale against your account, and send you one text and one email. The money is not final that day. Marketplace payouts settle on their own schedule and buyers can return things, so your balance updates as those clear - and we would rather tell you that than promise you a number that moves.
The moment of the sale
An item selling on a marketplace does not automatically tell us whose item it was. A marketplace order arrives with its own identifiers, and the job is to connect that order back to one specific consigned item and one specific consignor.
We do that with two identifiers rather than one: the marketplace's own item number, and the custom label that travels with the listing. When both point at the same item, that is strong evidence and the sale is recorded. When they disagree, nothing is recorded automatically and a person looks at it.
That second rule matters more than it sounds. The failure we are guarding against is not "the system missed a sale" - that gets noticed, because the item is gone and the money arrives. It is "the system attributed a sale to the wrong person", which is discovered by whoever did not get paid. We would rather stop and check.
The update you get
Once the sale is recorded against your account, you get a text and an email. That is deliberate: two channels for one event, not two notifications competing to tell you the same thing.
What you will not get is the same message twice. Every sale carries its own identity through the system, and a retry or a re-check cannot produce a second text. If you ever do receive two messages about one sale, that is a bug and we want to hear about it.
The message tells you what sold and what happens next. It does not quote you a payout date, because at that moment we do not honestly know one.
Why the money is not final that day
Two things sit between a sale and a payout, and neither is ours to speed up.
Marketplace settlement. When something sells, the marketplace holds and then releases funds on its own schedule. Selling fees are deducted from the transaction, including the portion that covers shipping.
The returns window. A buyer can return an item. Until that window has passed, the sale is real but not yet final.
So your balance reflects sales that have happened, and it moves as those sales settle. An article that told you "you are paid the moment it sells" would read better and would be false.
If a sale reverses
If an order is cancelled, refunded or returned, we do not delete the sale. The sale happened; the record of it stays. A separate reversal is recorded against it, and your balance recalculates.
Keeping both is the point. A ledger that quietly erases events cannot be audited later, and "it was there last week" is not something you should ever have to say about your own account.
You get an update when that happens too. It is a less pleasant message than the first one, and it is the one that matters most for trust.
Seeing it yourself
You do not have to wait for a message to know where you stand. Your dashboard shows every item, its status, what has sold, what fees were taken, what you have already been paid and what your current balance is - and the same numbers the messages are drawn from.
When there is a balance to pay out, you request it from there. We do not hold money until someone remembers to send it.
Advances
If you took an advance, your share of sales is credited against it first. Your balance can show as negative while that is being worked through, which simply means sales have not yet caught up with what you have already been paid. Nothing is owed back - it comes out of your share of future sales, and once it is covered, sales pay out normally again.
We would rather explain that plainly on a page than have it be a surprise on a statement.
The whole sequence
- Item received and reviewed
- Accepted, or we come back to you with questions
- Listed
- Sold - matched to your item, recorded, and you are told
- Settlement and reconciliation - marketplace payout clears, returns window passes
- Balance updated
- Payout requested and paid
- Anything unsold returned or collected
Steps 5 and 6 are the ones most people are not told about anywhere else. They are also the reason the honest answer to "when do I get paid" is a process rather than a date.