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This page covers how a single cart spanning multiple sellers is split into per-seller orders at checkout.

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Why carts are split

A marketplace cart can hold offers from many different sellers. Each seller fulfills, ships, and settles independently, so a single combined order would be impossible to operate. Instead, on completion the cart is divided along seller boundaries. Every seller with items in the cart gets its own Order, and all of those orders are attached to one parent OrderGroup. The split is driven by the completeCartWithSplitOrdersWorkflow. It groups the cart’s line items by the seller behind each offer, and builds one order per seller from that seller’s items and shipping methods.
Items are grouped by item.offer.seller_id. Sellers list against the shared master catalog through offers, so the offer, not the product, is what ties a line item to a seller.

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What the split produces

For each seller in the cart the workflow, in one transaction:
  • creates a child Order with that seller’s line items and shipping methods
  • links each order to the group (order_group_order) and to its seller (order_order_seller_seller)
  • mirrors the line-item → offer links onto the new order lines
  • splits payment captures proportionally across the child orders
  • reserves offer-scoped inventory and refreshes commission lines per order
Once every child order is created, the workflow emits order.placed for the orders and order_group.created for the group.
Promotions are attributed per seller: a seller-scoped promotion links only to that seller’s child order, while marketplace-wide promotions are applied as cart adjustments and belong to no single order.

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Independent child orders

After the split, each child order lives its own life. Fulfillment, returns, and refunds are handled per order, so one seller can ship while another is still preparing, without affecting the rest of the group. The group remains the single reference the shopper uses to see the purchase as a whole.