How buying group reselling works

A buying group is a company that pays resellers to buy specific products at retail and ship them to the group's warehouse. The group pays back the purchase price, often with a small premium, and the reseller keeps the credit card rewards or cashback earned on the purchase.

This page explains the words used in the rest of these docs.

The basic cycle

1. The group posts a deal. A deal names a product, the stores where you may buy it, and the payout per unit.
2. You commit or reserve. Many groups ask you to commit to a number of units before you buy. A commitment often has a deadline.
3. You buy the product at the retailer, usually with a rewards credit card, and ship it to the group's warehouse address.
4. You submit tracking. You give the group the tracking number so it can match the package to you when it arrives.
5. The group checks in the package and pays you the agreed payout, by ACH, check, or the group's own payout schedule.

Each step creates something to track: the commitment, the order, the tracking number, the payout and the profit. A reseller with hundreds of orders across several groups and several retailer accounts loses money when one of those items slips: a missed tracking submission, a short payout, a commitment deadline.

Words you will see

• Buying group (BG): the company that buys the products from you. Examples: BFMR, BuyingGroup.com, Deal & Runner, USA Buying Group, BuyersForPoints.
• Deal: a product the group wants, with a payout per unit and a list of allowed stores.
• Commitment or reservation: your promise to deliver a number of units of a deal, often by a deadline.
• Payout: what the group pays you per unit. "Above retail" means the payout is higher than the store price.
• Tracking submission: sending the carrier tracking number to the group.
• Warehouse address: the address the group tells you to ship to. Some groups use several.
• Cashback: the percent you earn back on the purchase from your credit card or a cashback program.
• Jig: a small change to a shipping address (for example "STE" instead of "SUITE") so that a store sees several orders as going to different addresses. Stores often limit how many units one address can buy.
• Mismatch: a payout that does not match what you expected or what the group reported.

Where BuyingGroupPro fits

BuyingGroupPro keeps all of these in one place. It imports the orders, links each to its group and commitment, sends the tracking, records the payout, and shows the profit after cashback. See what BuyingGroupPro is and the quickstart.