zDirect onboarding: Account setup

Account setup is required in order to use zDirect and to start selling on the Zalando platform. During this step, you’ll provide Zalando with information such as your company details, banking details, billing information, your key contacts and VAT details. Before we dive into the details, here is an overview of what will need to be done:

1. Login to zDirect.

2. Click the Settings icon on the top right of the page.

3. Click Business Profile: this will take you to the Onboarding dashboard. To learn more about the Onboarding dashboard check out the zDirect Getting Started guide.

4. Next, refer to the Complete your onboarding part of the dashboard which will have a list of tasks that you should work through.

5. Find the task Set up your account and click on Set up. This will take you to the Account setup overview page. 

When you first log in to zDirect, you will only see the Contract details section inside the Account setup.

Post contract signature, you will see and provide information for two profiles: 

• Company profile

• Country profile

You should first start by filling in the Company profile and then submit it for review. Once your Company profile has been reviewed, you will receive an email informing you whether the profile was approved or rejected. If your Company profile was rejected, you can find more information on the rejection reason and the specific issue(s) on zDirect. Once you’ve resolved the issue(s), you should resubmit the profile for review. 

After you submit your Company profile for review, you can start working on the Country profile(s) and submit it for review once done. You will find details on how to complete these profiles further below.

6. Once both the Company profile and the Country profile(s) have been approved, your Account Setup will be finalised. Your Onboarding dashboard will update to show this task as completed with a green tick mark.

When you first login into zDirect, you will need to submit your legal entity details.

It consists of the following fields:

Company name and address: Enter the company legal entity name and HQ address used in the contract(s) with Zalando. This should exactly match the full company name (including legal form, such as ‘Limited (Ltd.)’ or ‘GmbH’), and the address on your company’s Trade Register Excerpt or Certificate of Incorporation, which you will also need to submit. Please include any abbreviations and spaces in the name and address.

Signer details: Here you need to share the details of the person signing the contract with Zalando. Please make sure that the person signing the contract has the signing authority and that they are listed in the company’s current Trade Register Excerpt. If you have a second signer that you would also like listed in the contract, you can also add them below.

Upload the Trade Register Excerpt or Certificate of Incorporation: We need to ensure that the information shared by you in the form matches with the official documents, therefore we also need you to upload the documents. You can upload either the Trade register excerpt or Certificate of Incorporation. 

• Trade register excerpt: A trade register excerpt is an official document issued by the competent court of commercial registration of the selling legal entity. A trade excerpt may contain one or more of the following: Registered business name, date of registration, trade register ID, registered address, name of signatories and more.

• Certificate of Incorporation: A certificate of incorporation is a legal document/licence proving the formation of a company or legal entity. A certificate of incorporation may contain one or more of the following: Business name, date of foundation, address, shareholders and more.

Tax details: The following details are required for tax purposes:

• VAT ID: The VAT ID of the country where your company is legally registered and matches the above mentioned address.

• VAT certificate: A VAT certificate is a document that confirms that your business is officially registered for VAT purposes. A VAT certificate must include the name of the legal entity responsible sole proprietor which/who is selling towards the end customer, address and your VAT ID in the country of VAT registration. In general, you should submit a VAT certificate which is not older than six months. 

By now the first point on the left hand side of the Company profile page should show a green check mark, as you have submitted the necessary information.  All you need to do now is to send your Company profile data for review by clicking the Send for review button in the Zalando approval section. Your information will be assessed and you’ll get an email confirming your status and any next steps.

Once your contract details have been approved, and your contract signed, navigate to the Account setup overview page. Click Continue in the Company profile section at the top of the page to start submitting the necessary information. 

Once on the Company profile, you can refer to the list on the left side of the page for the key tasks that are covered in this section. Please note that the Contract details section you have submitted earlier is already approved, as indicated by the green tick mark.

There are two key sections remaining: 

• Business details

• Compliance details

For further help, you can refer to the information section on the right side of the Company profile page. 

If you do not have all the information required for Compliance details, you can still complete your Business details and move on to Country profile submission. We recommend that you apply to get the missing compliance details right away so as not to delay your go-live date. Once you have the pending information, you can add it to your profile.

This is the first section you will need to fill in under the Business details section where it consists of the following fields: you will be asked to share contact details. The contact(s) you need to share will depend on your chosen fulfilment (logistics) method. Important: Please note, that you will need to set up user roles for these contacts separately and manage their access rights as necessary. Please refer to this article on zDirect user roles and how to set these up.  

Main Company Contact: Your primary contact for the partnership with Zalando’s Partner Program.

• Main Company contact: The primary contact for partnership with Zalando.

• Logistics/Operations contact: The person in charge of logistics and operations management.

• ZFS Commercial contact: The person handling commercial discussions around ZFS.

• ZFS Invoices contact: The person managing ZFS invoicing.

This is where you need to provide specific billing and banking information. It has following sections:

Billing mode

Here you can specify your billing preferences for the Partner Program. With billing mode, you specify in which currency you would like to get paid by Zalando. 

Zalando payment options allow you to receive your payments in the following way:

1. Receive all payments in local currencies (EUR, CHF, PLN, etc.) with Local currency mode

2. Receive all payments in EUR with Euro mode.

If your bank is willing to convert a local currency to EUR for you there is also a third option for you to receive some payments in local currency and some in EUR. 

• Local currency mode

You receive the payments of all transactions in the original currency of the transaction without any currency conversions. This is recommended if you operate in non-Eurozone countries as an easier way to pay suppliers or employees in their local currency. 

• Euro mode

You receive the payments of all transactions in the Eur. Zalando will convert all transactions to EUR before sending them to you. You will need to pay if you want to change the payment to a different currency again.

For example, if you operate in Germany, Switzerland and Poland, you can define different EUR, CHF and PLN bank accounts (Local currency mode) or only a EUR bank account (Eur mode). In order to receive payments in the local currency for some of your markets, you can specify the local bank accounts (for instance, Swiss bank account for CHF) for those currencies and Eur or other accounts in another currency (for instance for Germany and Poland for receiving payments in Euro). For Poland your payments will be sent in PLN currency to your EUR company banking account and converted by your bank to EUR using the internal currency conversion rate. 

Invoice Language

Please specify your preferred language for invoices here.

Bank account details

Here you provide the bank account details for each currency you will be doing transactions in. If you have selected the Local currency mode, you will need to specify the bank accounts for each local currency. In case of Euro mode, you specify only one bank account for payments from all sales channels. It’s only possible to receive EUR payments to a single bank account. Adding another banking account for EUR is not possible.

You need to include the account holder name, bank name and IBAN to receive any payments from Zalando. Make sure this is accurate to avoid any delays.

You must also provide a confirmation document. Please ensure that the Official Bank Confirmation Letter contains IBAN/SWIFT details and Account Holder name. The Account Holder name field is not case sensitive, such as lower or upper cases, and the legal entity extension is optional.

In this section you can add or modify your shop name. The shop name is displayed when customers browse your products on Zalando. You can check how this is displayed by clicking the Show preview button.

How you fill out this section depends on your chosen fulfilment set up.

Return address: Here you’ll need to provide an address for your warehouse, where you plan to receive returned or damaged items. Please note that the return address must be in the EU. 

Under the Fulfilment details section you’ll have to provide an address(es) to warehouse(s) to receive two types of stock:

• Defective Goods: the warehouse address where you wish to receive any defective stock.

•  A-Goods return address: the warehouse address for all of the ZFS articles that are returned through a Stock return/Return to Merchant (RtM) process, and/or articles that have landed in quarantine storage. If it is the same address as above, you can just click the Copy defective goods address button.

Your logistics department should be able to provide you with this information. 

By now all of the tasks under Business details on the left side of the Company profile page should show a green check mark, as you have submitted the necessary information. All you need to do now is to send your Business Profile data for review by clicking the Send for review button in the Zalando approval section. Your information will be assessed and you’ll get an email confirming your status and any next steps.

This section can have up to two parts:

• Fixed Establishment (EU)

• EU One Stop Shop (OSS) details

Fixed establishment (EU): A fixed establishment is an establishment of a business in addition to its HQ, in a country other than the country of the principal establishment. If your company is not based in the EU or Northern Ireland, please check with your tax department or tax advisor if you have a fixed establishment within the EU or Northern Ireland.

If your business HQ is registered outside the EU or Northern Ireland and you are selling in the EU, you may need to provide your Fixed establishment address within the EU and the corresponding local VAT ID.  If this doesn’t apply to you, you can confirm by selecting I do not have a fixed establishment in the EU, as shown in the screenshot below.

If you have a Fixed establishment in the EU or Northern Ireland, you will need to provide its legal address, along with an official statement from your tax advisor as proof of address. Additionally you will also have to provide the VAT ID certificate registered at the Fixed establishment address. 

1. The official statement should consist of the name of the legal entity which is selling to the end customers including address of the Fixed establishment and VAT ID registered against the Fixed establishment.

2. A VAT certificate is a document that confirms that your business is officially registered for VAT purposes. A VAT certificate must include the name of the legal entity which is selling towards the end customer, address and your VAT ID in the country of VAT registration. In general, you should submit a VAT certificate which is not older than six months.

One Stop Shop (OSS): If your company is registered for the One Stop Shop (OSS) tax scheme in the EU or Northern Ireland, you can provide the single OSS VAT ID and certificate to cover all your EU VAT requirements. If you are not registered for OSS, you must provide VAT details for each country you intend to sell articles in through Zalando.

You will need to submit this information only if you are selling in one of the EU countries. Additionally, if you do not have a legal entity in the EU or Fixed Establishment in the EU or Northern Ireland, you will not be able to submit OSS details with us.

Proof of OSS registration: Please upload a document that confirms the VAT ID in your country of statutory seat or domicile is registered and used for One Stop Shop (OSS).

VAT group: Your legal entity may be part of a domestic VAT group, and so have no individual domestic VAT number assigned. If that is the case, you’ll need to provide:

1. A confirmation letter from the relevant tax authority/tax advisor.

2. A copy of the One Stop Shop (OSS) filing application of the VAT group parent legal entity

If your legal entity is not part of a VAT group, you will only need to submit the OSS VAT ID.

Fixed establishment (UK): A fixed establishment is a secondary establishment of a business, in a country other than the country of the principal establishment. If your company is not based in the UK, please check with your tax department or tax advisor if you have a fixed establishment in the UK.

If your business is registered outside of the UK and you are selling in the UK, you may need to provide your Fixed establishment address within the UK and the corresponding VAT ID. If this doesn’t apply to you, you can confirm by selecting I do not have a fixed establishment in the UK, as shown in the screenshot below:

If you have a Fixed establishment in the UK, you will need to provide the legal address of your Fixed establishment, with an official statement from your tax advisor as proof of address. Additionally you will also have to provide the VAT ID certificate registered to the address of the Fixed establishment. 

1. The official statement should consist of the name of the legal entity that is selling to the end customers, including the address of the Fixed establishment and VAT ID registered to the Fixed establishment.

2. A VAT certificate is a document that confirms that your business is officially registered for VAT purposes. A VAT certificate must include the name of the legal entity which is selling towards the end customer, address and your VAT ID in the country of VAT registration. In general, you should submit a VAT certificate which is not older than six months.

You can add the Tax ID numbers under Compliance details in your Company profile of your Business profile.

If you are a sole proprietor

Please submit your personal tax identification number, issued by your EU country of residence.

Please note that this number is usually assigned by the federal tax authority to natural persons only and is valid for life. If you have any further questions, please refer to this page of the European Commission.

If you are not a sole proprietor and operating under any other legal form

Please submit the local tax number issued to the EU headquarters of your company or partnership by means of a tax assessment notice

This number is issued by the local tax authorities and is valid until further notice. You will usually find this tax number on your company's or partnerships’ annual tax assessment notice. In case your company or partnership holds a tax registration in another EU Member State, please also provide us with the corresponding local tax number issued by this state (under point ‘Additional local EU tax IDs’).

In order to use ZFS, a valid VAT must be provided for each country in which your articles may be stored in a warehouse and offered for sale. Zalando offers warehousing in Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Sweden, and Spain.

As the primary ZFS warehouses are located in Germany, please first share your German VAT ID and certificate. If you have registered with Zalando for the ZFS International Outbound program, please also provide the corresponding VAT IDs of the warehouses which are enabled for you. Learn more about the ZFS International warehousing program here. 

If you are fulfilling your own orders, outbound warehouses are the warehouses where your articles are stored before shipping them to customers. If you are using multiple warehouses to serve Zalando customers, please add them all here. 

If the warehouse(s) your company uses have a Limited Risk Distribution (LRD) setup, you will need to provide proof of the LRD setup. Otherwise, you will need to provide a VAT ID and certificate for each warehouse.

To add these details, you need to provide the legal address and your corresponding VAT ID and certificate for all the outbound warehouse(s) your company uses. You only need to provide a single ID per country. For example, if you have multiple warehouses based in Germany, you only need to provide one German VAT ID. If you are using the LRD set up, a VAT ID is not required.

Please note that EU customers should only be served by EU warehouses as per Zalando’s Platform rules. Find further information here:

• • Article

  Platform Rules

Once approved, you will find the warehouse ID on this page. Warehouse IDs are available on this page after approval. In case of multiple warehouse addresses, you must share the warehouse ID for each customer order, so that Zalando can know the shipment warehouse for tax payments. 

By now all the sub sections under the compliance details section on the left hand side of the Company profile page should show a green check mark, as you have submitted the necessary information. All you need to do now, is to send your Compliance details data for review by clicking the Send for review button in the Zalando approval section. Your information will be assessed and you’ll get an email confirming your status and any next steps.

Once you submit the Company profile for review, you will be able to start working on the Country profile for each of the countries you plan to sell in. This enables you to share country specific information where necessary. 

On the Account setup overview page, refer to the Country profile section and click View on the country you want to submit the profile for.

You’ll then see the following fields you need to work on: 

• Business details

  • Contact details

  • Fulfilment setup: The information you need to provide will depend on your chosen fulfilment method.

• Compliance details: The information you need to provide will depend on your chosen sales channels and the OSS status.

You will need to provide country level contacts for these types:

• Customer Service contact: The person who works on customer service requests.

• Customer Escalation contact: The person who deals with customer service cases that have been escalated. This must be an individual email address. Not a group address.

• Partner Program Invoices contact: The person who handles all monthly invoicing.

This section will apply only to partners with their own fulfilment. 

In this section, you will be asked to provide details on your returns warehouse. If it is the same address as the one you set in the Company profile section, select Use company default. Otherwise, you can fill in the fields below. 

Here you will need to select your carrier and the delivery method. 

This section applies to you if you sell in countries other than the EU countries or if you sell in the EU countries but don’t have the EU One Stop Shop (OSS) registration.

If this section is applicable to you, you will need to provide us with the local VAT ID and the corresponding certificate in every country where you intend to sell your products or are already selling your products. 

Once you are done with this section, make sure to submit it for review. Once it has been approved by our team, your Account setup will be completed and you will be informed by email. 

You can see the review status for each of the profiles and the Approved tag on the Account setup overview page. 

If you need support with Account setup or have any questions, please reach out to us through our contact form, select the topic Onboarding and then select zDirect account.

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