I recently received an order through zenfolio and realized it COST KLC ƒotos money to make a print sale when the price list was set to Base Lab.

Normally when I receive an email about a sale, the email includes the total dollar amount in my account. But this one showed nothing... that made me investigate.

So I went to the order report and saw that the nine 4x6 images that were ordered were resulting in a negative balance for KLC ƒotos.

How did this happen?!

There is a photographer who kindly volunteers his time for organizations, so I had set the price list to "Base Lab Pricing"

Base Lab Pricing is defined as:

Your visitors will be able to order prints and products from the selected Zenfolio Partner Labs at base prices set by the labs. You will not be making any profits on the orders.
 

That seems fine and great! But turns out, zenfolio still charges for the Processing Fees of the total the customer paid.

Thankfully,
a) It was only a $0.62 charge
b) I was able to catch it right away so I could go change the price list to a nominal fee instead before any more orders came in.

Can you imagine if multiple orders while I was away from my computer?! That would have been a disaster!

This is also slightly upsetting as I try to find the balance of how much KLC ƒotos supports photographers who do not create any profit for KLC ƒotos. It's one thing when it costs my time, it's another when it results in a direct cost to KLC ƒotos! Ooof!

This is another case of zenfolio similar to the archive, where I get the logic behind it, but the execution is problematic. I understand the purpose of archiving images, but it shouldn't destroy thumbnails and organization of a site. I understand that there is a price point to even base lab pricing, but either the base lab pricing should incorporate that so that it's just net zero to the photographer as opposed to costing us money.

Check It

Thankfully I got to this in time and it wasn’t a disaster!

Check In

Di you have zenfolio prints offered at “base lab”? Has this happened to you? Better go check!