How Service Deals Work on Cheaply

A service deal sells your expertise instead of a physical item: design, repairs, tutoring, cleaning, consulting, anything you deliver rather than ship. It uses the same group-pricing engine as physical deals, but the fulfilment side is built around a delivery queue instead of a courier.

Group pricing still applies

You set price tiers by quantity exactly like a physical deal. The more buyers commit to the service, the lower the price for everyone, and your lowest tier is the auto-order trigger that locks the deal in at the best price.

As with every Cheaply deal, the model is buyer-funded: the buyer pays your price plus a small Deal Facilitation Fee on top, and you keep your full listed price.

The brief replaces the shipping address

Services have nothing to ship, so instead of a delivery address each buyer fills in an Order Instructions brief (a minimum length so you get something usable) describing exactly what they need. Buyers can also attach reference files, images, a PDF, a short video or audio note, so you have everything before you start.

The delivery queue

When you create the deal you tell Cheaply two things:

• Service delivery days: how long one delivery takes.
• Capacity per cycle: how many orders you can handle at once.

From these, Cheaply builds a queue. Every buyer is given a queue position, a cycle, and an estimated completion date in Lagos time, so they know when their turn comes up. Buyers can see all of this on their purchases page, and you see the full queue (briefs, reference files, order, and ETAs) on your seller service queue.

Start work, deliver, get paid

1. Start Work moves an order from queued to in progress, re-anchors the estimate to the real start time, and opens a templated inbox thread with the buyer.
2. Mark Delivered when the work is done. This opens the protection window: the buyer has a fixed number of days to accept or raise a complaint, with one reminder before it ends.
3. The buyer clicks Confirm Completion (which releases your funds immediately), or the window simply ends and you are auto-paid. A dispute pauses the countdown until it is resolved.

You keep your full price; Cheaply keeps only the buyer-paid fee.

The lifecycle at a glance

1. You publish the service with tiers and your delivery-days + capacity settings.
2. Buyers commit (each writes a brief, optionally attaches files); the price steps down as the group grows.
3. The deal locks; buyers are placed in the queue with ETAs.
4. You Start Work, deliver, and Mark Delivered.
5. The buyer confirms (or the protection window ends).
6. You are paid your full price.

In one sentence

Sell your service with quantity tiers, collect a clear brief from each buyer, work the queue in order, and get paid your full price once the buyer confirms or the protection window passes.