Setup & Modules
How four questions shape what you see — and why nothing is ever deleted
Ardent Seller shows you only what your business needs
A soap maker, a reseller, and a digital seller need very different screens. Instead of showing everyone everything, Ardent Seller asks four quick questions when you first set up and then shows the parts of the app — menus, dashboard widgets, and guided workflows — that fit your answers. The mechanism behind this is modules: six named groups of features that can each be shown or hidden. Nothing about modules is permanent, and nothing they hide is ever deleted.
The setup interview: four questions
The interview lives at Setup and takes under a minute. The first question is "What kind of business are you?" with five cards:
- I make things I sell
- I buy things and resell them
- I sell digital products or services
- I sell food I make
- Something else / just exploring
The second question is "Anything else you want on day one?" with four optional add-ons: Sync my Etsy shop, Production planning & equipment, Donations & charity tracking, and I also sell services, classes, or custom work.
The third question is "How do you track things today?": a spreadsheet, Craftybase, Inventora, another app, paper or memory, or nothing yet. This one changes nothing you see. It tells us where you are coming from, so the way in can be made easier for people who worked the same way you did.
The fourth question is "Where do you sell?": on Etsy, a Shopify store, Square, another website, in person, wholesale, or not selling yet, with as many as apply. Picking Etsy, Shopify or Square turns on the Marketplace module and puts a "Connect your shop" step at the top of your dashboard's Getting Started checklist, since connecting brings your listings and orders in for you. The other answers change nothing you see. They tell us how your sales happen, so recording them can be made to fit the way you actually sell, and which shop connections are worth building next.
Prefer to see the whole app? "Skip — show me everything" is always available and turns every module on. You are never locked in either way.
What each answer turns on
| Your answer | Question | Modules enabled (plus Core, always) |
|---|---|---|
| I make things I sell | Business type | Manufacturing + Advanced inventory ops |
| I buy things and resell them | Business type | Advanced inventory ops |
| I sell digital products or services | Business type | Services |
| I sell food I make | Business type | Manufacturing + Advanced inventory ops |
| Something else / just exploring | Business type | Everything |
| Sync my Etsy shop | Add-on | Marketplace |
| Production planning & equipment | Add-on | Manufacturing |
| Donations & charity tracking | Add-on | Giving & other money |
| I also sell services, classes, or custom work | Add-on | Services |
| How do you track things today? (any answer) | Tracking method | Nothing — it only records where you are coming from |
| Where do you sell? On Etsy, a Shopify store, or Square | Sales channels | Marketplace |
| Where do you sell? (any other answer) | Sales channels | Nothing — it only records how your sales happen |
| Skip — show me everything | Step 1 | Everything |
For a brand-new account these defaults are applied immediately. If your account already has data or a saved profile, the interview instead shows a "Suggested for your business" step where you choose Apply suggestions or Keep my current setup — your module choices are never changed silently.
The six modules
| Module | Who it's for | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Core | Everyone — always on. | The dashboard, products, ingredients, labor, customers, vendors, locations, sales, purchases, workflows, Document Imports, reports, settings, and support. |
| Manufacturing | Makers who produce what they sell. | Recipes, production runs, production transactions, subassemblies, finished goods, and equipment. |
| Advanced inventory ops | Sellers managing stock across counts, moves, and restocking. | Stocktakes, adjustments, transfers, restock planning, MRO supplies, and packaging. |
| Marketplace | Sellers syncing an Etsy shop, a Shopify store, or Square. | The Etsy, Shopify, and Square integrations (Sales Channels in the sidebar, or Integrations under Settings), plus their dashboard widgets. |
| Giving & other money | Sellers tracking donations, waste, and non-sales money. | Charities, donations, waste & loss, expenses, and income. |
| Services | Sellers offering services or digital products. | The Services list under Deliver. |
A module owns its sidebar entries, its dashboard widgets, and its guided workflows as one unit — turning Manufacturing off, for example, hides Recipes and Production Runs from the Create group along with the production widgets and the recipe-costing workflow. Reports are never gated by modules: every report stays available regardless of your setup.
Modules only hide the interface — your data stays
This is the one rule to remember. As the Settings page itself puts it: "Turning a module off only hides it from menus, dashboards, and workflows. Its records stay in your account, keep counting toward plan limits, and still appear in every report, the audit trail, and exports."
So if you turn off Giving & other money after recording a year of donations, those donation transactions remain in your account, still show in your reports and exports, and reappear in the menus the moment you turn the module back on. Modules are a lens, not a lock — and never a delete.
Visiting a page in a hidden module
Following a link or bookmark into an area whose module is off doesn't error out. Instead you'll see a friendly page titled "[Module] is turned off" explaining that the page belongs to a hidden module and that your data is untouched. If you're allowed to manage settings, an Enable & continue button turns the module on and takes you straight through; otherwise the page asks you to have your account owner enable it under Settings → Features.
Changing modules later
Open Settings → Features to see a card for every module with a toggle. Core is marked "Always on" with a disabled toggle — it can't be turned off. Your original interview answers are shown on the same page with an Edit answers link that returns you to the setup interview; because re-answering runs the suggest-and-confirm step, changing an answer never silently rewrites your module choices.
New to the app entirely? The Quick Start walks the first steps, and the Settings guide covers the rest of the Settings hub.
Related articles
Quick Start
Get started with Ardent Seller in three steps — add your ingredients, create a product, and write a recipe that prices it.
Settings & Library Guide
How to set up Ardent Seller: profile, billing, team roles, locations, integrations, and Library lists: attributes, tags, custom fields and customer groups.
Locations & Entities
What entities are in Ardent Seller — the five location types and three contact types, what data is scoped to the selected location, and how the location switcher works.