Customers

Shop Account Roles

Ordering process is critically important for most businesses and for some the order approval workflow is essential. It is used to enforce the business rules of a company to ensure that all orders are within budget.

In some organizations there are a lot of sales people and e-commerce managers who are involved in making the deals and purchases on behalf of a company. For some companies purchases require multiple levels of authorization that are built around unique business rules and departments. When sales people place orders on behalf of some company or department within a company, the system checks them against these rules.

Sana Commerce delivers support of different shop account roles and authorization procedure to meet your individual business requirements and convert the manual process of orders approval into fast and efficient automated process.

To manage shop account roles in Sana Admin click: Customers > Shop Accounts. Any business customer can have one of the following shop account roles:

• Regular account - is a regular business customer.
• Account manager - is able to create and manage sub-accounts directly in the web store. Account manager can also place orders just like a regular customer.
• Sub-account - is able to place orders just like a regular customer. However, if the order exceeds the cost limit set for the sub-account in the web store, the order should be approved. Depending on the rules set for the customer with the sub-account role there might be a single or multiple levels of authorization.

   Account role can be set only for a business customer. Contacts and sales agents do not support account roles.

For more information, see 'Shop Accounts'.

Webstore administrator can create a shop account in Sana Admin for a business customer with the Account manager role. Account manager in his/her turn can create and manage his/her sub-accounts directly in the webstore. All sub-accounts created by the account manager will be assigned to the same customer from the ERP system the shop account of the account manager is linked to. When the account manager creates a sub-account in the Sana Commerce webstore it will be available in Sana Admin with the sub-account role.

In the webstore the account manager can create and manage sub-accounts from the My account page > Manage sub-accounts.

The table below provides the description of the sub-account fields:

Field	Description
Name	Name of the sub-account.
E-mail address	E-mail address of the sub-account.
Activated	Activate the sub-account.
May order	Use this option to allow or prohibit creating orders for the sub-account. This option is available only if B2B customers are allowed to create orders and pay on account. Otherwise, sub-accounts will not be able to create orders. To check whether B2B customers can order, in Sana Admin click: Setup > Products > Stock and assortment, and check whether the option "View and order" is enabled for B2B customers. To check which payment type is used for B2B customers, in Sana Admin click: Setup > Ordering & checkout > Ordering, and check which option is selected in the "Online order payments" field for B2B customers.
May see prices	Use this setting to show or hide prices in the webstore for the sub-account. This option depends on whether price visibility is enabled/disabled globally in Sana Admin under: Setup > Products > Price. If it is disabled globally this option will not be available and thus cannot be enabled for the sub-account.
May see stock	Use this setting to show or hide stock in the webstore for the sub-account. This option depends on whether stock visibility is enabled/disabled globally in Sana Admin under: Setup > Products > Stock and assortment. If it is disabled globally this option will not be available and thus cannot be enabled for the sub-account.
May authorize orders	Allow or forbid sub-account to authorize orders of the other sub-accounts who are associated with the same customer from the ERP system.
Has limited budget	Using this setting you can limit sub-account's budget. If this setting is enabled the account manager can assign authorizers to a sub-account and set a spending limit per authorizer. Orders which exceed this limit will have to be authorized either by another sub-account or account manager. You can set up different spending limits and authorizers. You can set up multiple authorizers for the same spending limit. In this case the order should be approved by one of the authorizers.
Spending limits and authorizer

When the sub-account is created the e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address entered in the sub-account profile. A customer should follow the link in the e-mail to enter the password which will be used to log in the webstore.

Here is some information which you should know about customers with the sub-account role:

• When the sub-account is created it will have the same Account ID (customer account from the ERP system) as the account manager.
• Sub-accounts can place orders just like regular customers.
• Sub-accounts can have limited budget, which means that their orders need to be authorized by the other sub-accounts or account manager.
• Sub-accounts can place orders only if the Online payments ordering setting for B2B customers in Sana Admin is set to Full amount paid on account.

When a sub-account places the order, the authorizer(s) will receive an e-mail, informing him/her that the order has been placed and needs to be authorized.

Those sub-accounts and account managers who are set as authorizers can see all pending, approved and declined orders in the Sana Commerce webstore under: My account > Authorizations.

On the Authorization history page each order has its own status:

 - declined
 - approved
 - pending

An authorizer can also search for the order by order number, and filter the orders by authorization status and date. 

In the menu on the left, near the Authorizations menu item, the authorizer can see how many orders need to be authorized.

You can set up the Authorization reminders scheduled task which will send the reminders by e-mail to those account managers and sub-accounts who have orders that need to be authorized.

From the order details page of the order that needs to be authorized the authorizer can either approve the order or decline. In both cases a sub-account will get an e-mail with information about the order state. If an authorizer declines the order he/she can write a feedback informing the sub-account why he/she declined the order.

If an authorizer approved or declined the order by mistake he/she can also reverse authorization by clicking Cancel at the bottom of the order details page and decline or approve the order again. The ability to cancel authorization is available till the order status is 'open' in the ERP system.

Information whether the order has been approved or declined and by whom is shown on the order details page to all authorizers with the same account ID and to the sub-account who placed the order.

The authorization status (approved/declined) of the order is also recorded into the sales order in the ERP system.

Account manager can create multiple sub-accounts and assign one or several authorizers to a sub-account, that's why the authorization procedure may have more than one scenario.

For example, if you assign two authorizers with similar spending limits to a sub-account, and one of the authorizers has approved/declined the order, the other one will see the message at the bottom of the order details page that the order has been declined/approved by another authorizer. In case if the authorizer disagrees with authorization results he/she can cancel it.

Sub-accounts also have a possibility to place quotes. If a sub-account has a limited budget and an authorizer, and he/she places a quote it should be converted to order in the webstore, and only after this it will be possible to approve/decline the order.

Authorizer validation

• When a user tries to remove an authorizer, change authorization rights or deactivate an authorizer, the error message will be shown notifying a user of why it is not possible to manage the shop account.
• When a user tries to unlink an authorizer from a sub-account which still have orders that should be approved or declined, the error message will be shown notifying a user of why it is not possible to unlink the shop account.

The accounts of the authorizers are validated both, in Sana Admin and in the Sana web store.

For more information about quote to order conversion, see 'Order Processing'.