Add a customer

In B2B the customer is a company, not a person. The record that carries terms, credit and addresses is the organization; the people who log in are contacts inside it, each with a role that says what they may do. This walkthrough creates one of each, for a customer you have supplied for years, so you can log in as them later and see what they see.

Create the organization

1. In Commerce Studio, go to CRM › Organizations.
2. Select New organization.
3. Enter the Name as the legal name your ERP has it, so the two systems reconcile by eye.
4. Enter the Customer number from your ERP. It is unique per tenant and it is the join key every later integration needs.
5. Enter the VAT ID. Depending on your settings it is checked for format or against the EU VIES service, and it is what duplicate detection reads.
6. Enter the Industry as free text, and agree the spelling with your colleagues before you have four variants of "Automotive".
7. Set Lifecycle stage to customer and Status to active. The first describes the pipeline and grants nothing; the second decides whether the company may trade at all.
8. Set the commercial terms: payment terms, credit limit, and the price list code this company resolves onto. Leave them empty to inherit the defaults. See Payment terms and credit limits.
9. Save.

Add the person who orders

1. Go to CRM › Contacts and select New contact.
2. Enter the Email. It is the identity, unique per tenant, and what the person signs in with on your storefront.
3. Enter first name, last name and job title. Job title is free text and grants nothing.
4. Pick the Organization. This field is what gives the person their company's prices, terms and order history. A contact without one is a standalone consumer record.
5. Pick the Role: buyer for someone who orders directly. The five roles run from viewer, who may look and not buy, through requester, who submits for approval, to approver and admin. Set an Order approval limit only on roles that approve.
6. Set the Locale. It drives the shop language and the language of the order confirmation.
7. Tick Primary contact and save.

A word on several sites

There is no organization hierarchy, on purpose. One legal entity with three delivery sites is one organization with three shipping addresses. Two legal entities with separate invoices are two organizations, grouped in a segment if you price them together. The test is the invoice: if it gets its own invoice and its own credit limit, it is its own organization. Decide this before the first order, because orders cannot be reassigned afterwards. See Organizations and hierarchies.

What to check

• Open the organization. The header shows the customer number, VAT ID and industry; badges show status, lifecycle stage and payment terms. No red banner at the top means the company can trade.
• Open the contact. The Role & permissions section shows the grants this person holds and that they may act on them. The Organization & status section links to the company; if it is empty, the person has no company prices.
• The dashboard's Buyers tile now shows one account of one.

If this customer has negotiated prices

Give them a list of their own: create a second price list, bind it to this organization under Applies to, set Logged-in buyers only, and add the agreed entries. The most common mistake in the whole pricing area is creating a customer list and forgetting the account, which puts every buyer in the shop on that customer's prices. See Contract prices.

Next

• Create a storefront: somewhere for this contact to log in.
• Guide: Organizations and hierarchies and Contacts and roles in the Customers book.
• Product Help: Organizations and Contacts.