Self-registration
Self-registration lets a visitor create an account from the shop. In B2B that is never automatic: an account carries trade prices, and not everyone who fills in a form should get them.
Why B2B registration is an application
A consumer shop treats registration as a convenience: an account saves the address for next time, and there is nothing behind it worth protecting. Prices are public.
B2B prices are not. A registered account sees the trade price, the scale price, possibly the contract price. Handing that out to anyone with an email address means:
- your competitors have your price list by lunchtime
- consumers order goods that need a trade qualification
- somebody's private address ends up on a
net_30account
So the B2B version of registration is an application: the visitor asks, and somebody at your company says yes or no. Buyers expect this. What they do not expect is silence for a week.
The settings
All of these live in the Customers app's settings.
| Setting | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Allow B2B self-registration | Whether a visitor may register and found a new company |
| Allow B2C self-registration | Whether a visitor may register as a standalone person with no company |
| New registration handling | Active immediately, or Approval required |
| Default contact role | The role a self-registered person gets. The founder of a new company is still made its administrator; this is what everybody else gets. |
| Require VAT ID for organizations | Refuses a company founded without one |
| VAT ID validation | Off, Format only, or Format + VIES lookup |
| Notify these addresses about applications | Who is told when an application is submitted or decided |
| Tell the applicant why they were rejected | Whether the rejection reason leaves your building |
| Auto-reject applications after (days) | Closes applications nobody decided on. 0 = never |
Set it up
- Open the Customers app settings.
- Turn B2B self-registration on, and B2C self-registration off unless you sell to consumers.
- Set New registration handling to Approval required.
- Set Default contact role.
buyeris the usual choice;requesterif you want new people to be signed off by their own company first. - Turn Require VAT ID for organizations on if you sell trade-only.
- Set VAT ID validation to at least Format only.
- Put real addresses into Notify these addresses about applications.
- Decide Auto-reject after. 30 days is a defensible number;
0if you would rather a stale application sat there than closed itself.
What "pending" means
In approval mode a registration creates everything and leaves nothing usable:
| Pending | After approval | |
|---|---|---|
registration_status | pending | approved |
Contact status | invited | active |
| Sign-in | Exists, disabled | Enabled |
| The founded company | blocked | active |
The login account is created immediately and disabled, instead of being created at approval. That is why the applicant's own password works the second you approve: you never hold it, and approval cannot fail on an email address that was taken in the meantime.
An applicant who tries to sign in gets a specific answer, "we are reviewing your application", instead of "wrong password". Whether they are also told the reason for a rejection is the Tell the applicant why setting. That is a legal decision. Make it here, before anyone drafts the rejection email.
VAT ID validation
- Off stores whatever is typed.
- Format only checks the country prefix and the national pattern. It never leaves your building.
- Format + VIES lookup also asks the EU VIES service whether the number is registered.
VIES refuses only a definitive "not registered". If the service is unreachable, and member-state downtime is written into its own contract, the registration is not refused. An outage in Brussels should not close your shop in Bochum.
The number is stored exactly as typed. It is not silently normalised, because the customer has to recognise it on their invoice.
What to check
- Register once yourself, from the storefront, with a test address.
- The new contact appears in CRM › Contacts under the Awaiting approval queue, with an orange banner on its page.
- The notification reaches the addresses you configured.
- Try signing in as the applicant: it should be refused with a message about the application, not a password error.
Next
- Approve a registration — work the queue.
- Credit control in B2B — what terms a newly approved company should get.