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Customer Management

Parties​

In the CloudSuite platform, customers and suppliers are both named parties. In general, suppliers are not important for an eCommerce system, but in a B2B environment it is possible to apply prices with a net calculation of purchase prices including a surcharge percentage.

Parties are an important entity of the CloudSuite platform because they determine an important part of the customer journey of your customers. Named users can have one or multiple parties linked. In the case of multiple parties, they can easily switch between the linked parties.

The party is decisive for the following part of the user experience, which is described in detail elsewhere in this document:

  • Catalogs: which products will be presented
  • Prices
  • Overrule VAT calculation
  • Payment terms, such as online payment and order on account
  • Order conditions, such as order discounts and delivery costs.

Customer Groups & Categories​

Parties can be grouped in groups and categories.

Groups can be used to select a group of parties, addresses, and users that are related. This is a typical B2B feature, to create settings for a group of customers, such as budgets per order instead of per customer.

Categories define a category of customer. For a customer category, you can set external product codes or descriptions. This is really useful when customers work with their own set of product codes or descriptions that they can use to search for products in the webshop.

Addresses & Delivery Points​

For each party, you can define an unlimited amount of delivery and invoice addresses. Per party, a default invoice- and delivery address can be set which will be selected automatically after login.

While placing an order, you can easily change the delivery address or even add a new delivery address. The user should be authorized for these actions.

Within the delivery address, it is possible to define an unlimited amount of delivery points, which are in fact addresses as well. This is a typical B2B feature for customers that have separate addresses within their city address. A typical example is a university complex.

The addresses can be part of the VAT calculation due to delivery abroad, for which other tax regimes can apply. The calculation depends on the party Tax Rules.

Delivery Schedules per Customer​

Delivery schedules are used to define the working days and an unlimited number of time frames per day and to calculate the delivery date of the ordered product.

You can configure multiple schedules and link them to a customer; per customer, it is possible to define the days on which an order can be delivered. This will be taken into account when calculating the delivery date.

For specific products, like products that need processes, it is possible to overrule the delivery schedule of the customer by linking an availability schedule to the product.

Budgets​

With budgets, you can set up workflow and limitations for your customers while ordering.

Budgets are linked to users and you can share a budget with multiple users. For instance, a group of users — say within a department — can order for a fixed amount per month. CloudSuite offers various types of budget:

  • Maximum order amount
  • Maximum amount per period:
    • Week
    • Month
    • Quarter
    • Year
    • One-off

When a budget is exceeded, you can choose between one of the following actions:

  • Block the order
  • Accept the order, but raise a warning
  • Ask for authorization from a supervisor.

In combination with the feature of superusers, your customers can maintain their own budgets for their employees.

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