7. Managing Orders by the Reseller - Standard Edition for Resellers
Order Management and Approval
Resellers have full control over order management and approval with the Standard Edition. The Order Approval toggle for each account, the ability for end customers to place and manage their order, and the visibility over all orders offered by the Reseller Dashboard ensure that both Standard Edition resellers and end customers enjoy a seamless ordering experience with full budgetary control.
Activating Order Approval
Order Approval means that when an end customer submits an order, the Reseller must review and approve it for the purchase to be completed and the subscription to be activated. The purpose of this functionality is to give Resellers effective budgetary control, and for this reason, it is activated by default for all end customers.
Note that the toggle is enabled and locked for resellers who have set Credit Card as their payment method meaning that all of their end customer’s orders require approval. Resellers who have set Cash or Deposit as payment methods can deactivate it for any or all their customers.
The purpose of this is to prevent any unexpected and unauthorized orders which would otherwise automatically charge or overcharge the reseller’s credit card.
Before activating any resellers who use a credit card, ensure that they have at least one valid token in your system.
Resellers who do not have a valid token, or those who use payment gateways that do not support tokenization, will not be able to approve orders.
To activate or deactivate the order approval option, the user must:
Log into the admin environment and go to the My Customers menu from the left-hand side panel.
Find the individual customer record.
Click on the toggle under the customer’s name to activate or deactivate the requirement for order approval.
For existing resellers who have switched their payment method from cash or deposit to credit card, the toggle remains locked in its previous state, and order approval remains a requirement.
Ordering Process for the End Customer
Customers whose orders require approval follow the purchase process described in https://interworkscloud.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ICPD/pages/344555754. The end customer adds the products of their choice to their basket, reviews or provides the billing information along with the service details, and submits the order. The system displays a submission confirmation message and emails the end customer a URL for checking their order status. Lastly, Standard Edition resellers will receive an Order Confirmation notification email for all orders placed by their end customers, with or without an Order Approval process. Specifically, the aforementioned notification email is dispatched with a certain (1-4) priority either to:
The “Bill to” contact, if defined.
The “Primary” contact, if defined.
The oldest available contact.
The one who approves the order (whenever the approval is applicable).
Managing Orders
At any time, resellers can easily check the orders that require their attention right from the powerful Reseller Dashboard. Specifically, said Dashboard allows the reseller to check the orders that have not been executed due to insufficient funds or the ones submitted by end customers and must be reviewed for approval. Please refer to the relevant section for more details: https://interworkscloud.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ICPD/pages/529137840/7.+Managing+Orders+by+the+Reseller+-+Standard+Edition+for+Resellers#The-Reseller-Dashboard.
Order Validation
After the submitted order has been accepted, the following checks are performed:
Available Credit Check → Auto-executed Product Check → Active Token Check (only for credit card)
Available Credit Check
If the reseller has no available credit, at this point, the order is submitted to the distributor. The reseller receives a notification informing them that their credit is insufficient. Additionally, a new record appears on the distributor’s Unexecuted Orders Due to Insufficient Credit widget. If the reseller’s credit is sufficient, the system performs the next check.
Auto-executed Product Check
If the reseller’s available credit is sufficient for the purchase, but one or more of the products in the order require manual execution, the order is submitted to the distributor. If the product is automatically executed and the selected payment method is credit card, the system performs the active token check.
Active Token Check
If the reseller has selected a payment method (i.e. credit card) that relies on a payment gateway, end customers can only submit orders that require the Reseller’s approval. In this case, the platform runs an additional check to determine whether the reseller has an active token that contains the expiration date of their credit card. If the reseller has an active token, and the payment gateway accepts the request, the order is executed successfully. If the gateway returns an error, the order will not be submitted to the distributor.
If they do not have a token, or if it is inactive or expired, a warning message is displayed to the reseller, stating:
Your payment method does not support this action. Please contact your distributor.
In this case, the order remains in pending status in the admin menu.
Detailed Order View
Resellers at the Standard Edition can easily obtain details on a specific order by clicking on the order number at the orders section of the individual end customers page. To access the detailed page of an order the user needs to navigate to My Customers, click on the name of the customer, scroll down to the order section and then, click on the order number.
Selecting the order number displays the following information:
If the order contains sub-orders, then the overall status takes into account the partial execution of these sub-orders. The status of the main order will remain as submitted until all the sub-orders have been executed. The detailed view of an order with multiple sub-orders is shown below.
The panel on the left displays the order number, its status, the order date, quick actions (if applicable), the total cost, and the total amount. If the order status is “Pending Reseller Approval” or “Unexecuted due to Insufficient Credit”, the system displays an Actions button where the user can accept or cancel the order.
In any other order status, this button is not displayed, as seen below:
On the right-hand side, the system displays details about the items of the order, including product name, delivery status, quantity purchased, unit price, discount, and total amount.
The Reseller Dashboard
Resellers at the Standard Edition can obtain a quick and comprehensive overview of key metrics right from the Reseller Dashboard, a user-friendly tool for providing fast, accurate and effortless overview of the reseller's business performance with meaningful KPIs, such as general statistics, product mix, orders and other pertinent data.
The purpose of the Reseller Dashboard is to reduce operational costs, eliminate potentially erroneous assumptions and revenue projections, minimize the risk of missing critical information, and assist in important business decisions/activities. Overall, the tool helps resellers at the Standard Edition retain their focus on managing their business more efficiently.
Accessing the Dashboard
To access the Dashboard, the user must log in to the admin environment of the Storefront and click on the Dashboard icon from the main menu on the left-hand side of the screen:
Upon accessing the Dashboard, the user is presented with the following main components:
General Statistics
Product Mix
Unexecuted Orders
Submitted Orders
General Statistics
The General Statistics widget provides several account statistics by dividing the info into three columns with their respective color code: blue for the monthly costs and account balance columns, and red for the overdue payments column.
Specifically, this widget displays the following information:
Indicator | Description |
|---|---|
Monthly Costs | The costs of the reseller's purchases during the current month, up to the current date, and can be either positive or negative. The system does not take canceled invoices into account. To calculate total monthly costs, the system:
|
Account Balance | Calculated by taking into account all the invoices, refunds and payments billed to the reseller since the creation of their account. |
Subscriptions sold | The number of subscriptions sold by the reseller during the current month, up to the current date, regardless of status. Please note that subscription renewals or trial subscriptions of any form are not considered in the calculations. |
Licenses sold | Number of licenses i.e. software subscription, RIs, ESD, sold by the reseller in the current month, up to the current date, regardless of status |
Active Subscriptions | The number of active subscriptions of the reseller at the current date. All subscriptions under "Active" & "Pending for cancellation" status at the current date are taken into consideration excluding active Trial subscriptions. |
Suspended Subscriptions
| The number of suspended subscriptions of the reseller at the current date |
Overdue Payments | The total monetary value of overdue invoices issued to the reseller but not paid to date. |
Credit Limit | The limit set on the credit the Distributor makes available to the reseller at the Standard Edition |
Available Credit | The total credit available for use at a specific time for the reseller |
Product Mix
The Product Mix widget displays by default all the Products that the reseller has purchased in the period selected at the top right corner of the widget (this month, last month, last 3 months) in the form of a pie chart, filtered by Product Type and Billing Type. Each slice is calculated against the total purchase volume and is displayed in a distinct color. A legend below the chart explains of the colors to the data.
The information for this chart is retrieved from all debit invoices billed to the reseller, with invoice dates issued within the specified time range and under the status paid/unpaid. The system does not take canceled invoices into account. For more details on how to use filters on the Product Mix widget, please see: https://interworkscloud.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ICPD/pages/553222830/Reseller+s+Dashboard+Widgets.
Unexecuted Orders Due to Insufficient Credit
This widget displays all the orders submitted by end customers do not require reseller approval, but are not executed due to insufficient credit of the reseller. It is important to mention that regardless of the settings concerning the prior approval of the reseller for an order, the system always validates the reseller’s credit limit before the execution of each order.
If the reseller doesn't have available credit, the order is submitted to the distributor. The reseller receives a notification informing them that their credit is insufficient. Additionally, a new record appears on the widget. In this case, the reseller needs to take one of the following actions:
proceed with the order execution, after paying their distributor off to free up credit
cancel the order.
The widget displays the following columns:
Order: the identification number from the respective order. This is a link that redirects the reseller to the respective order page.
Customer: the account name of the end customer. When it is blank, it means that the order was made by the reseller for the reseller.
Order Date: the date of submission of the order
Total Cost: the total cost of the order for which the reseller needs to have available credit. It is calculated according to the price list assigned to the reseller by their distributor.
Total Amount: the final order price including the reseller’s markup. This is the amount displayed to the end customers.
Actions: the last column of each order displays a three-dots icon which gives access to the following actions:
Accept order, which means that the reseller pays off some of the debt to the distributor in order to free up credit and proceed with the execution of the order
Cancel order, which means that the order submitted by the end customer will not be executed.
Submitted Orders Pending Approval
The fourth widget displays the orders submitted by end customers for whom the reseller has activated the requirement for prior approval. When this setting is activated, an end customer can submit their order which will not be executed until the reseller approves it.
Similarly, the reseller needs to take one of the following actions:
accept the order and proceed with its execution
cancel the order.
The widget displays the following columns:
Order: the identification number from the respective order. This is a link that redirects the reseller to the respective order page.
Customer: the account name of the end customer. When it is blank, it means that the order was made by the reseller for the reseller.
Order Date: the date of submission of the order
Total Cost: the total cost of the order for which the reseller needs to have available credit. It is calculated according to the price list assigned to the reseller by their distributor.
Total Amount: the final order price, including the reseller’s markup. This is the amount displayed to the end customers.
Actions: the last column of each order displays a three-dots icon which gives access to the following actions:
Accept order, which means that the reseller pays off some of the debt to the distributor in order to free up credit and proceed with the execution of the order
Cancel order, which means that the order submitted by the end customer will not be executed.
It is important to note that when an end customer successfully submits an order that the reseller accepts but is not executed due to the latter’s insufficient credit, then this order will also be displayed in this widget.