Company Associations

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Key Features
• Enabling and Customizing Company Associations
• Creating the Company Association Structure
• Managing Company Association Relationships via the Admin
• Managing Company Associations as the Company / Company Account Admin

Overview

Company Associations are an incredibly powerful tool for B2B sellers. It allows store owners to configure their customers as companies, allowing them to have multiple users place orders on the company’s behalf and manage their orders and users. 

Key Features

• Company Customization: B2B customers can configure their company structure as needed to allow their users to purchase products as needed while allowing them to incorporate their order approval processes.
• Shared Company Data: Company Users can place orders using company shared address books or securely saved credit cards.
• User Management: Companies can configure individual users for their company allowing them to quickly remove users when their purchasing staff change.

Enabling and Customizing Company Associations

1. Navigate to the Company settings by clicking on the left menu Settings > People > Companies.

2. Select the checkbox “Company Associations Enabled”.
3. If your offer rewards, you can enable allow Company Users to utilize the Company’s rewards points by clicking the checkbox for “Use Company’s Rewards Points”
4. You can also allow users to spend more Rewards Points than the Company has currently earned. This is a special use case and is not typically recommended. If you enable this setting, add the Maximum Rewards Points Can Overspend to place a limit on the number of points that can be spent over the limit.
5. Select the New Company User Email template. This is the email which is sent to new users for the company.
   NOTE: Some versions of Storefront do not have standard New Company Email templates. If yours does not, contact support for assistance.
6. You can customize the Company User Type labels to meet your needs. These labels are used throughout the platform for your users, they are not able to be configured on a company by company basis and they apply to all stores, if you have multiple storefronts or microstores. These labels are displayed in customer records to show the relationship between the users’ types.
7. The Company label and the Company Account Admin label can be set to any value desired. For example, Company Account Admin can be set to Company Admin or Company can be set to Business Unit.
8. The Company Manager and the Manager of Employee labels should be the same under normal circumstances. They can be set to Manager, Supervisor, or Department Head for example.
9. The Company Employee and Employee of Manager labels should be the same under normal circumstances. They can be set to Employee or Staff for example.
10. Using the standard naming, the relationships for the user accounts available will be:
    1. USER is my Account Admin (I’m the Company)
    2. USER is my Company (I’m the Account Admin)
    3. USER is my Company (I’m the Employee)
    4. USER is my Company (I’m the Manager)
    5. USER is my Employee (I’m the Company)
    6. USER is my Employee (I’m the Manager)
    7. USER is my Manager (I’m the Company)
    8. USER is my Manager (I’m the Employee)
    9. NOTE: For detailed descriptions of each selection, see Company Associations - Relationship Tree
    10. NOTE: These options are only shown in the store admin section. When companies configure their users, there are different selections.
11. For our example, we will set the following values for clarity.
    1. Company Label: Enterprise
    2. Company Account Admin Label: Purchasing VP
    3. Company Manager Label: Supervisor
    4. Company Employee Label: Purchasing Agent
    5. Manager of Employee Label: Purchasing Supervisor
    6. Employee of Manager: Direct Report

You can now configure individual customer accounts to be companies.

Creating the Company Association Structure

We will now configure a sample company account. We will be setting up the following structure:

This structure has an Enterprise with 1 Purchasing VP, 1 Supervisor with 1 Purchasing Agent assigned to it and a single Purchasing Agent that is not assigned to any Manager.

The approval workflow for this example would be orders placed by Purchasing Agent 2 will be approved by the Supervisor or the Purchasing VP. The orders placed by either the Supervisor or purchasing Agent 1 will be approved by the Purchasing VP.

Converting a Customer Account to a Company Account

Once a Customer Account has been converted to a Company Account, the Company will be able to manage their own users. You can also manage the user relationships manually through the admin section, but the process is slightly different.

1. Navigate to the Customers section in the left menu.
2. Search for the customer that you want to convert to a Company and click the edit icon.
   1. If the customer does not have an account yet, follow the steps to create the customer account manually by using the New customer button in the upper right corner of the customer section.
3. In the left Customer menu, Click Customer Associations.

4. In the upper right corner of the section, click New

5. In the field “Search by customer email or name” search for the first user account you want to add to the Company account.
   1. If the initial user does not exist, you must manually create the user before they can be added to the Company.
6. Select the user type you want to add the customer as. In our example, you want to select one of the following options:
   1. Purchasing Agent (I am the Enterprise)
   2. Supervisor (I am the Enterprise)
   3. Purchasing VP (I am the Enterprise).

7. Note: This describes the relationship between the 2 accounts. Since it is relational, you could make this change from the Purchasing VP account and set it to “is my Enterprise (I am the Purchasing Agent”
8. Click Save to save the relationship.
9. The account has now been converted to a Company account.

Managing Company Association Relationships via the Admin

Most company associations can be managed directly in the Company account by using the process above. You can delete them, edit them, etc. The only company association relationship that is managed elsewhere is the Employee / Manager relationship because the relationship is not technically between the Employee and the Company. To add an employee relationship, follow these steps below.

1. Navigate to the Customers section in the left menu.
2. Search for the account for the Manager (in our case, called the Supervisor).
   1. The account must already be set up as a Manager user in the company.
3. Navigate to the Customer Associations. You should see that the Company relationship is already configured.

4. Click New in the upper right corner.
5. Select the user account to set up as the Employee assigned to this Manager account.

6. Set the Employee account as the employee of manager type. In our example, that is “Direct Report (I’m the Purchasing Supervisor).
7. Click Save.
8. The Employee user has now been assigned to the Manager account as an employee.
9. If needed, you could navigate to the Purchasing Agent account, and select “Purchasing Supervisor (I’m the Direct Report)”.

Managing Company Associations as the Company / Company Account Admin

Adding Users to Your Company

After configuring all of the users and their relationships above, we have a functioning company that can be used. But companies need to know how to manage their staff for their account. Company and Company Account Admins (in our examples, Enterprises and Purchasing VPs) can manage users. Below are the steps to manage users from their account pages.

NOTE: The company user must have an existing customer account. They will need to register before they can be added. 

1. Sign into the storefront as either a Company or Company Account Admin
2. In the My Account section, in the left menu, select User Management.

3. To create a new employee (either a Company Account Admin, Company Manager or Company Employee), the user can click New in the top right corner. They will be shown a popup to configure the new user.

4. Select the Permission Level, assign it to a Manager (if applicable). Then fill out the First Name, Last Name and Email. Company, Title, and Phone Numbers are optional.
5. Click Save.
6. When you save this user, they will receive an email, based on the email template set in the New Company User Email setting. If there is not a template set for New Company Users, the registration email template gets sent. 

Removing a User from Your Company

1. Sign into the storefront as either a Company or Company Account Admin
2. In the My Account section, in the left menu, select User Management.
3. Find the user that needs to be removed and click Delete. Confirm your selection and the user will be removed from your Company.

Setting a User as Inactive in Your Company

4. Sign into the storefront as either a Company or Company Account Admin
5. In the My Account section, in the left menu, select User Management.
6. Find the user that needs to be set as Inactive and click on the edit button.
7. Check the box labeled “Inactive Account” then click Save.
8. The user has now been set to inactive and will not be able to place orders, approve orders, or make changes to your Company Account.