Dashboard
Launch Checklist

Book a SparkLayer Onboarding Call
Need help along the way and want to speak to our team? Book a call here.
Introduction
When you create an account on SparkLayer, you'll get access to the SparkLayer Dashboard. The Dashboard has a customised onboarding process that gently guides you through all the necessary steps before you're ready to start inviting your B2B customers and taking orders on your website. You can learn more about this in our guide here﻿.
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Once you've completed the main onboarding steps, you'll then see a final step "Test & Launch SparkLayer" which our guide below explains.
✅  Before you start final testing, make sure:
You've added the SparkLayer frontend (or our team has done this for you)
You've added a B2B price list (even if it's just a test one)
You've added a B2B customer group (even if it's just a test one)
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Test & Launch SparkLayer
The final step in the SparkLayer Onboarding Process is "Test & Launch SparkLayer". To help with this process, we've also elaborated on our recommendation steps below to make this as seamless as possible and allow you to get up and running!
Frontend widgets installation
If you've requested our support team to install the Frontend Interfaces﻿ for you, you can use the below as a way to perform your own testing.
🔍 1. Test as a customer and log in
To simulate a B2B customer on your store, you can configure a sample customer within your eCommerce store.
🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
Please note
For any customers that you want to place B2B orders, they must have a tag of b2b assigned to them in Shopify within their customer record. Without this tag, SparkLayer will not load.
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1
Edit or create a customer record
First, within your Shopify Customers admin, find an existing customer record or add a new one.
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Fill in all the form fields, including the address. It's important that an address is specified otherwise SparkLayer won't find the customer record.
2
Tag the customer
Next, tag the customer with b2b
From within the customer record in Shopify, go to the Tags section and type b2b into the field. You can either choose from an existing tag, or add it as a new tag
<video class="full-screen-video__media" preload="none" autoplay="" loop="" muted="" playsinline="" webkit-playinginline="">
    <source src="https://www.sparklayer.io/assets/videos/shopify-tag-add.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
<video class="full-screen-video__media" preload="none" autoplay="" loop="" muted="" playsinline="" webkit-playinginline="">
    <source src="https://www.sparklayer.io/assets/videos/shopify-tag-add.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
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3
Invite the customer
If you're creating a brand new customer record, you'll need to click 'Send account invite' and then confirm the account once you've received the activation email (learn more here).
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The customer will then receive an email asking them to confirm your account by setting a password. You can edit the contents of this email here.
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4
Login as a customer
Finally, return to your website and visit the login page (e.g. www.yourstore.com/account) and enter your customer email and password. If you can't access this page, make sure you have customer accounts enabled (learn more here).
You'll then see SparkLayer load and you can browse your store as a B2B customer!
5
Inviting customers
See our guide further down this page on how to invite your customers.
Please refer to your platform for details.
Checking a B2B customer
You can also check that a B2B customer has successfully synchronised to SparkLayer in the Customer Sync tool within the SparkLayer Dashboard.
🆔 2. Check you have product SKUs
Important!
For SparkLayer to work, all products that you want B2B customers to see pricing for must have unique SKUs. Without SKUs, SparkLayer has no way to show B2B pricing or our special frontend "widgets"
🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
How to check for SKUs in Shopify
Within your Shopify Products admin, if you navigate to any product, you should see a SKU display within the product details. In our example below, the product has a SKU of MUG-CAT which is the unique identifier for the product.
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How to add SKUs
If you don't already have SKUs, it's relatively quick to do. You can either edit individual products and add them manually, or you can use the Shopify admin's Import or feature to do this in bulk. You may also want to consider an app such as Matrixify if you have a lot of SKUs to add.
No customisations applicable.
✅ 3. Check your products are 'enabled'
🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
For SparkLayer to show B2B pricing, products must be assigned to the B2B Ordering sales channel for each product. If the product is not assigned, SparkLayer will not show any pricing. This can be a good way to make specific products "Unavailable" to your B2B customers.
No customisations applicable.
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💰 4. Set up your B2B pricing
You can add all your B2B prices in the Price List section of SparkLayer and set either automatic price lists (a percentage off your retail prices) or manually uploaded prices.
With manually uploaded prices, you can upload prices via CSV if you want to set exact B2B pricing (you can also download a sample price list here﻿). 
Please note
SparkLayer will not show any B2B pricing until this step is done.
🛒 5. Placing B2B orders
🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
You can place an order by going to any product page and adding items to your order. When you add items, they will then appear in the My Order Interface﻿ and you can then proceed to checkout.
Please note
When placing orders, please note that non-card payments will be submitted into Shopify as 'Draft orders' (you can find this under "Orders" in your Shopify admin). You can learn more about how this works in our guide here and ways to automatically convert them into completed orders.
No customisations applicable.
🎨 6. Check your design customisations (CSS)
We typically recommend adding some basic CSS customisations to your website to match your styling. If you've requested installation by our team, these will have been set up for you. If you'd like to customise these further, please see Customising the Design﻿﻿
📝 7. Set up a registration process
🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
Currently, your B2B customers can register by going to the /account URL on your website. If you're looking for a more sophisticated way to customise your wholesale registration process, we highly recommend the following app, Customer Fields﻿. 
This app will allow you to tailor the registration form, moderate customer applications, and customise the invite process. We've a full guide on other great options here.﻿
No customisations applicable.
🚀 8. Enable additional B2B features (hiding products, approval form, shipping)
We've got a variety of additional features you can add such as showing a live stock level, pack sizes, B2B-only products, retail prices (RRP), and much more. 
Customer experience
✅  Set up a B2B login page﻿
✅  Set up a B2B registration page﻿
✅  Hiding B2B products from regular DTC customers﻿
✅  Show B2B-only content﻿ 
✅  Create a B2B-only navigation menu﻿ 
✅  Modify your B2B email notifications﻿ 

Checkout process
✅  Configure B2B-only shipping﻿
✅  Customise your B2B payment methods﻿
✅  Configure custom checkout data fields﻿

Product configurations
✅  Setup product pack sizing﻿
✅  Setup minimum and maximum quantities﻿
✅  Show live inventory levels﻿
✅  Setup pre-orders and backorders﻿
✅  Set "reserve inventory" for your DTC customers﻿

You can explore our full list of configurations here﻿.
To see what else is possible, check our full guide here﻿.
Book a SparkLayer Onboarding Call
Need help along the way and want to speak to our team? Book a call here.
﻿
Inviting your customers
When you're ready to begin inviting your B2B customers, we've some recommend tips you can use as part of your onboarding process.
Before you invite your customers
We strongly recommend you perform a full end-to-end test of the steps within "Test & Launch SparkLayer". Once you're done, you may want to invite a subset of customers to guage any feedback before inviting all your customers!
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👤  Inviting your customers
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🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
Inviting customers
When you're ready to begin inviting your B2B customers to your Shopify store, you can easily manage this via the Shopify admin by following the process below.
1
Edit or create a customer record
First, within your Shopify Customers admin, find an existing customer record or add a new one.
﻿
Fill in all the form fields, including the address. It's important that an address is specified otherwise SparkLayer won't find the customer record.
2
Tag the customer
Next, tag the customer with b2b
From within the customer record in Shopify, go to the Tags section and type b2b into the field. You can either choose from an existing tag, or add it as a new tag
<video class="full-screen-video__media" preload="none" autoplay="" loop="" muted="" playsinline="" webkit-playinginline="">
    <source src="https://www.sparklayer.io/assets/videos/shopify-tag-add.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
<video class="full-screen-video__media" preload="none" autoplay="" loop="" muted="" playsinline="" webkit-playinginline="">
    <source src="https://www.sparklayer.io/assets/videos/shopify-tag-add.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
﻿
3
Invite the customer
If you're creating a brand new customer record, you'll need to click 'Send account invite' 
﻿
The customer will then receive an email asking them to confirm your account by setting a password. You can edit the contents of this email here.
﻿
4
Login as a customer
Finally, the customer can return to your website and visit the login page (e.g. www.yourstore.com/account) and enter their customer email and password. If they can't access this page, make sure you have customer accounts enabled (learn more here).
They'll then see SparkLayer load and they can browse your store as a B2B customer!
Please refer to your platform for details.
👥  Inviting your customers in bulk
🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
If you're looking to invite a set of B2B customers in one go, you can use third-party Shopify apps to streamline this for you. A popular option is Matrixify which has built-in tools to quickly create customer records and invite them.
If you're looking to bulk invite customers but want to skip sending them emails, you can also try BAIS Bulk Account Invite﻿
Automating the approval process
To further automate the process, it's possible to allow customers to "apply for access" on your store that you can then moderate before granting them the ability to place B2B orders. We've detailed some great options in our guide here.
Please refer to your platform for details.
﻿
🤖  Automating the approval process
🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
Automating the approval process
To further automate the process, it's possible to allow customers to "apply for access" on your store that you can then moderate before granting them the ability to place B2B orders. We've detailed some great options in our guide here.
Please refer to your platform for details.
﻿
💌  Using our example "Welcome" email 
To help with the process of inviting your customers, we've put together an example email you could send to them! Perhaps this could be sent in a newsletter or as a personal email from your B2B sales team.
﻿
﻿Dear [Valued Partner],﻿
﻿We’re excited to announce our new online B2B store and we’re excited to have you join!﻿
﻿To ensure a smooth start, we’ve put together a guide to help you activate your account and start placing orders.﻿
﻿Account Activation: The First Step to Joining﻿
﻿Look Out for Our Email: Keep an eye on your inbox for an email from [My Store] with the subject "Activate Your [My Store] Partner Account."﻿
﻿Activate with a Click: Within that email, you'll find the ‘Activate My Account’ button. Click it to move forward with your activation.﻿
﻿Secure Your Login: Follow the link to create your own secure password. After this, your account is all set and ready to go.﻿
﻿B2B Portal: Streamlining Your Business﻿
﻿Fast Track with Quick Order: Speed is essential in business. That's why our ‘Quick Order’ feature offers a simple layout to place your orders quickly and efficiently - perfect for when you know exactly what you need.﻿
﻿Explore Products in Detail: Curious about a product? Visit the ‘Products’ page for an in-depth look at the benefits, and quickly add to your order﻿
﻿Effortless Account Management﻿
﻿Your Orders, Simplified: By clicking on the ‘Account’ or ‘Cart’ icons, you can view your Order Summary, adjust account settings, and monitor your orders in real-time.﻿
﻿Get a Shipping Quote: Ready to finalize your order? Get live shipping costs right before you place your order﻿
﻿Approval Before Payment: If you need administrative approval, select 'Pay on Account' to submit your order and we'll take care of the rest.﻿
﻿Account Extras:﻿
﻿Within ‘My Account,’ you’ll also discover tools to:﻿
﻿Review your order history.﻿
﻿Save personalized shopping lists for quick reordering.﻿
﻿Update your shipping addresses whenever necessary.﻿
﻿We're Here for You﻿
﻿Should you have any questions or need assistance, our dedicated team is ready to help at [Your Support Email].﻿
﻿Thank you for choosing [My Store] as your partner, we’re excited to have you on board!﻿
﻿Warm regards,﻿
﻿[Your Name]
[Your Position]
[My Store]
[Contact Information]﻿
🎨  Updates to your website
🛍️ Using Shopify
🌐 Other platforms
Alongside the above recommendations, there are also a variety of "on site" updates you could think about to encourage your B2B customers to access your B2B store:
Navigation: Add a clear link to your navigation, e.g. in the header or footer. You can typically do this from your Shopify Admin, under "Online Store" and clicking "Navigation"
Landing page: Set up a landing page to entice new (and existing) customers. This could include graphics, some selling points of your B2B store, testimonials, featured products, and more
Emails: think about how you can update any email marketing you have to promote your new B2B store!
Please refer to your platform for details.
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