Company Users
Please note Company Users is only available on the SparkLayer Pro, and Enterprise plan. You can change your plan here or learn more about our how pricing works.
Company Users is a powerful feature of SparkLayer that allows companies to create "teams" of users that can share specific actions within their account. Sometimes referred to as "company roles" or "sub accounts", this feature is designed to optimise company B2B purchasing and account management.
Once enabled on your store, Company Users allows the following activities to be shared across team members once they log into their account:
Area | Actions |
|---|---|
Order history | Users of the same company can see all orders placed for the entire company, check order status, and re-order |
Shopping lists | Users of the same company can view and delete shopping lists that have been created |
Address book | Users of the same company can view, edit, and delete all addresses within the company |
It's also possible to set "roles" of Company Users that grant users specific permissions during the B2B ordering process (see below).
Please note, the following activities are not shared across team members.
Area | Actions |
|---|---|
Shopping Cart | If a user has items in their order, these will not be shared across users. |
To get started with Company Users, you'll need to enable a special setting within SparkLayer. Within the SparkLayer Dashboard, go to the Settings area and switch on "Enable company users".
When this setting is enabled, this will then activate a special "widget" within the My Account area called "Company Users".
The Company Users functionality works as follows:
An active B2B customer logs into their account on your website
From their My Account area, they then navigate to the "Company Users" widget (at the bottom). From here, they can see all other active company users and invite other users
Once another user has been invited to the Company, that specific user can subsequently login and begin placing B2B orders
Once a company user logs in, they'll also have access to a variety of shared actions and activities that all other company users can see. This currently includes:
- Orders - users will see all orders placed by the company
- Shopping lists - users will see all shopping lists created by the company
- Address book - users will see all addresses added by the company
Essentially, the customer who begins the inviting process becomes the "main user" (or "admin") and can control which other users have (or do not have) access to the company.
To invite users, from the My Account area, the customer clicks the 'Invite new user" link in the "Company Users" widget.
Once the "Invite new user" link is clicked, they are then asked to complete an invite form. This form includes the ability to:
- Specify a first and last name and an email address
- Specify the "role" of the Company User (see below)
Please note The email address specified here will be the email address used to login
When the "Send invite" button is clicked, this will then trigger the following actions:
Account status | Actions |
|---|---|
If the invitee does not already have an account on the website | This will send the invitee an email asking them to create a password to activate their account and join the company |
If the invitee already has an account on the website | The customer will be able to login with their existing login details to join the company. If the invitee is already registered as a B2B customer in your store, they will not be able to become a sub-account. In this instance, the invitee will need to be "manually" associated. This can be actioned by using metafields to associate records and you can learn more in our guide here. |
For invitees that do not already have an account, they'll receive an email that looks similar to the below. This is an email that is generated via Shopify and can be easily modified. Within Shopify, this uses the "Activate Account" email notification and can be modified within the Settings > Notifications area of your Shopify admin.
Please note As part of introducing Company Users to your B2B customer base, we recommend informing them of the process detailed above to ensure they are familiar with the steps involved.
When an invited Company User logs in, they'll see the My Account Interface as normal along with additional messaging confirming they are part of a company.
In addition, they'll also see the company they are connected to within their My Details area.
The invited Company User can browse the website and begin adding items to an order. All prices shown will be the prices set up for the "main user" using the Price Lists of SparkLayer.
Once they've added products to an order, they can access the My Cart Interface at any point and begin the checkout process. Just as with the standard customer experience, they can select an address, shipping method, and see all available payment methods.
To understand the payment flow, the payment methods work as follows:
Payment Method | Flow | Status |
|---|---|---|
Pay by Invoice | The order is submitted as a Draft order within Shopify and then has to be manually acted upon | Order is left in Draft status until the payment is successfully made |
Pay on Account | The order is submitted as a Draft order within Shopify and then has to be manually acted upon | Order is left in Draft status until the payment is successfully made |
Pay Online by Card | The order is submitted as a Draft order within Shopify and the customer will receive a notification to make payment (see below) | Order is left in Draft status until the payment is successfully made |
Request for Quote | The order is submitted as a Draft order within Shopify and then has to be manually acted upon | Order is left in Draft status until the payment is successfully made |
The payment flow works broadly the same for a Company User as for a standard customer. When the Company User places an order, the orders will by default enter Shopify in the Draft order status with the order saved in the account of the "main user". Within the "Notes" section, under "Additional details", you'll find the email address of the company user who placed the order (within the "Company User Email" field). Just as with any order in Shopify, you'll see the customer's details on the top right.
Depending on the payment method used by the Company User, if the customer is required to make payment, they'll receive an automatic email notification detailing their order and a button to checkout. This uses the 'Send invoice' feature of Shopify Draft orders and you can learn more about how this works here.
Once the customer completes their purchase by making payment, the order is then marked as paid and will then display within your Shopify Orders area.
You can edit this email template by going to Settings > Notifications within Shopify and search for the Draft order invoice template
If the customer hasn't made payment for any reason or you are processing it manually, within Shopify you can open the order and easily resend or manually mark as paid. Please note, the order will stay as a Draft order until action has been taken.
"Roles" let you set up specific privileges for Company Users that are invited. To set a role for a Company User, from the main My Account overview click the "Invite new user" link to get started. Within the invitation screen, you'll see a section "User role".
There are currently two types of roles available:
Role | Details |
|---|---|
Standard | This will allow users to place orders and view all account activity within your shared company account |
Limited | Users will be able to add items to an order but not complete orders. All orders will be sent to the company account owner for approval |
If the invited Company User is set to "Limited", they will be prompted during the checkout process that their order will need reviewing by a team member before it can be completed.
Orders placed this way are essentially "pending" orders that will be invisible to the merchant. Once the order has been approved, this will then create a full order which can then be reviewed, completed, and fulfilled as normal.
When an order is submitted for review, this will show within the main Company User's account under "Recent Activity" with a status of "Requires Approval". The Order ID will be prefaced with a special identifier (e.g. #P-1234), differentiating it from other orders. You can learn more about how this works.
When clicking through to an order, within the Actions menu, the Company User can then perform the following actions:
Action | Details |
|---|---|
Complete Order | This will load the contents of the order into a new "Cart", allowing the Company User to proceed through the checkout and place the order |
Cancel Order | This will cancel the order and remove it from the "Requires approval" list. |
Please note Previously, submitting an order for review did not trigger email notifications to the main Company User. With the new update, notifications are now sent automatically.
Email notifications are sent to both the "main" and "limited" Company Users at key stages of the order review process, without requiring them to be logged in:
- Main User Notification: When a limited user submits an order for review, the main Company User will receive an email alert, notifying them of the pending order that requires their attention.
- Limited User Confirmation: Once the main Company User approves or amends the order, the limited user will receive a confirmation email, updating them on the status of their order.
Please note The name displayed at the top of Company User emails, as shown in the dropdown example above, is synchronised directly from your eCommerce platform by default. If you’d like to customise this information, you can learn how to modify and overwrite your default store details.
As with inviting new users, the "main user" can also easily remove users. From the "Company Users" widget, simply click the icon to remove the user's access to the company.
As well as the "main user" being able to invite users, it's also possible to associate users to a company manually by using special settings against a customer.
Setting up metafields on Shopify To learn more about how to configure metafields on Shopify for SparkLayer, please refer to our guide here
Item | Details |
|---|---|
Custom data type | |
Metafield type | This must be set as a single line text |
Namespace | This must be set as sparklayer |
Key | This must be set as parent_customer_id |
Value | This must be the customer ID of the main user (see below) |
The manual association works by simply adding the main account customer ID into the parent_customer_id metafield.
You can find the main account customer ID in the URL when navigating a customer within the admin. For example, the URL in your browser may look something like this:
https://your-shopify-store-url.com/admin/customers/6494756339930
In this example, the main account customer ID would be 6494756339930
Please note In addition to adding the metafields above, any customers added manually will also require the appropriate b2b tags to be associated to their customer record in Shopify. For example, if the main user has tags b2b and b2b-company-1, these must also be added to the customers being associated.
Company Users is fully compatible with the Sales Agent Ordering allowing sales agents to add users to a company, just as a "main user" would. The inviting users works in the same fashion as detailed above.
It's possible to adjust the text specific to the Company Users functionality by adding special code to the SparkLayer Core Script.
Please note the following limitations of Company Users:
- Inviting users: when a new user is invited, they will receive the "Activate Account" email from Shopify. It is not currently possible to create a custom email notification for this
- Restricting access: when Company Users is activated in the SparkLayer Dashboard, it will apply to all customers that login. It is not possible to manually specify which customers have access to Company Users.