What's New!

Introduction

Each month, we release new features to SparkLayer and you can see our latest updates below.

September, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Shopify Onboarding Dashboard

If you're using your Shopify admin to keep tabs of your SparkLayer installation process, you'll like our latest update!

We've now greatly improved the interface, making it easier to see the key onboarding steps, learn about available features, and quickly access the main SparkLayer Dashboard to complete your onboarding process.

Restricting billing address modifications

By default, you can allow customers to edit and manage addresses via their My Account area. If you'd prefer to restrict them from editing their billing address, you can now enable this via the Configurations area of the SparkLayer Dashboard.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Product widgets - single variant products If you have single variant products on your website, you can now display the full variant name in the table-view mode
• CSS styling controls We've now added the ability to customise the "Order Complete" checkmark icon colour that shows to customers once an order is placed
• Price Lists admin If you now try to download a "manual price list" that hasn't had prices uploaded, you'll be prompted with a message (rather than downloading a blank file previously)

August, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Checkout address editing

We're pleased to announce one of our most requested features - checkout address editing! Customers can now add new addresses directly from the My Order Interface, making it even faster to choose shipping addresses and complete an order

This new feature can also help streamline and compliment any drop-shipping activities your customers may be doing. To learn more about how it works, see our guide here.

Set minimum and maximum order limits

To add more flexibility to your ordering rules, we've now released the ability to set both minimum and maximum order requirements for your customer groups.

Based on the rules you set, you can now more easily restrict customers from being able to checkout until they meet the order requirements. To learn more, see our full guide here.

Custom checkout message

On the final step of the My Order Interface, Review & Pay, it's now possible to display a "custom checkout message" that lets you inform customers of any special notes or information they need to be aware of.

It's a great way to highlight information about shipping, payment, or anything else! Learn more.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• My Order - displaying RRP price If you've set up rrp pricing for your products, you can now display the RRP price within the My Order Interface
• My Order - selecting a payment method If a customer has pre-selected a payment method (e.g. Pay by Invoice) and subsequently makes changes to their order, the payment method will now be pre-selected (rather than resetting back to the default payment method)
• Product widgets - handling for "Unavailable" If all variants of a product are set as "Unavailable" (i.e. they have no B2B pricing set), the Product Detail Interface and Product Card Interface will now hide the "Add to Order" button from showing to a customer
• Product cards - improved handling for variants If your products have multiple levels of variants (e.g. colour and size), the Product Card Interface will now only show available variants based on availability and "disable" variants that cannot be added to an order
• My Account - "Financials" section If you have credit terms set up for your B2B customers but you'd prefer to hide the "Financials" section from the My Account Interface, you can now do this via a new configuration. Learn more
• Dashboard - Shipping You can now more easily edit and delete shipping rules directly from the Shipping area of the SparkLayer Dashboard

July, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Display custom fields within the My Account

Within the My Account Interface, it's now possible to show "custom fields" allowing you to add additional information that you want your B2B customers to see. For example, you may want to include details of their sale agent contact, website address, or anything else!

Setting custom fields for the My Details area works in a very similar way to the custom checkout fields feature and you can learn more in our full guide here.

Upload invoices to an order

When viewing an order, in addition to the order details (such as products ordered, order status, address), it's now possible to attach an invoice against an order that the customer can subsequently download.

Once the invoice has been uploaded, your customers can then view the invoice by viewing their order details within the My Account Interface.

You can learn more about how to set this up in our guide here.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Price lists - clearing prices You can now "clear" price lists within the SparkLayer Dashboard for any price lists that you've manually uploaded (via a CSV). This is especially useful if you want to remove existing price list data and re-upload it.
• My Order - uploading CSV data Within the My Order Interface, you can now paste in CSV data to quickly populate an order. This works alongside the existing CSV file upload feature. Learn more.
• Product cards - display stock level and SKU Within the Product Card Interface, you can now optionally display a live stock level and SKU (product code). Learn more
• Checkout validation You can now define more granular rules for validating whether a customer is allowed to proceed to checkout. Learn more in out JavaScript SDK.

June, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Integration with experience platform, Pack

Speed and performance have always been at the heart of how we’ve built SparkLayer: from how we manage the complexities of B2B pricing in a scalable way, through to ensuring that the end B2B customer gets the smoothest possible experience when placing orders online.Today, we're thrilled to announce our latest partnership that takes this a step further, as we launch our official integration with Pack! Learn more about our partnership.

Configure net payment terms more easily

We've just made setting customer net payment terms even easier! If you're using the SparkLayer "Pay on Account" payment method, you can now set up specific net payment terms for a customer and have this automatically populate the payment terms in Shopify.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Address book - phone numbers
  When adding an address in the My Account area, you can now optionally make customers specify a phone number. This will then be included in the customer's details if they proceed to place an order
• Address book - billing & shipping address
  When adding an address in the My Account area, customers can now specify if they want the address to be their default Billing and/or default Shipping address. This is useful if they require different addresses when placing an order

May, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

The new B2B Price Engine

We’re excited to announce the launch of one of our most anticipated updates, our new Price Engine that gives SparkLayer customers powerful new ways to automate and streamline their B2B pricing rules!

Previously, SparkLayer gave customers the ability to manage pricing via CSV uploads and, for more complex integrations, automating pricing via the SparkLayer API. With the new Price Engine, SparkLayer customers can now:

• Use pricing from their eCommerce platform (e.g. Shopify) to create automatic B2B pricing (e.g. set B2B prices to be 20% off Shopify prices)
• Set up automatic pricing based off other price lists (e.g. 50% off your default price list)
• Quickly download price lists to make edits and then easily re-upload
• Edit pricing “inline" with our Price Editor Tool
• Import manual prices more quickly, with a major performance boost

Learn more in our recent announcement or see how it works in our guide here.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Product widgets You can now optionally display the RRP prices anywhere on your storefront with our new RRP price widget
• Performance improvements We've made a range of improvements under the hood to speed up the process of importing pricing into SparkLayer

April, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

The new Price Editor

The Price Editor tool compliments the pricing import tool, allowing you to easily add and edit pricing in a more "adhoc" manner. For example, perhaps you need to edit a single price for product and add a new one, and you'd prefer not to upload a new CSV file to do this.

The Price Editor tool works by letting you search for a product SKU and then edit and add pricing inline, allowing you to rapid modify your B2B pricing. Our team has been busily working on our major pricing engine update (coming soon!) and we've also released the following improvements.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Languages We've added support for Hebrew and Georgian to the SparkLayer Frontend. See all languages we support.
• SDK updates If you're using our JavaScript SDK to build more custom interfaces, you can now reference the total weight of an order. This is useful if you want to hide/show messaging based on a customer's order contents reaching a certain weight threshold.
• Performance improvements We've made a range of improvements under the hood to speed up the process of importing pricing into SparkLayer

March, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Checkout Custom Fields

Checkout Custom Fields give you the ability to capture additional information from the customer when they checkout. We've released two enhancements that give even more flexibility to how you set these up as well as new ways to display this data to customers.

It's now possible to set validation rules within Checkout Custom Fields allowing you to apply restrictions to fields such as dates (for example, blocking customers from selecting a weekend).

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Data Sync area We've released a new area to the SparkLayer Dashboard called Data Sync that combines both product and customer data sent from Shopify.
• Payment methods It's now possible to change the order that payment methods show during the checkout as well as set the default.
• Stock level key You can now display the stock level key on desktop by using the CSS variable --spark-pdp-stock-key-desktop: flex
• Cart notification You can optionally hide the progress bar by using the CSS variable --spark-toast-animation-display: none

February, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Company Users

It's here! One of our most anticipated product updates, Company Users, is now available! Company Users is a brand new tool that’s designed to improve the B2B purchasing and account management flow within an organisation. Sometimes referred to as "B2B account management", it allows companies to create teams of users (i.e. Company Users) that can share specific actions within their account.

From placing orders and tracking their status, repeat ordering previous orders, through to creating shopping lists and sharing address books. What sets the SparkLayer Company Users tool apart is how simple it is to use. Inline with our approach to make the B2B experience self-service, customers themselves can create their own teams right from within their My Account area. There’s no need to request the store owner to manage this on their behalf, the customers themselves have full control over the process. Learn more about Company Users.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Multi-currency support We've made some major improvements to how SparkLayer works with Shopify Markets/multi-currency meaning you can manage this all within a single Shopify store.
• My Account Re-ordering When viewing a completed order in the My Account area, it's now possible to re-order items on a product-by-product basis.
• The SparkLayer Dashboard We've made a number of interface improvements including the ability to edit and delete Customer Groups.

January, 2023

🎉 NEW FEATURES

DEAR Systems Integration

We’re pleased to release our latest integration with DEAR Systems. DEAR Systems has long held the reputation as being the system of choice for established and fast-growing brands, providing a centralised location to manage inventory, orders, warehousing, fulfilment, accounting, and more.

The SparkLayer integration works by connecting to the merchant's DEAR Systems account to access B2B data such as product pricing and price lists as well as synchronising B2B customer data.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• SparkLayer Quick Order Customers will now see a running total of ‘lines’ and ‘items’ next to the sub-total. This makes it easier for them to see the size of their B2B order
• Dark mode For merchants using a ‘dark’ theme, we’ve Improved support for dark mode on collection pages
• Right-to-Left mode: SparkLayer now supports countries/languages that require “right-to-left” (or RTL)
• Language editing We’ve made it easier to manage language updates with a simpler way to add text overwrites within your storefront
• Language translation support We’ve added support for Romanian and Arabic.

December, 2022

🎉 NEW FEATURES

1-click Shopify B2B theme install

If you're using SparkLayer on Shopify, you may be aware of Shopify's latest theme, Dawn. With our new 1-click B2B theme install, any merchant using SparkLayer can now instantly install our B2B-optimised version of the Shopify Dawn theme and get up and running with their B2B store in a matter of minutes. Best of all, no code changes are required to set this up.

It's a great way to test how SparkLayer works before installing it on a live Shopify theme or you could even use it as the basis for your next B2B store! To get started, go to the SparkLayer Dashboard.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Product page widget The product page widget currently shows a special 'table' view for products that have variants (e.g. size, colour). You can now render the same 'table' view for single variant products by adapting the product widget code.
• Product settings We've updated our documentation on product settings including how it's possible to set products (and variants) to not be "sellable" to B2B customers and even how to fully hide products (and variants) from showing with a special "display" setting.
• Tiered pricing By default, if you have tiered pricing set up, the pricing will be applied across all variants of a product. You can now set this to only apply to specific variants via a new setting within the SparkLayer Dashboard.
• Pack sizing The product detail page widget now supports a 'Pack price' that gives customers a cost for all products within a pack.
• Product widgets customisations We've enabled additional design customisation settings including button and input styling.
• Line item limits With Shopify's line item limit of ~ 250 items, we've now included special notifications within the SparkLayer Quick Order if customers exceed this limit
• Dashboard product data You can now search by SKU within the Data look up tool in the SparkLayer Dashboard.
• Brightpearl integration We've made improvements to the handling of customer address syncing for BrightPearl, including phone numbers and company names.

November, 2022

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Configure "custom dates" for backorder products

With support already for backordering/pre-ordering built into SparkLayer, we’re excited to announce our latest update, "custom dates" that can be set for backorder products."Custom dates" allow you to set an exact date when the product is expected to be available. It’s a great way to give the end customer better visibility of when to expect receipt of the products on order, and helps deliver an overall better customer experience.

Use-cases could include:

• Setting a "due in" date of when you're expecting the product to be in stock
• Setting an "estimated shipping" date of when you're expecting the product to ship

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Product page tiered pricing If you're using tiered pricing, the information table shown to customers on a product page will now include pack sizing. For example, if your tiered pricing starts at 6 units, this will be shown as the first in the list.
• Product page widget We've improved the interface of the product page widget to hide the initial variant dropdown if a product only has a single option within it.
• Product card variants If a product has variants that don't have prices assigned, these will be shown last in the purchasing dropdown on the product card widget
• My account area If you're using our account balance feature, you can now optionally hide any reference to 'credit' if you don't set a credit limit against a customer.
• CSV import The SparkLayer Quick Order Interface now has improved messaging for customers using the CSV import tool, making it clearer when a product isn't able to be imported due to stock limitations.

October, 2022

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Custom Fields during the checkout

Our latest update includes the much anticipated 'custom fields' feature that allows you to add additional data capture fields during the checkout process.

Use-cases could include:

• A date capture field, e.g. "Shipping" or "Delivery" date
• Purchase order number (PO number)
• Additional Shipping requests

Custom fields has support for the following types of data capture: Text entry fields, Select menus (i.e. drop downs), Date selection, Email, Phone, and more.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Price lists deletion You can now delete price lists directly from the SparkLayer price list admin
• Total quantity of items The SparkLayer Quick Order Interface will now show the total units in a customer's order (i.e. total quantity) before checking out
• Customer credit and payment on account If you have customer credit enabled, you can now allow customers to optionally be able to checkout using Payment on Account (previously this was blocked for customers who exceed their credit limit)
• We've partnered with Balance payments to offer Buy Now and Pay Later for B2B merchants using Shopify. Learn more

September, 2022

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Quick Buy Mode

Our new Quick Buy Mode gives you a new way to display the SparkLayer product widget on your collection pages with an optimised 'table' view.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Back-order, minimum stock level If you're using the backorder feature, it's now possible to set granular minimum stock levels at a product variant level giving you more flexibility on how many units you allow to be sold to customers.
• Product variant images If you've product images within Shopify that are assigned to a product variant (e.g. colour), it's now possible to change the images shown to a customer when a variant is selected via SparkLayer. This is a manual change, if you would like this enabled please contact us
• Cart line item limit We've increased the maximum line items available in a single order from 100 to 250, with customer-friendly messaging should customers exceed this. Languages: we've added support for new languages, Norwegian and Finnish

August, 2022

🎉 NEW FEATURES

B2B shipping rules

If you've set up SparkLayer on your B2C (DTC) website and need to create different shipping rules for your B2B customers, you can now do this via the SparkLayer shipping tool.

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Address display We've improved visibility of shipping addresses and customers can now see their selected address just before they complete their order. The address summary will show in the final order totals section of the SparkLayer Quick Order Interface
• CSV importing We've made improvements to our CSV import tools, with handling for different currency formats. For customers uploading price lists in Euros for example, the import will now support comma formats for pricing (such as 19,99)
• Performance We've released a big performance improvement to the frontend, with a more rapid login process. We've re-engineered how our user authentication works and merchants should now see a much quicker log in process when a B2B customer signs in.

July, 2022

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Show product settings

If you've configured your products to work with settings such as pack sizing or minimum and maximum quantities, you can now display this to customers anywhere where you show the SparkLayer product interface. Once enabled, this will show a new 'Qty rules apply' message that will show all associated product rules you've set up.

Show order notes from My account overview

If customers place an order and include a special note (e.g. PO number), this can now be viewed from the My account overview page

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Shopping list names If a customer creates a new shopping list and uses the same name as an existing one, this will now fully overwrite it instead of creating a duplicate
• My account ship-to address You can now show the shipping address for an order from the My account overview page.

June, 2022

🎉 NEW FEATURES

Show tiered pricing on product cards

If you're using tiered pricing, you can now display the discount summary within the product card widget. The product card will now optionally display the cheapest price to the customer as well as the maximum discount they could receive. The customer can also mouse-over the widget to see a fully summary of the tiered pricing available. You can test out how it works on our demo store

My Account order tracking information

If you supply shipping information against a customer's order within Shopify, this will now be shown within the SparkLayer My Account interface when viewing an order. The tracking information includes

• A link to the shipping company's own tracking page
• The specific tracking number for the customer's visibility

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Address searching If B2B customers have large numbers of addresses saved against their address book, they can now use a special search box to more easily select their preferred address.
• Multi-currency support For merchants using a custom ERP solution, we can now enable multi-currency on the same Shopify instance. This is currently restricted only to manual payments only (e.g. Payment by Invoice, Request for Quote) and does require technical investigation before enabling.
• JavaScript SDK For merchants using our SKD, we've added some additional events including 'on cart update'.