Company Entities and Relationships

Plan: B2B Developer

Lesson 8 of 19 · 30 min

Company Accounts

In B2B Edition, accounts are organized by companies rather than individual customers, which is typical in BigCommerce. This structure is designed to cater to businesses selling products to other businesses with authorized buyers. Therefore, in B2B transactions, the company itself is considered the ‘customer,’ and the authorized buyers are referred to as ‘company users.‘

Registering for a Company Account

There are two types of accounts available to customers: Business accounts and Personal accounts. As the store owner, you can decide which type of account requires a completed registration form, or not require account registration at all. The registration form is an efficient way to collect company information for new accounts.

Depending on your store’s settings, a company might need a B2B Edition user to manually approve their registration. This setting can be turned off in the B2B Edition control panel under General Settings > Company Management.

Company Account Status

Once a company submits the account registration form, the account must be approved by a B2B Edition user. The approval process and store access can be adjusted through various settings while the account is pending. Ensuring these settings are correctly configured is crucial for a smooth onboarding experience.

• Enable automatic approval - new accounts do not need to be manually approved by a B2B Edition user
• Require approval before new company accounts can place orders
• Require approval before new company accounts can see products and pricing

These settings can be toggled on or off in the B2B Edition control panel > General Settings > Company Management.

Managing Company Addresses

B2B customers often have multiple billing and shipping addresses. Each company account has its own address book that lists all associated addresses. Default shipping and billing addresses can be set at the account level and will appear at the top of the address book. Company addresses are not linked to BigCommerce customer addresses unless a personal account is converted to a business account.

Address labels help identify specific types of addresses within the address book. This optional field helps users organize various billing and shipping addresses in a company account. Labels can include company name, location name, organization name, company code, or any other relevant identifier.

B2B Edition Company Accounts and BigCommerce Customer Group Relationship

Company accounts are independent of customer groups, meaning that the two entities exist separately. Customer groups can be used to set the pricing and the viewable catalog for a company or a group of companies; however, this is optional and company accounts are not required to be assigned to a customer group.

For example, your B2B storefront sells both wholesale and retail products, and it works for some of your customers to have access to both types of products. You can set up two customer groups (Eastern and Western regions) to give your customers access to the specific pricing and catalogs for their region. In addition, you can have other company accounts that are not assigned a customer group. These companies will have access to the products and pricing on your storefront regardless of region.

With independent Companies, Company accounts do not automatically generate customer groups. This allows you to:

• Assign an existing customer group during company creation
• Reassign company accounts to a different customer group
• Create a single customer group and assign it to multiple company accounts to manage their catalog access and pricing structure in one place
• Set a default customer group for new company accounts
• Update customer group assignments in bulk via CSV import
• Provide a company with your storefront’s default catalog and pricing by unassigning the customer group

BigCommerce price lists allow you to assign company- and currency-specific pricing to specific customer groups. Individualized pricing for companies can be accomplished by applying a price list one or more customer groups and associating the customer groups with companies as appropriate. For more information about using price lists, see Using Price Lists documentation.

Company Users

Company users, or buyers, can access the Buyer Portal from the storefront to manage orders, request sales quotes, and pay invoices. Each buyer has a user account with a role that determines their permissions within the Buyer Portal. When a B2B Edition user is created, a customer account is automatically created in BigCommerce.

There are three default company user roles:

• Junior Buyer – Can submit Shopping Lists for approval to other buyers for approval. Junior Buyers cannot make purchases on their own. This role is useful for Company employees that require approval to make purchases for their business.
• Senior Buyer– Can approve Shopping Lists from other buyers or create their own. Senior Buyers can also place orders on the storefront and view Company order history. This role can be used for Company managers that regularly make purchases on behalf of their business, or who oversee a team that creates purchase lists to be approved.
• Admin – In addition to the actions available to Senior Buyers, Admins can manage other aspects of their Company account, such as setting up business addresses, adding new users, and paying invoices. This role should be assigned to individuals that manage the entire Company account.

B2B Edition allows you to create custom user roles with unique permissions to support specific workflows for buyers, and these can be assigned to buyers in any Company account. However, it is important to note that some API requests are restricted based on user role and permissions.

Company Credit and Payment Terms

Company credit settings allow you to set a maximum value for orders using the Purchase Order payment method and place company accounts on a credit hold if they surpass their allowed credit.

The credit amount does not track buyer credit usage; it only establishes a cap on an order’s total value that can be placed using the Purchase Order payment method. The available credit value will not decrease when buyers make a purchase order, nor increase when they pay an open invoice.

If monitoring credit is what you need, you can use the Payments API to sync an ERP or accounting system.

There are three company credit settings:

• Available credit - the currency and value of a company’s credit
• Disable payment via PO when credit value exceeded- this prevents company buyers from using the PO payment method at checkout if the total value for their order exceeds their available credit. Other payment options will still be available
• Put account on credit hold - all transactions in your store except for invoice payments will be halted

A warning banner will appear in the company’s buyer portal when the available credit has been exceeded. The banner will inform buyers of the credit hold and advise them to contact you for more information.

Company Payment Terms

When an invoice is generated for an order it is assigned the default payment term configured in your invoice settings. To allow for individual business relationships and agreements on payment deadlines, you can set payment terms on the company level varying from “Due on receipt” to “Net 60.”

Resources

• Using Price Lists
• Companies and Customer Groups in B2B Edition
• Payments API