B2B Components
The B2B Components offer you the opportunity to equip your store with the most important B2B functions.
The B2B Components also offer store customers, who have been authorized accordingly by the store operator, a variety of functions to map their own company structure. These include roles and contacts (sub-accounts for the customer's employees), orders including the approval process as well as order lists and individual order numbers.
Approval per customer group
In the customer groups in your administration under Settings > Shop, you can directly preset whether and which B2B functions a customer group should receive when registering. To do this, you must activate the customised registration form for the desired customer group.
To do this, you can activate or deactivate the individual functions Employee Management (1), Quick Orders(2), Quote Management(3) and/or Order Approval(4), which are described below in this article.
Quote Management
If you have an evolve plan, the new quota management is available.
Often, B2B customers' requirements are so unique that the ordering process cannot be handled by default in the online shop but requires personal consultation with the supplier. In addition, B2B customers often aim for long-term business relationships where customized price offers enable closer cooperation and specific agreements tailored to their long-term needs. It is precisely for this communication that Evolve's new Quote Management feature comes into play. Here, you can exchange prices between buyer and merchant via the shop.
Request prices
As a logged-in B2B customer, you have the option to request a specific price for the items in the shopping cart.
To send a quote request to the dealer, click on Request a quote and then on Send request.
If you would like to add a specific comment, you can write it in the comment field.
In the next step, you will see all your quotation requests in your customer account under Quotes.
There are a total of 5 statuses: Open, In Progress, Accepted, Rejected, Answered and Expired.
Edit quotes
As a merchant, you have the possibility to view and edit the offers in the admin in the area Orders > Quotes. Here you have a complete overview of all received offers.
In the next step, you can edit the requests and enter an individual price or discount. If you agree with your price adjustment, you can send the quote back to the customer by clicking the button Send Quote.
You can set a time limit for your offer by entering an expiry date in the next step.
If you would like to add a comment to the offer, you can do so in the message field.
Employee Management
From Shopware version 6.5.6.0 and the Evolve plan, it is possible to use the employee management. This allows you to create employees and assign roles to them. In order for the Company tab to be available for the respective customer, the employee management must be activated in the customer's edit mode.
You can invite a new employee to the company by clicking the Add employee account button (1). For this purpose, the first name, last name and e-mail address must be entered. The role is optional. In the overview, you can check the status of each employee. After the invitation has been accepted within 2 hours, the employee is part of the organization. Via the three points, you can deactivate it if necessary.
You can create a role via the button Add role (2).
First, you enter the name (1) for the role. You can also decide whether this role should be used as the default role for new employees (2). Furthermore, you can set the permissions (3) for the employee here. These are limited to the areas of employee management, role management and orders.
In the frontend, the respective employee can also create roles and manage employees. To do this, first log in and go to the your account icon (1). Here you can then go to the respective employee management (2) or to the role management (3). The configurations here are the same as in the admin.
Order Approvals
As of Shopware version 6.5.8.0 and the Shopware Evolve plan, it is possible to use the approve orders function. This enables your customers to activate this function for a B2B account.
The function can be activated for each customer by first going to edit mode in the admin's customer overview and then setting the "Order approvals" function to active.
Activation in the frontend
You must then create a role in the activated customer account in which you activate the corresponding functions. The role is created by clicking on Roles --> Add role in the overview. Alternatively, you can also create the role in the Administration.
Approval rules
You use the approval rules to define who is authorised to grant order approvals and for whom. You use the roles you have defined for this assignment.
Click on Create rule to create a new approval rule. If you have already defined rules, they will be listed here. You can edit or delete an existing rule via [...]
Create a new rule
If you want to create a new rule, the following fields must always be filled in.
Name (the name of the rule. It is best to choose the naming so that you can immediately recognise what the rule does)
Priority (you can use the priority to control which authorisation rule takes precedence over others. The higher the number entered, the higher the priority of this rule. For example, if two rules apply, the rule with the higher priority is applied).
Gives order approvals (Here you select the role that can grant the approvals | e.g. managing director, purchasing manager, etc.).
Needs order approvals (Here you select the role that requires approval of the order | e.g. trainee, buyer, etc.)
Applies to (the selection options would be All orders, in which case it is always applied, or Own condition, which allows you to set up rule-based authorisations)
Custom condition
If you select "Custom condition" for the Applies to item, further selection conditions are displayed. The functionality corresponds to that of the Rule Builder, which you already know from the Shop Admin.
Condition (in the dropdown you can choose between different items to determine when the authorisation rule should be applied. You can select Total, Total, Shipping costs, Subtotal of all items, Shipping method used, Payment method used, Total volume of all products or Total weight of all products).
Operator (the selection differs depending on which condition you have previously selected. For example, if you want to react to a sum, "is equal to" or "is greater than or equal to" would be available here. If the condition is dependent on a dispatch type, you can choose between "is one of" and "is not one of").
- Value (here you enter a comparison value. If you have selected a sum, you define a monetary value. When comparing to a shipping method, you choose between your shipping methods and for other selections (e.g. volume) you enter the appropriate unit).
B2B customer accounts can then only order orders with approval. The B2B accounts will then also see this in the order completion.
The main B2B account is then shown this and has the option of accepting or rejecting it.
Quick orders
Starting with Shopware version 6.5.4.0 and the Shopware Evolve plan, it is possible to use the quick order function.
This allows your customers to speed up the ordering process by adding items to the shopping cart via item number or CSV file.
Activation
The function can be activated per customer by first entering the edit mode in the user configuration in the admin and then setting the "Quick order" function to active.
Frontend view
In the frontend, you can access the feature by clicking on the account icon (1) and then selecting Quick Orders (2).
To speed up the general ordering process, you can search for products by name or number (1) and adjust the quantity (2) directly.
Alternatively, you can upload a CSV file (3). After clicking on the button a window will open where you can upload your file. The file must contain the columns "product_number" and "quantity". You can also download a sample file there. As soon as all products are selected, you can add them to the shopping cart (4). If you want to delete the list, you can do this with the button "Clear list" (5).
Shopping list
From Shopware 6.6.3.0 you can use the shopping lists in the B2B Components.
On the one hand, the shopping list can be used by B2B users to create a shopping list for a later purchase. On the other hand, the retailer can use the shopping list to provide an order suggestion for specific use cases.
Activation
You can decide for each customer whether the shopping lists should be used. Open the customer in the administration and activate the slider for the shopping lists, as shown in the screenshot.
Frontend view
In the front end, you can access the feature by clicking on the account icon (1) and then selecting Shopping lists (2).
If you have not used shopping lists before, you can start directly by clicking on Create list.
As soon as the first shopping list has been created, you will see this view:
You can also create a new list via Create list. For each existing shopping list, you can access the context menu via ... . Open shows you which products you have saved. If you want to use an existing list as the basis for a new one, you can obtain a copy of the selected list with Duplicate. If you are not happy with the name, you can use Rename. If a list is no longer required, you can delete it with Delete.
An order with the selected products is created when you execute Add products to cart.
Admin view
As a store owner, you have the option of creating or editing shopping lists for B2B customers in the admin.
Once you have activated the shopping lists for the relevant customer in the B2B Components area, you will receive an additional "Company" tab (1) in the customer account.
This tab shows the list of all shopping lists (2) for this customer. This contains an overview of how many products the list contains, the total value of the list and who created the list. As soon as you are in edit mode (3), you can add a list (4) or edit an existing list (5).
When you edit or create a new list, you can first define the name (1) in the General tab. For new shopping lists, you can also specify the sales channel (2) for which they are intended. For existing lists, this is fixed and cannot be changed.
In the Items section (3), you can add or remove products and change quantities in a similar way to the order overview.
You can either save the list directly using the Save button (4) or save the changes as a new list or as a duplicate using the right arrow.
Add products to a shopping list
To add products to your shopping list, you can directly click on the grey plus sign in a category list. In the product detail view, you will find a plus sign labelled Add to list.
Under Add to you will find the names of your existing shopping lists. Simply click on the name of the list to which you would like to add the product. If you want to create a new list, you can use the last menu entry for this.
Sales Agent
Sales agents and independent dealers can access B2B relevant customers via the Sales Agent Login. This function can be set up as a separate installation.
It is set up either by your agency or your administrator on your own server or subdomain and is linked to your store.
You can find more information in the article Sales Agent.