Setting up reseller records

In the back office, resellers are customers that are also distributors. To make a customer a reseller, the customer must be set up as these things:

A vendor, to get paid for commissions earned when the reseller’s customers place orders.
A salesperson, to associate other existing back office customers that belong to this reseller.
A service partner, to submit and get paid for service request order (SRO) transactions from the portal.
A Customer Portal and Reseller Portal user, to log in to the portals.

For resellers in a multi-site implementation, a customer, salesperson, commission, and vendor record must exist in each site of the Customer Portal site group and they must be kept in sync with each other between sites. The customer number must be the same in each site. The reseller’s salesperson must reference the same salesperson. The salesperson must reference the same vendor. The commission record must have the correct commission percentage for the salesperson.

The User Account Management Utility helps to put these tables in sync; however, the utility does not create customer records. All customer records must be created manually in the back office. The utility can copy the vendor, salesperson, commission, and reseller's salesperson records when missing in sites where the customer record of the reseller exists.

This task assumes that the reseller’s customer record already exists in all sites of the Customer Portal site group. These additional steps are required:

In the Customer Portal site group’s Primary Site, complete these tasks:
1. On the Vendors form, create a record to represent this reseller. For the Vendor ID, we recommend that you use the same number as the customer number, to indicate that these records are tied together; however, you can use an existing vendor record if one exists. The reseller’s commission checks are sent to the header address, or remit-to address if one is provided, on this form.
2. On the Salespersons form, create a record for this reseller. For the salesperson ID, we recommend that you use a prefix of R (for Reseller) plus the customer number. Again, this helps to tie all of the associated records together. Also, use the reseller’s company name as the salesperson name. Select Outside and Portal Reseller, and specify the Ref Num of the vendor record from step 1a.
  Note: The salesperson ID should be considered a reseller company ID and not a personal ID, because when you apply this ID to multiple customer ship-tos, you are giving the reseller company and all of its associated users access to the customers’ information. For example, for a reseller user Jane Doe who has a customer record linked to the reseller ABC Company (CustNum = 499), we recommend that you create a salesperson ID of R499. Specify the reseller’s company name, ABC Company, as the salesperson name. This way, R499 gives you reference back to the customer that is the portal reseller to which you are adding associations for the reseller’s customers, and the reseller company name is included in the Salesperson list.
3. On the Commission Table Maintenance form, specify the commission percentage for the reseller’s salesperson ID. You must enter an asterisk (*) in the Product Code field, so the commission percentage is the same for all product codes. Enter the percentage in only the first Commission field.
On the Customers or Multi-Site Customers form, select the reseller’s customer record, and in the Reseller’s Salesperson field, specify the salesperson ID from step 1b. For multi-site implementations, this must be completed in every site of the Customer Portal site group, using the same customer number in each site.
On the Customer Ship-Tos or Multi-Site Customer Ship-Tos form, select the reseller’s customer record, and in the Salesperson field, specify the reseller’s salesperson ID. This allows the reseller to receive commissions for its own purchases. For multi-site implementations, this must be completed in every site of the Customer Portal site group, using the same salesperson ID in each site. Also, this must be done for all of the reseller's ship-tos.
On the Partners form, set up the reseller as a partner and be sure to specify this information:

Type

Select Customer.

Ref Num

Select the reseller’s customer number from step 2.

Active

Select this option to make the record active.

Default Payment Type

Specify the default payment type to use when the reseller enters a new SRO Miscellaneous transaction on the portal.

User

If the partner needs to be associated with a specific user account, select the user ID. Once the user ID is specified, then SRO transactions against this partner ID can be submitted from the portal by only this user account. No other user account can submit SRO transactions against this partner, even if the user is associated with the reseller. If a partner record needs to be shared by multiple back office user accounts, leave the User field blank so any user associated with the reseller can submit SRO transactions against this partner.

Reimburse Material

Select this option to allow the reseller to be reimbursed for SRO material transactions.

Reimburse Labor

Select this option to allow the reseller to be reimbursed for SRO labor transactions.
Use the Reseller Portal User Account Management Utility to create a back office user account record for the reseller. See Creating user accounts with the utility.
- For a single-site implementation, the utility automatically associates the user account with the reseller's customer account on the Customer Users form.
- For a multi-site implementation, the utility automatically associates the user account with the customer account. The utility also copies the vendor, salesperson, commission table, and reseller's salesperson from the Primary Site to all other sites.