B2B

The TOTECS Platform allows you create one or more user login accounts linked to their associated Debtor Account / Card Id in the accounting / ERP system.  Each user account has their own shopping basket, favourites, shopping lists and order history.  This allows different people from the same company to login and place orders independently of each other.  This structure makes it easy for customer accounts who have mutiple store locations and mutiple purchasing staff in each store.

Note: Most ERP systems do not represent all the different people within a customer account who do purchasing.  Normally, the customer card contains overall debtor account information such as price level, tax codes, payment terms and delivery addresses for each location / store.  By linking online users to customer accounts, you can setup an unlimited number of users per customer account.  In some cases, our clients have large corporate accounts with 100+ users linked to the one common customer account code in the Accounting/ERP system.

No, all shopping cart and their contents are persisted over time.  This ensures that if the user is logged out or their session expires, they will see their shopping cart exactly as it was the next time they login.  

Note: If the user has logged in on another day, their shopping cart is checked and any prices are updated and inactive items are removed.

Yes.  One of the most powerful mechanism of TOTECS is how user accounts are linked to customer accounts in the ERP to make sure that when customers login and browse the catalogue, they can see prices that are configured specifically for them.  

Customer account pricing is a complex capability for an eCommerce Platform.  Generally, the more inventory / customer account pricing rules in play, the slower the product search is on the website. This can be devastating for large distributors who can lose customers because their website is too slow.  

TOTECS gets around this through it's high speed smart Universal Pricing Algorithm developed over many years.  Most other platforms integrate the basics such as price levels but fail to handle more complex structures.  Making the task more difficult is that each ERP system offers different pricing capabilities and data structures.  

TOTECS works differently to other platforms.  The Connector software that is installed on the client's ERP server exports customer account pricing data into the TOTECS Universal Pricing data structures.  This means the Connector does the heavy lifting of translating layers of pricing rules into a simpler and smarter universal data structure.  

When a user searches the catalogue online, the Universal Pricing Algorithm rips out layered customer account prices from the Universal Pricing data structures at super high speed and delivers fully priced search results in a fraction of a second.   How do we know it works well?  Alectro put it to the test having over 500,000 inventory SKUs stored in the platform.  See it for yourself and search for some HDMI Wall Plates at www.alectro.com.au

The Universal Pricing Algorithm supports the following layered pricing structures:

• Price groups (groups of price levels)
• Price levels (unlimited levels plus reference price level Ie, List or RRP)
• Customer account contracts based on active date ranges (each having multiple levels)
• Customer discount matrixes (discounts applied to classes or categories)
• Customer special price rules (individual, category or global)
• Quantity discounts (price breaks or price rule driven)
• Mixed quantity discounts (Ie, order X+ units of a mixture of products and trigger a global discount break for each product)

Need Further Customisation?

The Connector software contains the Generic Adapter which allows you to configure SQL queries that extract pricing logic exactly how you need it done and translates it into the Universal Pricing data structures. 

Every user login account in TOTECS is assigned to an Inventory Permission Role.  The role defines rules that govern if the user is allowed to View a product, Add it to Cart, request Dropshipment or Add if its on Backorder.  

The role is configured easily by setting the default state for all products and then adding exceptions.  This means you could configure an inventory role to knock out all product and add exceptions rules to allow products based on certain product data attributes (ie, brand, supplier code, product code prefixed with...).  To address this question, you would do the reverse and allow all products and add exception rules to knock out the ones not permitted.

TOTECS allows you to create an umlimited number of Inventory Permission Roles thus the possibilities for product catalogue permissions are virtually endless.  That said, normally most clients have at the most 20 roles configured.

The product details and search results listings can be configured to either show a 'volume discount' link that when clicked on, shows a popup of the qty breaks and prices available.  Alternatively, quantity break discounts can be displayed directly beneath each product in the category or search results (Ie, Buy 100+ for $4.50 each).  The latter makes it absolutely clear to the customer that volume discounts are available.

Yes.  The TOTECS User Permissions system contains inventory roles that specify the rules that trigger if a product is active or not for them.  Managing this can be tricky if there are a lot of products on contract so there is a smart solution to make this easy to configure.

TOTECS has a default feature that for any product found on a customer account contract, it is considered as active even if the user is assigned to an Inventory Role where the product is inactive.  This means that you can create and assign the user to an Inventory Role that disables all products and only those that are on the customer account contract are active.

Note: The category tree and product search dynamically display only categories and products that are active.  For instance, if a top level category of Shoes has no products active or on contract for any of it's children category branches, then the entire branch cannot be browsed by that user when they login.  This reduces confusion and makes sure customers can only view/order the products they are allowed to.

TOTECS offers a feature called restricted carton quantities that can be switched on using the User Facility Permission role assigned to the user.  For any users assigned to role with the switch activated, when they add to cart a quantity of units that doesn't match the carton qty, a popup message will advise them that they may only order in multiples of X.

Note: Most advanced ERPs have fields that can store Packs Per Carton or Inner / Outer quantities.  The product Export can be configured to sync the relevant field data into the TOTECS Packs Per Carton field that is used for carton quantity restrictions.

TOTECS can be configured to either:

1. Do nothing and not interrupt the customer's ordering process (often preferred by suppliers who want a customer service person to contact them to discuss their account after the order is received) OR
2. Show an icon indicating their account is On Hold or Exceeding Credit Limit (often this icon is linked to the Account Enquiry feature.  When the user clicks on the icon, they will see their live account balance (retrieved through the Connector and a list of outstanding invoices) AND / OR
3. Diplay a message to either Warn or Block the customer when they proceed into the Checkout process for the current order they are working on (note the warning message can take them to the Account Enquiry outstanding invoices page so they can rectify their account)

Note: TOTECS has a switch that enables the online user to select outstanding invoices and pay them online using Credit Card or direct deposit.  If the Block setting is active in option 3, the block is released after they have paid at least one invoice.  This feedback loop reduces the onerous job of 'chasing up' accounts who have fallen behind.

This is often a requirement for larger corporate, public or government customers.  The Purchaser / Manager Approvals feature allows you to assign Purchaser Users to Manager Users for approvals.  

How it works?

1. The purchaser user logs on, adds items to cart and proceeds through checkout as per normal.  
2. When they confirm and submit the order, TOTECS advises them the order has been submitted to their manager for approval.
3. TOTECS holds the order in a pending state and sends an email to the manager user notifying them that a purchaser has submitted an online order for approval.
4. The manager logs on and browses the list of orders to approve and either selects to Approve, Modify or Decline an order.
5. If approved, the order is then submitted to the Accounting/ERP via the Connector as a Sales Order

Note: If the manager user elects to Modify the order, they can edit the qtys, add or remove products as required.

Conditional Approvals

In some cases, the customer may want extra conditions configured so that orders may be automatically approved up to a pre-approved limit or after 24 hours of no action another manager will be notified for approval.

They can however you will need to advise each person that if they place an order at the same time as another person using the same user account, they will be adding to the same shopping cart which could be potentially confusing.

Generally, it's better to give each person a user account however in some cases, a single user account can be used by people who work and do their orders on different days of the week.

TOTECS has a fixed layout B2B Trade interface that works in all browsers going right back to Internet Explorer v6.  This interface is robust and contains virtually all the B2B features and workflows available in the platform.

Individual user accounts can be switched to login to the Trade Interface instead of the Content Managed website interface.

Note: The Trade Interface may not display properly on future browser versions.  Active development of the Trade Interface has ceased however bug fixes are still applied as they arise.  

TOTECS has a feature where customer account ids, each representing a cost centre code can be assigned to a user.  This user can then create shopping baskets and switch between them for any of these cost centre accounts.