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Process of Setting Up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications

This section tells you how to set up the ability to check the credit standing of customers who want to pay with purchase orders.

Before an order for products or services can be completed through your Siebel application, your company may want to assess whether the customer is in good credit standing to make the purchase on credit. Different applications are used to perform credit checks depending on the method of payment.

• For business customers paying with purchase orders, credit checks on the customer account are performed by a back-office, third-party accounts receivable or credit management application. This chapter describes how to set up these applications.
• For customers paying with a credit card, credit checks are performed by a third-party payment application. This chapter does not include information about how to set up these applications. For more information about third-party payment applications, see Siebel eSales Administration Guide.

Third-party accounts receivable or credit management applications use logic to make a credit determination based on your company's previous history with the customer account and other credit data.

Integration with third-party credit checking applications uses a specific, pre-built Application Services Interface (ASI) named External Credit Check. Some configuration is required to set up this integration, but once set up, this functionality should not require any maintenance.

Credit checks are performed as part of the order process at the payment line level, when the user clicks the Credit Check button in an order, and as part of the quote process at the header level, when the user chooses the Verify menu option in a quote.

Two workflows directly control the process of checking the credit status of business accounts. These are:

• Credit Check - Quotes
• Credit Check - Orders

For more information about the quote and order process, including the details of these workflows, see ASI Workflows for Quotes and Orders.

NOTE:  Purchase order credit checks can also be made on a quote or order from a customer application, such as Siebel eSales. For information about how to set up a purchase order credit checking integration from a customer application, see Siebel eSales Administration Guide.

To set up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications, you must perform the following tasks:

1. Verifying the External Credit Check ASI User Properties
2. Configuring Web Services for Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications
3. Activating the Workflow Processes for Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications

To set up Purchase Order Credit Checking Applications, you can perform the following optional tasks:

4. Modifying User Properties for Purchase Order Credit Checking Integration
5. Turning Off Credit Checking
6. Customizing When Credit Checks Are Performed
7. Changing the Credit Auto-Approval Limit For Accounts
8. Skipping Credit Checks For an Account
9. Restricting Which Employees Can Administer Credit Checking
10. Extending the ASI for Credit Check Interface Request

NOTE:  If you modify any lists of values such as order types or purchase order payment methods, be sure to review the workflows processes in Credit Check - Quotes and Credit Check - Orders to verify that the application logic to determine whether to call credit check is still correct.

For more information about to how to set up, use, and modify integrations based on ASIs, see Application Services Interface Reference: Siebel eBusiness Application Integration Volume VI.