Understand shoppers and new account registration requests

You can allow a prospective account-based shopper to request registration of a new store account.

This section applies to Open Storefront Framework (OSF) and Storefront Classic.

Enabling this feature lets a shopper submit an account registration request for a new account by providing required business details. The information is reviewed by an administrator from the merchant side after the shopper submits the required details, and, if needed, the administrator may request additional details from the shopper such as credit checks. The registration request is then either approved or rejected. If the request is approved, the new contact for the account is activated.

An example of how the basic process works is provided in the list that follows. This high-level description is provided only as example and an introduction and does not necessarily mean that your process would work exactly this way.

For example, all of the emails that are sent during the approval/rejection process are only lightly touched upon in the example process flow. For more detail on the automated emails described in the process, refer to Configure Email Settings.

• The administrator for the account-based shopper enables the ability for a shopper to request registration of a new store account in the Settings area of administrator user interface. Refer to Configure Account-based Shoppers in the Configure Shopper Settings section for more details.
• A prospective account-based shopper uses the store user interface to submit a new account registration request. When the registration request is received, its status at this point is New.
• The administrator sees the new registration request in the Registration Requests area of the Accounts page. Refer to Work with account registration requests for more information on how to view and work with these types of requests.
• The administrator opens the registration request and begins reviewing it.
• The administrator saves some review changes and/or explicitly sets the request status to Review.
• Another administrator reopens the registration request to review it and decides more information is needed before an approval decision can be made. This administrator can then change the status to More Info Needed.
• Outside of the store, the administrator emails the account requester asking for additional information.
• The account requester sends the administrator the required information and sends it back to the administrator.
• After reading the account requester’s email, the other administrator opens the registration request, adds the new/missing information, and sets the registration request’s status back to Review.
• The original administrator opens the registration request and makes a decision whether to accept or reject the account request.
• If the administrator accepts the registration request, an approval email is sent to the account requester. The registration request then disappears from the Registration Request list and appears in the Account list. The account requester then becomes a contact in the new account.
• If the administrator rejects the registration request, they can optionally enter comments to add to the rejection email.

The rejection email is sent to the account requester and the registration request remains in the Registration Request list with a status of Rejected.