Use Order Approvals

26 Use Order Approvals

Retail Digital Commerce includes an order approvals feature for account-based storefronts.

This feature allows an administrator to enable order approvals for an account and specify a purchase limit. When a contact within the account creates an order that exceeds the purchase limit, the order is sent to an approver for confirmation before it is submitted.

You can also integrate with an external system that determines if an order requires approval. This is useful if you want to use the system to create more complex rules than a simple purchase limit to determine if an order requires approval. For example, you might want all orders that include specific items or that are shipped to certain addresses to require approval. See Enable Order Approvals to learn how to integrate with an external system for order approvals.

The sections in this chapter describe how to accomplish various order approval-related tasks in both the Retail Digital Commerce administration interface and the storefront. Note that, for the storefront tasks, this section assumes that order approvals have been properly configured on the storefront side. For details on how to do this, see Enable Order Approvals.

Understand Order Approvals

When a shopper places an order that requires approval, that order is not submitted until the approval has been given.

Approvers are notified, via email, when orders come in that require approval. An approver can log in and see all orders that require approval for their account.

If the order is approved, what happens next depends on the type of payment method the shopper needs to use. Retail Digital Commerce cannot store credit card information, so it cannot maintain credit card information for the time period in between when the order is placed and when the order is approved. Therefore, if the shopper needs to use a credit card for payment, the shopper must return to the order’s details after the order has been approved and provide credit card payment information. The amount of time the shopper has to make payment on an approved order is configured via the Price Hold Period, described in Set a price hold period. Other than payment information, the shopper should not be able to modify any other order details. Limiting the shopper’s order editing ability requires some customization of the checkout layout, described in Manage the checkout flow for orders requiring approval.

If the shopper used a deferred payment method such as invoice or cash when placing the order, no additional payment details are needed and the order is submitted immediately upon approval.

When an approver approves an order that needs payment, an email is sent to the shopper notifying that the order has been approved and she should provide payment information. When an approver approves an order that does not need payment, the standard order placed email is sent to the shopper, telling the shopper that the order has been submitted.

If the approver rejects the order, the shopper is notified via email. Rejected orders cannot be modified or re-submitted. However, the shopper can view the rejected order’s details and add its items to a new shopping cart to form the basis of a modified order that can pass approval.

Enable or Disable Order Approvals

Order approval settings are defined at the account level and apply to all contacts within the account.

The order approval feature can be enabled or disabled either in the administration interface or on the storefront, but not both. If you configure the order approval settings from the storefront, the corresponding settings in the administration interface become read-only.

Note:

This section describes how to enable or disable the order approval feature when you set a purchase limit in Retail Digital Commerce. To set up the Retail Digital Commerce order approval feature using the Order Approval webhook to integrate with an external system, see Enable Order Approvals.

Order approvals can only be enabled if at least one contact in the account has the Approver role. See Manage approvers for an account for details on how to assign that role. When order approvals are disabled, the change only affects new orders. Existing orders that require approval continue to require approval.

To enable or disable order approvals in the administration interface:

Click the Accounts icon.
Select the account to be modified.
Click the Approvals tab.
If you are using multiple sites, select the name of the site. Approvals are site-specific.
If you are using an external approval system, select the Use external service to determine approval settings check box. Note that when this option is selected, the default Require Approval option is disabled.
Enable the Require approval option and set the purchase limit above which orders require approval. See Understand the purchase limit for order approvals for more details.

Before you can enable order approvals from the storefront, you must set an option in the administration interface that gives control of the order approvals setting to the storefront administrator. Note that when you set the option, the order approvals settings in the administration interface become read-only.

To enable or disable order approvals in the storefront:

Click the Accounts icon.
Select the account to be modified.
Click the Approvals tab.
If you are using multiple sites, provide the name of the site, as approvals are site-specific.
Enable the administrator at the account can manage approvals option and click Save.
On the storefront, log in as an administrator.
Click the My Account link.
Click the Order Approval Settings tab.

Note:
The Order Approval Settings tab must be configured on the storefront before you can use it and it also may use a different name if your implementation team chose to use a different one.
Enable the Require Approvals option and set the purchase limit above which orders require approval. See Understand the purchase limit for order approvals for more details.

Understand the Purchase Limit for Order Approvals

The purchase limit sets a value.

Orders that exceed this value require approval. If a purchase limit is not defined, no orders require approval. If a purchase limit is set to 0, all orders require approval. There is one purchase limit for the entire account and it applies to all contacts in the account, regardless of role (buyer, approver, or administrator). The currency for the purchase limit value is determined by the price list group associated with the account’s contract. In other words, if an account’s contract is associated with a price list group that uses Euros, then the purchase limit is also in Euros.

If an account has multiple contracts, you must select a site when setting a purchase limit. The purchase limit applies to any orders submitted by buyers on the associated site.

Note:

Display of a contact’s purchase limit is not included in the out-of-the-box widgets, however, you can write custom widget code to display this information. See Display a contact’s purchase limit in a widget for more information.

Set a Price Hold Period

You can set a price hold period, after which an approved order that is pending payment is canceled by the system.

The time count starts from when an order is approved. The notification email that is sent to a shopper after an order is approved includes an expiration date and time that is based on the price hold period. The shopper must pay for the order by this expiration date and time.

After the specified amount of time has passed, the order is marked for cancellation. To handle the actual removal of these orders, a scheduled service runs that identifies orders that have been marked for cancellation and then removes them. See Set the frequency of canceled order clean up for more information on this service.

The price hold is site-specific and applies to all accounts. The default setting is that there is no time limit. An order that has been canceled because of the time limit has a “Removed” status, which is the same as any other canceled order. Coupons that have been redeemed as part of a canceled order are not released.

To set the price hold period:

Click the Settings icon.
Select the Site.
Click Payment Processing.
Click the Setup tab.
Enter a number of days and hours for the Price Hold Period and click Save.

Note:

When the Price Hold Period is modified, the new time limit applies to all orders, existing and new. This means that the expiration date and time that a contact sees in the “Order Approved” notification email may become stale if the time limit has been changed after the contact has viewed the email. See Notify users of order approval-related events for more information about the “Order Approved” notification email.

Manage Approvers for an Account

You must assign the Approver role to users you want to be able to approve orders.

An approver can:

View all orders requiring approval for their account.
Approve any order requiring approval, including those that were submitted before the approver was assigned the Approver role.
Approve their own orders.

An administrator assigning roles:

Can assign the Approver role to himself.
Cannot remove the Approver role from the last approver on the account or deactivate the last approver on the account if there are orders pending approval or the order approval feature is enabled.

To assign the approver role in the administration interface:

In the administration interface, click the Accounts icon.
Select the account to be modified.
Click the Contacts tab.
Select the contact you want to assign the Approver role to, click the Approver role, then save the contact.

To assign the approver role in the storefront:

On the storefront, log in as an administrator.
Click the My Account link.
Click the Account Contacts tab.
Select the contact you want to assign the Approver role to, click the Approver role, then Save the contact.

Understand the Effect of Order Approvals on Scheduled Orders

A scheduled order requires approval if one instance of the scheduled order exceeds the purchase limit.

When a scheduled order is approved, the approval applies to every instance of the order created based on the schedule. The approval will persist even if the prices of the schedule order change. Conversely, if Retail Digital Commerce determines that a new scheduled order does not require approval, that determination persists even if the prices change in the schedule order and cause its total value to exceed the purchase limit at some point in the future.

The approval status of a scheduled order affects what the shopper can do with the order. When a scheduled order has been approved, the order is locked down and the only elements that can be edited are the schedule, the active or inactive setting, and the payment method. Note that a scheduled order does not go back for re-approval if the schedule is edited.

When a scheduled order has been rejected, none of the order’s instances will be allowed to proceed and the order cannot be edited. When a scheduled order is pending approval, its contents will be repriced when the order’s details are viewed. The shopper can modify the schedule and the active/inactive setting of a scheduled order that is pending approval.

Note:

Scheduled orders that already exist when the order approval feature is enabled are allowed to proceed without approval.

Notify Users of Order Approval-Related Events

Emails are sent to approvers and shoppers to notify them of various order approval-related events.

You can enable or disable these emails in the administration interface (see Configure Email Settings for more information). The order approval-related emails include the following:

The Order Pending For Approval email is sent to all approvers when an order is placed that requires approval.
The Order Approved email is sent to the shopper when an order is approved and needs payment. Note that this email provides the shopper with an expiration date and time, after which the order is canceled if payment has not been made. See Set a price hold period for more information.
The Order Placed email is sent to the shopper when an order is approved that does not require payment. In this case, the order is submitted immediately upon approval and the shopper is notified via the Order Placed email.
The Order Rejected email is sent to the shopper when an order is rejected.
The Store Cancel Order email is sent to the shopper when an order is canceled because it exceeds the price hold period.
The Payment Failure email is sent to the shopper when an approved order that has been paid for encounters a payment error.

Clicking the order link in any of these emails will take the shopper or approver to the Order Details page for the order. From this page, the approver can approve or reject the order and provide optional comments. Also from the details page, the shopper can provide payment for an order that has been approved. For an order that has been rejected, a shopper can choose to add the order’s items to a new shopping cart to form the basis of a modified order that can pass approval.

You can modify the out-of-the-box email templates so that they match your storefront’s look and feel. See the Customize Email Templates for detailed information.