Elastic Path Account Management
note
Account Management API is now deprecated and we recommend that you use Account Management functionality built into Elastic Path Commerce 8.2 and later.
warning
Elastic Path Account Management 1.0.0 is deprecated and will not be supported after April 2019. Elastic Path does not provide any security patches, quality fixes, or documentation updates for this version.
Use a later version to maintain performance and security. Note that you cannot upgrade 1.0.0 to a later version.
Overview
Elastic Path B2B Commerce provides the Account Management service to fulfill the seller and buyer organization’s account management requirements. A buyer organization is an organization that shops from a seller. An associate makes purchases for a buyer organization. The Account Management service enables sellers to define buyer organization’s account structure, such as divisions, or to assign associates to the divisions.
Features
With the Account Management service, seller organizations can provide exclusive pricing for an organization or a division within the organization. The features of the Account Management service are:
- Organizational accounts: Model organizational accounts for the customers
- Shop on behalf of an organization: Enable users in an organization to shop on behalf of the organizations
Organizational Accounts
Seller administrator can create and manage commerce accounts for the buyer organizations. The seller organization models the divisional structure for the corporate accounts to manage accounting and commerce processes as required. With this functionality, the buyer organizations can manage the organization accounts to conduct the business successfully and integrate with the rest of the e-commerce system.
Organizations
A buyer organization is a representation of information about the buyer company. When you create an organization, only the basic information about the organization along with a root division is created.
Divisions
Divisions within an organization represent purchasing accounts of an organization. The seller administrator creates a default commerce account for the root division. The name of the root division must be the same as the organization and you cannot delete or rename this division. If you change the name of the organization, the system updates the name of the root division automatically.
Associates
An individual who is a part of the buyer organization is called associate. An associate can have one or more roles such as: buyer administrator, buyer, buyer approver, depending on the level of permission. Associates completes transactions on behalf of divisions with an organization. An associate can be part of multiple divisions with the buyer role, however this permission is not inherited to the divisions with in a division.
Shop on behalf of an organization
The seller administrator can add associates to the buyer organizations and enable them to purchase on behalf of the divisions within the organization.