Adding Users to the Purchasing Organization

As you know, the merchant admin of ACME defined the root admin (Linda) for the customer organization Rustic. Now, Linda will continue to set up the rest of the Rustic purchasing organization, including the architectural building blocks of hierarchical, organized units and their assigned cost centers. Units represent structures within the organization, such as a department or a location. Linda will also define the users (Rustic employees) and assign them roles.

In general, each customer organization has four different types of actors supporting it: buyers, approvers, managers, and admins. Rustic, a customer of the merchant store, ACME, is no exception. Of course, each role has a specific purpose and configurable permissions.

Users are assigned to units and must have at least one of the following four roles:

• B2B Administrator: To administer the organization structure, a user must have the B2B administrator role. The B2B administrator is only permitted to administer the structure equal to or below the B2B administrator's position in the hierarchy.

• B2B Manager: To view reports on the organization's expenditures, a user must have the B2B manager role. The B2B manager's visibility is also restricted by the position in the hierarchy.

• B2B Approver: To provide customer approval for an order, a user must have the B2B approver role and rights that define the monetary limits to which the user can approve.

• B2B Customer (the buyer): Only users with the B2B customer role are permitted to place orders. B2B customers can create orders of any value. If the order value is within the user's order threshold, the order is placed immediately. If the order value exceeds the user's order threshold, the order is assigned to an approver for review and approval. If approved, the order is placed and fulfilled on the merchant side.

The image showcases the simplified structure of our customer organization, Rustic, which we use throughout our course. It shows buyer Alejandro assigned to the B2B unit Services East. He is part of the user group Standard Permissions, which defines certain purchase limits.

Let us first see the Customer Purchasing Organization's hierarchy in the storefront and then understand the roles.

Linda Wolf is the Rustic B2B admin on the customer side. After logging in successfully, she navigates to the My Company section, where she configures the Rustic Organization and creates its child units.

The next screenshot shows that the root unit, Rustic, contains two sub-units: Rustic Services and Rustic Retail.

Rustic Services has two further sub-units: Services East and Services West.

Linda, the B2B admin on the customer side, adds users in the buyer role to different business units. Again, she does this in the My Company section. In the back end, they belong to the b2bcustomergroup.

These individuals are responsible for identifying requirements, selecting suitable products, and initiating purchase orders. Only users in the B2B customer role are permitted to place orders. They can create orders of any value. As long as the order value is within the buyer's purchase limit, the order is placed immediately. If the order value exceeds the limit, the order is assigned to an approver for review and approval. If approved, the order is placed. Approval from the merchant's account manager may also be required for the order.

​Alejandro Navarro is a buyer for the customer organization Rustic, belonging to the B2B Unit Services East.

Let's see how Linda creates him in the system.

First, Linda logs in to ACME's Storefront and navigates to the My Company section under the My Account area. Then, she clicks on Units.

She drills down to the Services East Unit and selects Users in the right pane to see a list of all assigned users to that unit. To add Alejandro, she clicks Create.

As you can see in the next screenshot, Linda enters all of Alejandro's basic information, selects the Customer Role, and assigns him to the preselected business unit, Services East. She does not grant him the right to View Unit Level Orders.

Once she is done, she saves the newly created buyer.

Approvers are users in the B2B approver role and assigned to a B2B unit – either the root or a subunit. Only approvers can approve or deny orders exceeding the buyer’s purchase limits. In addition, each approver is restricted by monetary limits on approvals. If that limit is exceeded, the approval process picks the next approver in the hierarchy of B2B units up to the root unit

Mingmei Wang is the direct approver for Alejandro’s orders because both belong to the same unit: Services East.

If Alejandro’s order exceeds his purchase limit, Mingmei must approve it. Otherwise, if it exceeds Mingmei’s approval limit, it would cascade up the hierarchy of units and their assigned approvers. Finally, it would be Hanna Schmidt’s responsibility to approve the order, because she is the approver with almost no approval limit for the entire Rustic root unit.

This is summarized here:

As we know, Linda Wolf is the admin for the customer root unit Rustic. B2B administrators like Linda are responsible for setting up the entire customer organization. This includes creating business units, managing cost centers, assigning budgets, and establishing shipping addresses. Additionally, Linda creates customer users with specific roles and associates them with the respective business units.

Overall, admins define the whole purchasing organization. However, they can only manage their assigned B2B unit or those at a lower level in the hierarchy.

For example, administrators of the Services East unit do not have the authority to manage units above them, such as Rustic Services or the root unit, Rustic itself. Therefore, since Linda is assigned to the Rustic unit, she can manage both Rustic and all of its subordinate units.

Budgets are assigned to different cost centers, ensuring that the spending of the units assigned to these cost centers stays within predefined limits. B2B cost centers do not sum up over branches or hierarchy levels. Each B2B cost center has its own budget for its orders.

Purchase limits, on the other hand, are used for user-specific spend control. They define how much buyers can spend per individual order or over a specific time span, like a week, quarter, or year. Purchase limits can be assigned to users and user groups.

Purchase limits define different allowed order thresholds:

1. Per order: For example, Alejandro Navarro can purchase up to 5000 USD in one order. Any order exceeding that limit needs approval before it can be fulfilled.
2. Per timespan: For example, Alejandro Navarro has an allowed threshold of 15000 USD per month for any number of orders. Any additional order exceeding that limit needs approval. Of course, the time span could also be day, week, quarter, or year.

Users with this permission are allowed to place orders that exceed the remaining budget. When enabled, selected buyers can place orders that go beyond their assigned unit budget. That approach provides flexibility in special circumstances. For instance, Alejandro Navarro needs to purchase significantly more products during Christmas, which likely exceeds the budget limit set for his assigned unit. In this rare case, Admin Linda may temporarily grant him a Budget Exceeded Permission.

Definition: User groups assign permissions and purchase limits to multiple buyers without following the organization's hierarchy. For example, Alejandro's purchase limits come from his User group: Standard Permissions. B2B administrators can view, create, modify, and delete user groups via the User groups page in the My Company area.

A purchase limit is usually assigned to an entire user group rather than individual buyers. For a proof of concept, let’s explore how Linda can create a purchase limit within the system and assign it to the User group: Standard Permissions. This will also impact Alejandro Navarro, a member of that group.

After successful login, Linda navigates to the My Account→My Company→Purchase Limits and clicks Add. She now adds the mandatory information:

Code: Rustic_5K_USD_ORDER

Type: Allowed Order Threshold (per order)

Currency: U.S. Dollars

Threshold: 5000

Parent Unit: Rustic

Finally, she saves the new purchase limit.

Linda can see all available purchase limits in the My Account area under My Company→Purchase Limits as shown here:

Linda navigates to the User group: Standard Permissions, and selects the option to manage the assigned purchase limits. From the list of available purchase limits, she assigns the previously created Rustic_5K_USD_ORDER and clicks DONE.

The new limit is now assigned to the User group: Standard Permissions and is also implicitly assigned to Alejandro, a member of this group.

The diagram below illustrates a portion of the overview presented at the beginning of the lesson, visualizing Alejandro’s implicit association with the new purchase limit through the User group: Standard Permissions of which he is a member.

​The admin from the merchant side creates the B2B admin of the customer organization.

The B2B admin is assigned to the customer root unit and sets up the rest of the customer organization, which includes:

• Creation and configuration of subunits with assigned cost centers.

• Creation and assign users to B2B roles like customer (buyer), approver, manager, and additional admins.

• Assignment of users to units.

• Assignment of purchase limits to users/user groups and budgets to cost centers for spend control.

• Configure the hierarchical approval process within the customer organization for orders exceeding their limits.