HELP! Complex Customer Discount Question

[sandlg]

Here's my problem. My client does business with several offices across the country. Different corporations get different pricing based on the quantites they purchase (there is regular retail, a 10% discount, and a 20% discount depending on which company it is). The problem is that if a new office goes online to place an order and they don't already have an individual account for their office, there's no way for them to get the corporate pricing. I thought it might work if they were given some kind of promotional code that they were required to enter upon login, but I don't see any way of doing this. I realize they would still be entered into Quickbooks as a new customer, but at least then an account could be set up for them so that they could then be assigned the right pricing. It's the only way I can think of to resolve the problem of orders coming in from unknown people who belong to one of the corporate offices.

Is there any way to do this? Any suggestions? I'd appreciate all the help I can get.

[cbarling]

There's no standard way of entering a coupon to give a discount at present. Extending the way discounting works is being considered for a future release. A customer in Actinic Business can both have mutliple buyer accounts and multiple delivery addresses. I'm not sure from memory how this works with the QuickBooks Link interface.

However, as I thought about it I didn't quite understand the requirement.

For instance, if anyone can access any discount then :
- how would people know which discount they should use?
- how do you stop people accessing the wrong (biggest) discount?

So it seems to me that whatever method is used, you need to communicate with the customer ahead of time what their discount is and how to get it. If that's the case, you can set up an account for them in Actinic Business and control their pricing.

Either way it's worth experimenting a bit. Maybe all branch offices for the clients customers could be set up ahead of time?

Or maybe I'm missing the point here?

Chris
Actinic

[sandlg]

Chris...you emailed me a suggestion on this to have the clients log in under their headquarters ID the first time they sign on. After that, they can be converted to a new customer account. The only problem right now is that when the user logs on and proceeds to the invoice page, the page is automatically pre-filling in the Name, Company, State, Country, Phone, and Email fields with headquarter's info. If they don't change this, then my client will get incorrect information sent with the order. Is there a way to prevent Actinic from populating these fields? If so, how do I do this so that the fields all remain blank when the client gets to the invoice page?

[cbarling]

You are able to set up accounts so that the delivery address can be specified by the buyer at the point that they buy.

It's on View | Customer accounts | Buyers tab. You click the "Allow user to Select or Enter New address" option.

However, all invoices would still be be sent to a central address.

Not sure if this does what you want, but let's hope.

Regards,
Chris
Actinic

[sandlg]

Hi...yes, that's the way I have it set up. The problem is that it's pre-populating the fields where they can enter a new address. How do I stop it from doing this?

[cbarling]

If you mean that there's always a default address present, then I'm afraid there's currently no way around that. Providing an option to force people to enter a new address is being considered for a future release.

Chris
Actinic

[Jan]

Originally posted by cbarling
If you mean that there's always a default address present, then I'm afraid there's currently no way around that. Providing an option to force people to enter a new address is being considered for a future release.

Chris
Actinic

I use a single customer account for my mailing list members which gives them access to special offers, hidden sections etc. However it all looks a bit shabby because you see the dummy address details when you buy something so being able to specify that they always have to enter their address (which could then be remembered for that PC as usual) would be much better.

Regards,