Customers Groups



 

Customer Groups are used to determine how your store interacts with certain groups of customers that are logged into your store. It is designed for B2B sales. It is used to set pricing, tax, shipping methods, for specific types of customers.


Overview


This tutorial will show you how to create a customer group, set it up, set prices, then assign a customer to the group. You will need to repeat this process for multiple different groups. For example our B2B/B2C manufacturer clients normally have the following pricing levels: Retail, Wholesale, Distributor, Law Enforcement. Some of our B2C retail ecommerce oriented may have the following pricing levels: Retail, Buyers Club Member, Law Enforcement, Employee, Friends and Family. A wholesale distributor using the CloudCommerce system would likely have the following pricing levels: Retail, Wholesale Level 1, Wholesale Level 2, Wholesale Level 3, and/or additional customer specific pricing algorithms.


Each business has its own pricing structure, and the system is configurable to allow this. Along with pricing, for various reasons you may want to control other variables relating to that customer's purchase, such as tax and shipping. The customer groups feature in CloudCommerce allows control of the following variables:


  • Set catalog price markup level per customer group

  • Set individual item prices per customer group

  • Show prices w/ or w/o tax included

  • Is customer group tax exempt y/n

  • Set the payment methods allowed at checkout for the customer

  • Set the shipping methods allowed at checkout for the customer

  • Allow/disallow coupon use

  • Allow/disallow points use

  • Allow/disallow low order fee


Create a Customer Group


  1. Login to your CloudCommerce administrator dashboard.

  2. On the left side menu, click on Store Information -> Customer Groups. You will now see a list of the existing customer groups.

  1. Click the Insert button to create a new customer group.

  1. We will now set the variables for this group of customers. For the purpose of this demonstration, we will be creating an employee pricing level. Enter the Group Name: “Employee”.

  1. Set the “Show Prices with/without tax” variable drop down to: “show prices without tax”. (Note, this feature allows you to combine sales tax into the price of the item shown on the front end of the website if configured correctly.)

  1. The the “Tax Exempt” dropdown to “No”. (Note, for businesses or customers which are exempt from sales tax such as wholesale buyers, non profits, etc. you can set this to “Yes”.)

  2. Next we will set the payment modules allowed at checkout for this customer group. For this example, we are going to say that if an employee is purchasing at this price, he/she can not use a credit card and must use the cash/money order payment method. Click the radio button for “Set Payment Modules for Customer Group”. Then check the box next to “Check/Money Order”. (Note, if you wish this customer group to use all available payment methods for your store, click the radio button “Use Settings from Configuration”.)

  1. Now we will set the shipping methods allowed for this customer group. Because it is an employee pricing group, we will only want these items to be picked up in the store. Click the “Set shipping modules for the customer group” radio button. Check the box next to “Store Pickup.”  (Note, if you wish this customer group to use all available shipping methods for your store, click the radio button “Use Settings from Configuration”.)

  1. For the Order Totals Module, we will disallow coupons, points, and the low order fee for employees. These modules will not be shown on the checkout page and will not be added to the order total if applicable. To do so click the radio button next to “Set order total modules for the customer group”. Click the checkboxes next to the items that you want to be included at checkout and part of the orders total, in this instance check “Shipping”, “Sub Total”, “Tax”, “Total”. (Note, if you wish this customer group to include all available order total items for your store, click the radio button “Use Settings from Configuration”.)

  1. Lastly we will determine any individual sales tax rate exemptions. This is used if your customer may be taxed for some items, but not others, or if the customer has locations in different tax zones. Because this is an employee customer they not exempt from any taxes. Click the “Use Settings from Configuration (zone based)” radio button for this customer.

  1. Click the “Update” button to save this customer group as a new customer group. You will now see the new customer group shown at the Store Information -> Customer Groups page.

  1. Next we will continue on to set prices for this new customer group.


Setting Prices for Customer Groups via QPU (macro pricing updates)


  1. Navigate to Catalog -> Quick Price Update

  1. Set the Manufacturer(s), Categories, Ranges, Markup Values, Roundoff, and Save Update options for this customer group. (For more information on how to use the QPU Quick Price Update function see the article here.) Select the customer group to assign this price update to, in this case “Employee” from the select customer group drop down menu. Click the “Update” button.

  2. In this example, all prices for everything in our store for this customer group have been set to a 10% Margin above base price (cost). Setting prices broadly in bulk for this customer has been completed, and you are ready to assign a customer to the group.


Assigning Customers to a Customer Group


  1. On the left side menu of your CloudCommerce dashboard, navigate to Store Information -> Customers.

  1. Find the customer you wish to assign to this group. In this case we will be assigning “David Harris” to our new employee pricing group. Click on the customer's name to highlight the customer.

  1. Click the “Edit” button.

  1. Select the new group from the “Customer Group” drop down box. In this case we will select “Employee”.

  1. Scroll to the bottom of the customer edit page, and click the “Update” button.

  1. Repeat the process of adding additional customers to this customer group for the remainder of your eligible customers, in this case employees.


Demonstrating Functionality of Customer Group Pricing


  1. To see this in action, and learn more about how Customer Groups and Pricing interact within your store we will see how this works with a few items, and test to confirm we have our settings correct. Let's choose an item from our website to test with. For this instance we will utilize a Pelican Case.

  1. We can see the case is priced at 35.99 retail. Now let's log-in to the front end of our store as our new employee “David Harris”.

  • Click on My Account

  • Enter your username and password

  • Navigate back to the item

We will now check the price for the same item as a logged in customer which is part of the “Employee” Customer Group.

  1. Success! We can now see that the lower price is being shown to customers that are assigned to the Employee Customer Group that are Logged In.


Controlling Prices on Individual Items


  1. Now let's say there is an item you wish to change the customer group price for individually. We will continue to use the Pelican Case as an example. To view and change the individual item prices, you will use the edit item feature in the dashboard. We will forgo the instructions on how to get there, because by now we will assume if you are using advanced features such as customer groups, you know how to edit an item. If you need a refresher, click here to learn more about adding and editing items, otherwise navigate to the Pelican Case (or your specific item) in your dashboard.

  2. Click the “Pricing” tab. To view the products pricing.

  1. For this example we will change the price to 29.99 for the employee group. Simply highlight the employee group price, and type in the new price.

  1. Click the “Quick Update” button.

  2. Refresh the item on the front end to see how the customer will see the new price.


How Customer Groups Interacts with Checkout


  1. When a Customer is Logged In and an item is added to the cart, the assigned group level pricing will show for that item.

  1. Upon proceeding to checkout, only the shipping, payment, and order total modules allowed for that customer group will be shown.


If you have further questions regarding Customer Groups functionality in CloudCommerce please contact our team at 1-800-699-0820 ext. 2 or via www.obnit.com/clientarea.php










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