Is there another wholesale option using the regular front end?

Question

Is there another way to allow wholesale approved logins to use the regular website front end so they can order attributes and use custom product forms, and still receive wholesale pricing?

Answer 1

You would need to utilize the regular (retail) member login and then set up a customer group and price category for wholesalers.  If you are already using the actual wholesale side of the site, you would need to have the customers re-register on the regular side of the site.  Then, once you approve them to be wholesalers, you would add them to the 'Wholesale' cgroup which would have the price category for wholesalers so they could receive their wholesale pricing.

Comments

Note: using this method, you will NOT be using the Wholesale section in CV3 store admin. That section pertains only to the order-form method of wholesale.

Here are the steps for setup:

1. Create your "wholesale" price category - do this under Inventory / Price Categories

2. For any products that will have a wholesale price, you'll need to enter a price for that wholesale price category. You can do this either manually in admin, or via an import file.
You'll use these column headers for the additional price in an import file.

RetailPrice*       | Products can have multiple price categories.  * represents the value linking the
RetailPriceCat*   | price, price category and special price and should be incremental numbers.

The * can be replaced either with the price category ID (the number that you see next to it in admin). So if you create a price category called "wholesale" and it has an ID of 5, you'll use:

RetailPrice5 (the value in this column is your wholesale price)
RetailPriceCat5 (and the value in this column would be 5)

3. Create a customer group, call it "wholesale". This will not be an 'all users' group, because only customers that you add to this group should be eligible for the wholesale pricing.
Do not select any options at the Group level. Save the group, and then go back in to add a Rule. The Rule should have the box checked next to "Use price category: " and select your wholesale price category, and save. You will be manually adding users to this group after you have approved them for wholesale pricing.

4. If you want to have a wholesale application on the site, you'll need to create a generic form (under Design / Generic Forms) to include the fields you want filled in. Instructions for generic forms are at the bottom of this email.

5. If you want to approve a user for wholesale, you will need to add them to the wholesale customer group. First, go to Customers / Members and search for them by email address to see if they have an existing user account. If they do, simply add their email address to the customer group by clicking the "edit customer groups" link next to their email address, check the box next to Wholesale, and save. Then you can email them to let them know they've been approved. If the user does NOT have a member account, you can manually create one by clicking the "add member" link on the search results page. Enter the info from their application and set a password for them. After saving, follow the same steps as above to add them to the wholesale customer group, and then you can email them their login info.

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Generic Form info:

The steps below are an example for setting up a 'Feedback' form at the URL http://www.mydomain.com/feedback.

1. Create template for /feedback

- Go to Design - Template Library and click New Template. Enter Common Name as 'Feedback', File Name as 'feedback' and leave the Copy dropdown at None.
- When the template loads, replace {* INSERT CONTENT HERE *} with {include file="generic_form.tpl"}

2. Create template for Confirmation / Thank You page - this is what the customer sees after they submit the form.

- Follow the same steps from #1 to create a new template
- EX: Common Name = Feedback Thanks, File Name = feedback_thanks, Copy = None
- Replace {* INSERT CONTENT HERE *} with your thank you message.

3. Create Customer Group - the email address of any respondents to your form will be stored in a customer group- NOTE: for the purposes of wholesale using price categories, you do NOT want to automatically add the user to the wholesale group unless you do not require approval, because being added to that group automatically gives them the pricing. You could create another group called "wholesale applications" and have it add to that group instead.

- Go to Customers - Groups and click Add Customer Group.
- Enter a Name for the customer group. No other boxes on this page need to be checked off. Submit to save.

4. Create Generic Form & Define Settings

- Go to Design - Generic Forms and use the Add Form section to enter a Name (only visible in the admin); submit to save.
- Under Edit Forms, click the name of the form to edit.

Form Name/Email Subject: (you pick)
Template: (template set up in step #1) feedback.tpl
Confirmation/Thank You Template: (template set up in step #2) feedback_thanks.tpl
To Email: (address the submissions will be sent to)
From Email: (address it appears the submissions are sent from)
Customer Group: (customer group set up in #3)
Click 'Save Form Information' to save the settings

5. Build Generic Form Fields

- Now you get to build out the fields of your generic form. On the Edit Generic Form page, the 'Add New Field' section allows you to select a field type from the dropdown. You then complete the settings for that field and save.

You can then preview your form as you are building it by viewing it in Staging at the /feedback page.