Customer Managment for E-Commerce

E-Commerce B2B introduces the Web Accounts list to your Dynamics NAV.

Web Accounts is the master list of your e-commerce customers that may sign in to the Storefront, and each Web Account can be linked to your Dynamics NAV Customer card, or your Dynamics NAV Contact card.

If you have enabled your e-commerce store for public (B2C) access, the Web Accounts list must contain an entry representing the generic “unregistered” account that is used for product pricing and order formation purposes when transacting with customers without their own accounts. This Web Account must then be set up as the generic “B2C unregistered” account in general E-Commerce B2B application setup page.

In order to enable your existing customers to sign in to your e-commerce site, you must set up Web Account cards for them, and provide the Accounts with initial passwords. Depending on your preferences, you can:

• Create Web Accounts from Contact cards
• Create Web Accounts from Customer cards
• Create Web Accounts manually

For prospective customers (B2B model) E-Commerce B2B includes a web-based sign-up form that will be received in NAV, and processing the Sign-up form can automatically create Web Account, Customer and Contact cards based on the information submitted by the prospective customer.

In B2C scenarios, the customer account creation starts with a customer creating an account along with placing their first order. If this is enabled for your e-commerce site, Web Account cards will be created automatically based on the information provided by the customers.

Depending on your scenario, you can link your Web Accounts to either Customer or Contact cards in NAV, or you can also create Standalone Web Accounts that are not linked to any other Dynamics NAV entity.

Linking to Contacts:

• Works best if you already use Contacts functionality in Dynamics NAV and maintain the list of persons assigned to each of your customers.
• Follows the account-per-person model, where there can be multiple persons associated with a company.
• Leverages your Contact list as the master list of business contact persons that are now also enabled for e-commerce.

Linking to Customers directly:

• Works best if you do not plan to use Contacts functionality in Dynamics NAV.
• You can still create multiple Web Accounts for each Customer, e.g. Web Accounts representing the persons authorized to buy on behalf of the company represented by the Customer card.

Standalone Accounts

• Typically used for specific purposes like site administration, testing or your employee access.
• Account details are maintained solely on the Web Account card and not synchronized from any other cards in NAV.
• Requires a valid customer no. in Sell-to Customer No. field for the system to determine the applicable product pricing.

It is also possible to mix the Contact/Customer linking methods across your Web Accounts list.

When linked to Contacts or Customers, the Web Accounts will be automatically updated when you change some relevant information on the Contact or Customer cards later. Either way of linking is therefore reccomended, as you should normally keep your Contact and Customer lists as the single point of data entry and avoid the need to manually update Web Accounts.

The customers that have their Web Accounts linked to Customers cards (directly or via Contact cards) get personalized experience in the Storefront. Not only they get “their” product pricing, but since you already maintain customer-related information in Dynamics NAV, it is made use of in E-Commerce as well.

Once signed in, customers see their personal and company information in My Profile page. The page is based on the data stored on the Web Account card, which is in turn linked to a Customer card. The customers can see their personal details and also the details of the company they are purchasing on behalf of. In addition to legal and contact details, the page also displays the standard payment terms and invoice discount applicable to the customer, according to the Customer card, and the Ship-to addresses for the Customer.

On checkout, the customer will not be asked for any additional details, as you already maintain the neccessary billing and shipping details in Dynamics NAV, thus enabling instant order placement. The customer will have an option to select the desired Ship-to address for the order (with the default one already assigned as per Web Account settings), the desired shipment method, and also the payment method, if you have enabled credit card or other means of payment in addition to the standard one, which is an invoice according to payment terms set up on the Customer card.

If you are using multiple Locations in Dynamics NAV, e-commerce orders will be received with the Location Code from the Customer Card. If the customer has Ship-to Addresses in NAV, and the customer has selected one during checkout, the Location Code from the Ship-to Address Card will be used.

Contract customers typically have the following fields set up on the Customer card:

• Credit Limit - Similar to Dynamics NAV, E-Commerce will issue a warning on the Shopping Cart page in case the Credit Limit will be fully consumed by the invoice balance plus the current order.
• Payment Terms - E-Commerce B2B will display the default payment terms during the checkout process. As E-Commerce B2B does not issue invoices, having the payment terms displayed is merely informative.
• Payment Method - Should you have more than one payment method enabled in E-Commerce, the system will pre-select the payment method for the customer according to the one set up on the Customer card.

When calculating order totals, the system will also consider the VAT Bus. Posting Group and Invoice Disc. Code assigned to the Customer to calculate the appropriate VAT and apply the invoice discount respectively.

E-Commerce B2B stores all the orders placed online in Dynamics NAV, and they are also displayed on the History page online. While processing the orders (accepting, picking, shipping, invoicing), the system will automatically update the statuses, and the customer can follow-up on the order fulfillment online. Please see Order Processing for details.

This applies to orders placed in E-Commerce B2B only. Upon implementing E-Commerce B2B it is possible to generate the order history “backwards” to provide your customers with historical information, yet as Dynamics NAV does not typically hold “order originals”, and Orders are normally deleted upon full invoicing, such data generation is only possible based on posted invoices or shipments, which do not neccessarily match the Orders the customers have placed originally.

When posting financial transactions like Invoices or Payments for a Customer in Dynamics NAV, the entries are stored in the Customer Ledger table. E-Commerce B2B will display the Customer Ledger online to enable your customers to keep track of their accounts payable and quick informal reconcillation. The Customer Entries are presented as Financials page in E-Commerce B2B, and only “open” entries are displayed by default, with the option to view the full history.

In addition, customers can see a quick financial summary sidebar that includes the Credit Limit, Balance (both current and overdue), Outstanding Orders, and the indicative Remaining Credit Limit as the sum of the above.

The Financials list and the summary sidebar will only be visible to the Web Accounts with “View Financials” permission assigned, which is not enabled by default when authorizing Customers and Contacts given the somewhat sensitive nature of this information.