Process: Create contract

 

Flow

Legend

 

Objective

To create a contract with a customer which entitles the customer to purchase under the specified terms and conditions.

 

Description

Contracts entitle a customer organization to purchase designated products in a store at a specified price for a specified period of time under specific conditions. WebSphere Commerce provides the ability to record and deploy contracts that have been negotiated.

A contract consists of the following elements:

Profile

The contract profile contains the identifying information for the contract. This information includes a unique name for the contract, a short description, and a time period during which the contract is valid.

Participants

Contract participants specify the customers entitled to the contract's terms and conditions. The contract contains two types of participants: Buyer participants, which list the customer organizations or member groups; and a single Seller participant, which is usually the organization that owns the store, and to which the Account Representative that created the contract belongs.

Terms and conditions

Contract terms and conditions are the rules that cover the actual implementation of the contract. Contract terms and conditions cover such information as product pricing, returns and refunds, payment, shipping, and order approval.

Attachments

Contract attachments cover any unstructured information not recorded explicitly in the form of terms and conditions, such as documents, spreadsheets or presentations that provide additional information about the contract and any general remarks about the contract. WebSphere Commerce stores Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) that indicate the location of contract attachments, not the actual attachment files.

Reference

A contract can refer to another contract. For example, contract A can refer to contract B. Thus, a buyer who is entitled to contract A will be entitled to all the terms and conditions from contract A, as well as to all the terms and conditions in contract B. You can refer to base contracts that are in base contract account in the same store, as well as to base contracts set up in an asset store.

All contracts are associated with business accounts. Contracts cannot be created for customers for whom you have not created an account.

Different items in a single order may be purchased under different contracts. Buyers can select the contract they shop under at either the start of the shopping flow or when they add an item to their order, depending on the store design. When purchasing items under different contracts the following rules apply:

Contracts can be created or updated through two methods: using the Commerce Accelerator user interface, and by importing an XML document with the contract definition.

In some situations, it is more efficient or necessary to use contract XML import:

 

Features

 

Customization

Additional terms and conditions may be added to a contract. Existing terms and conditions may be augmented to contain more data. In both cases, the commands defined in the store must also be customized with logic which looks at and respects the new or enhanced terms and conditions. Contract approval may be turned on or off for contracts created for an organization. Additional data validation checks can be added when the contract is submitted for approval.

 

Edition

Enterprise

 

Subprocesses

 

Tasks

Task Description Role
Delete contract

Delete a contract. The contract will no longer be available to create reports.

Account Representative
Import external contract data

In some situations, you may maintain your customers pricing and product information in an external system (for example, SAP). In this scenario, the contracts will refer to product sets and price list through business policies. An automated tool would be created to extract the product and pricing data from the external system, and populate the appropriate product sets and price lists in WebSphere Commerce.

Pricing data is imported into price lists referred to by a contract through a Price business policy. The prices are imported by massload or other means.

Product data is imported into product sets referred to by a contract through a Product Set business policy. The products are imported by massload or other means.

System
Negotiate with customer (external)

Contact a customer offline to discuss and negotiate on the terms and conditions and other details for a new contract.

Account Representative
Select base contract

Select the base contract applicable with the industry to which the customer belongs. The contract will share the terms and conditions from the base contract. Base contracts are contained in accounts that are marked for containing base contracts. These accounts can be in the same store as the customer contract, or they may be in a store with which this store has a 'contract' store relationship.

Account Representative
Select customer group participants

Select the customer groups and organizations that take part in the contract as Buyers and Sellers. One Seller and multiple Buyer participants may be specified. The Buyer participant can be customer groups that contain a list of entitled users.

Account Representative
Select organization participants

Select the organizations that take part in the contract. One Seller and multiple Buyer participants may be specified. The Buyer participant can be the entire account holder organization, specific sub-organizations, or individual users.

Account Representative
Set contract details

Set contract details such as:

  • start and end dates
  • contract description and remarks
  • contract attachments
  • can purchases under this contract be made using the business account credit line
Account Representative
Set contract terms

Terms and conditions define how a contract is implemented for a customer organization. They define what is being sold under the contract, the price of the items being sold, how the items are shipped, how orders are paid for, how item returns are handled, how orders are approved, and where orders are shipped from.

Contract terms and conditions can also be referred to as contract terms or terms.

Many terms and conditions reference business policies because many aspects of a store's operation are defined by business policies. Terms and conditions provide some standard parameters for the business polices they reference. Providing parameters to the business policies allows you to modify the behavior of business policies for each contract. Terms and conditions that reference business policies are indicated on this page with an asterisk (*).

The Buyer is entitled to all the terms and conditions from this contract, any base contract of this contract, and from the Buyer's account. For each term and condition, the Buyer is entitled to a union of the specified terms in the contracts and account, except where noted below.

WebSphere Commerce supports the following terms and conditions:

  • Fulfillment center

This optional term allows you to specify the list of fulfillment centers from which orders placed under the contract must be filled. This list must be a subset of the fulfillment centers defined for the store. Fulfillment center precedence is defined by the store and cannot be overridden by the terms and conditions of a contract.

  • Order approval

This term specifies if orders must be approved by the customer organization before filling the orders. You can specify an optional amount, that includes taxes and shipping, that would allow orders with a value below the amount to be filled without approval from the customer organization. If an order total is over this amount, approval is required. If a Buyer is placing an order with order items under multiple contracts and one item in the order has a contract specifying this term, the entire order is subject to the order approval term that applies to the item.

  • Payment method

This optional term specifies the payment methods that will be accepted for orders made under the contract. The payment method could be as general as a payment type, such as a credit card type, or as specific as a credit card number to be used for payment. If no payment method term is specified in a contract, payment in all methods accepted by the store will be accepted for orders made under the contract. An optional billing address may be specified. The billing address may be specified as specific addresses from the business account organization's address book, or the Buyer can select an address from the following address books (using the Address Book term and condition): their personal address book, their parent organization's address book, or their business account organization's address book.

  • Pricing terms and conditions

Pricing terms and conditions define what products are available under a contract and what prices the customer will pay for the products. At least one pricing term is required in a contract. The following pricing terms and conditions are available in WebSphere Commerce:

  • -- Master catalog with filtering

You can use the WebSphere Commerce catalog filtering features to restrict or limit the view of the catalog to a specific set of users within a hosted store. You can also use the Catalog Filter to exclude any of the products or categories in the master catalog that you do not want to sell under a contract.

The Catalog Filter presents the master catalog as an aggregated tree view of all products and categories available for sale from the store. The Catalog Filter consists of three parts:

  • ---- The catalog tree, which you can use to include the catalog, categories, and products; exclude categories and products and apply percentage price adjustments to the entire catalog.
  • ---- The Include dialog, which displays when you include either the entire catalog, category, or product. The Include dialog allows you to set the percentage price adjustment for the catalog, category, or product that you are including for sale in the store. You can set a fixed price for a product.
  • ---- The Set Price Adjustment dialog, which displays when you choose to change the percentage price adjustment for the catalog, a category, or a product, or fixed price adjustment for a product.

The current settings from this contract and any base contract are displayed.

This term and condition replaces the rest of the pricing and product terms mentioned below, except for the Customized price list. If there are multiple price lists available in a store, the Account Representative chooses which price list should be used for the basis of price adjustments in this contract. Examples of types of price list can include list, cost, and others. If the contract refers to a base contract, then the filter must use the same price list as is used in the catalog filter in the base contract.

  • -- Dynamic kit component pricing

This term offers a dynamic kit for sale and specifies the adjusted prices of components within the dynamic kit. The adjustment can be specified as a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) or as a fixed price. The price of the dynamic kit is the sum of the adjusted component prices.

  • -- Customized price list

This term specifies that both the list of products for sale and their prices are customized for sale in a contract and their price is customized. Items are not limited to a section of the store catalog they can be from anywhere in the store catalog.

  • -- Entire catalog with adjustment*

This term offers all of the products available in a store catalog for sale with a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) from the base price as defined in the store catalog. If no adjustment is specified, items are sold at the base price.

  • -- Price list with adjustment*

This term offers all of the products available in a price list for sale with a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) from the base price as defined in the store catalog. If no adjustment is specified, items are sold at the base price.

  • -- Price list with selective adjustment*

This term is similar to price list with adjustment except the adjustment is not applied to the entire price list. The adjustment is made on a subset of the price list. The subset of the price list may either be a product set business policy or a customized product set.

  • Product constraint terms and conditions

Product constraint terms and conditions control what products are included or excluded for sale under a contract. Product constraint terms are optional. If no product constraint terms and conditions are specified in a contract, all products specified in the contract's price terms and conditions are available for sale under the contract. The following product constraint terms and conditions are available in WebSphere Commerce:

  • -- Customized product set exclusion

This term states the items in a customized product set are not for sale in a contract.

  • -- Customized product set inclusion

This term states that items in a customized product set are for sale in a contract.

  • -- Product set exclusion*

This term states the items in a product set business policy are not for sale in a contract.

  • -- Product set inclusion*

This term states that items in a product set business policy are for sale in a contract.

Exclusion terms have precedence over inclusion terms. This means that if a product appears both an inclusion term and an exclusion term in the contract, the product could not be purchased under the contract.

  • Returns terms and conditions

Returns terms and conditions specify how returns are handled under this contract. If no returns terms and conditions are specified then returns can not be created. If returns terms and conditions are specified they should only be one set that applies to the entire contract. The following returns terms and conditions are available in WebSphere Commerce:

  • -- Refund payment method*

This term specifies the payment method used to pay refunds to a customer. If a return charge term is specified, at least one refund payment method term must be specified as well. This term may not be specified if returns are not allowed under the contract.

  • -- Return charge*

This term specifies how returns are automatically approved and any deductions from the refund made for handling the return (for example, restocking charges).

  • Right to buy amount

This term places a limit on the combined value of all orders, including taxes and shipping, placed under a contract. The value of all orders made under the contract must be less or equal to a specified amount. If this limit is exceeded when placing an order, payment authorization for the order will fail.

  • Shipping terms and conditions

Shipping terms and conditions specify how orders will be shipped, where they will be shipped to and who will pay for the shipping. The following shipping terms and conditions are available in WebSphere Commerce:

  • -- Shipping mode*

This optional term defines how orders created under a contract are shipped. If this term is not specified in a contract, orders can be shipped by any mode available in a store. A shipping mode is also known as a shipping provider. A shipping provider is the combination of a shipping carrier and its shipping service. For example, "XYZ Courier, Overnight" is a shipping provider.

  • -- Ship-to address

This optional term specifies where products purchased under a contract are shipped. Specifying this term and condition allows you to limit the locations where orders can be shipped. If the ship-to address term and condition is not specified, a ship-to address must be specified each time an order is made under a contract. If this term is specified, the Buyer can not specify a new ship-to address when placing an order, but must select a ship-to address from a list of ship-to addresses. The ship-to address may be specified as specific addresses from the business account organization's address book, or the Buyer can select an address from the following address books (using the Address Book term and condition): their personal address book, their parent organization's address book, or their business account organization's address book.

  • -- Shipping charge type*

This term defines who pays for shipping orders. The following types of shipping charges are supported:

  • ---- No shipping charge
  • ---- Shipping charges are paid by the Buyer to the Seller. The Seller calculates the shipping charges when the order is captured and the shipping costs become part of the order total.
  • ---- Shipping charges are paid by the Buyer to the shipping carrier. The carrier calculates the shipping cost and assumes the responsibility of collecting payment from the Buyer. Shipping costs are not calculated when the order is captured.

The order of precedence is the customer contract, if not defined there, then the Buyer's account, and if not defined there, then in the base contract.

  • -- Shipping adjustment

This optional term specifies the adjusted shipping charges to be applied to the customer's order. Adjustments can be specified to be applicable on individual products, categories, or the entire catalog. The adjustment can be specified as a percentage adjustment (mark-up or discount) or as a fixed price.

  • -- Address book

This term allows you to specify the address books from which the customer can choose the shipping and billing addresses for an order. When completing the checkout process for an order, the customer can select an address from the following address books: their personal address book, their parent organization's address book, or their business account organization's address book.

Account Representative
Submit contract for approval

Submit a contract for a Sales Manager's approval when all the contract modifications have been completed.

Account Representative

 

Business artifacts

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