(Enterprise)

Contracts

Contracts enable a customer organization or a customer group to purchase products from a store at a specified price for a specified time under specific conditions.

Types of contracts

Default contract

A default contract defines the default customer entitlement for a store. The default contract applies to all customers shopping at a store and do not have any other contract with the store, for example, guest customers. Also, the default contract applies to customers who buy products that are not covered by other contracts they have with the store, if the customer is permitted to purchase products that are not covered by a contract.

Note: The only type of contract that is supported by the Professional and Express editions of WebSphere Commerce is the default contract.

Business contracts types: When you create contracts for WebSphere Commerce, it is important to understand the business model in which the store is based, the participants, usages, and XML elements for each business model:

Business model	Contract XML element	Usage	Participants
B2B	BuyerContract	Organization buyer (default)	Buyer Seller

Buyer contract

A buyer contract enables a customer organization to purchase products from a store at a specified price for a specified time under specific conditions. All buyer contracts are associated with business accounts; buyer contracts cannot be created for customers who do not have an account.

Note: A single order that contains different items can be purchased under different contracts. Depending on the store design, 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. When buyers purchase items under different contracts, the following rules apply:

• Contracts for all items in an order must share at least one payment method. If the contract for an item does not share a payment method, the buyer cannot add that item to the order. Only the payment methods that are shared by all items in an order can be used to pay for the order.

• All items in an order must come from contracts that belong to the same business account or the store default contract.

Referral contract

WebSphere Commerce provides the ability for the store to pass requests for quotes and orders from resellers to your proxy stores or distributors. These abilities and the terms and conditions that are applied to these abilities are defined in a service agreement. Creating and managing distributor service agreements is the basis of distributor relationships in WebSphere Commerce. A distributor service agreement is also referred to as a referral contract.

Hosting contract

A hosting contract is a contract between the hosting service provider and the store operator.

Note: A hosting contract is often referred to as a reseller service agreement.

• Contract states
  A contract passes various states from the time it is created until the time it is deleted. In most cases, the change of state is triggered by actions you take. Some state changes occur automatically.

• Contract referral
  A base contract is a contract that can be referred to by other contracts. For example, contract B refers to (base) contract A. Thus, a buyer who is entitled to the terms and conditions in contract B is also entitled to all the terms and conditions in contract A. Multiple customer contracts can refer to the same base contract so that all the customer contracts can share a set of terms and conditions.

• Display customization
  Through the WebSphere Commerce we can change the look of display pages in the store for every business customer by specifying the DisplayCustomizationTC term and condition in the business account definition. This display customization can be as simple as adding a different logo, or as complex as having a custom store name and message, for each customer.

• Creating contracts
  There are two methods to create contracts in WebSphere Commerce. We can use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator or XML format to create contracts.

• Manage contracts
  Managing a contract involves tasks that take the contract from creation to the end of the contract's lifecycle. The various tasks that are involved in managing a contract are performed by different roles.