Managing Account Credit For Your Customers

Managing Account Credit Balances

With enterprise eCommerce, some clients need a powerful means of managing approvals, managing roles and locations, and keeping track of what level of budget those different locations have access to. They also need to log who the purchases approvers are and organize them by their locations, all while managing the credit on the account. For example, the overall account may have a certain amount of credit, or they may have a credit balance of a certain amount, and being able to distribute that or select how much of that budget or credit is distributed to each particular location/user. 

This can be particularly helpful for companies that are making purchases consistently at different locations. They may have a corporate headquarters with a controller or CFO, or possibly a purchasing department that is trying to manage overhead and implement detailed cost controls within their operation. This can apply to entire departments or even a single individual, allowing different individuals within the organization to have access to these credit amounts. 

Any company that has an account with your enterprise eCommerce system, and if the system is configured as such, their primary admin can enable access to different levels of credit access. Depending on the configuration of the eCommerce system, Clarity's software allows for credit-based purchases — often via electronic payment APIs — so they're going to be a certain level of credit on the overall account and in the sub-accounts that are children of the parent account. 

Think of a company with multiple locations, or possibly subsidiaries, and each location could be a sub-account. This, along with users and user hierarchy, could be implemented in order to allow the account to distribute the credit availability for the overall account to these individual locations or divisions. This can be very helpful for autonomous ordering from these different units, so that they can complete their purchases and run things autonomously within their division. All of that data can then be forwarded to the overall controller. 

No matter your eCommerce business model, steps can also be put in place so that they go through an approval process with the overall controller. Credit limits can be assigned per department or location, and if a location want to go over that limit, then the requests can be sent to the appropriate distribution list or controller within the parent company. The controller can then move credits from other accounts or authorize spending with another currency. This control is very helpful to manage access to the funds and make sure there are checks and balances in place before large purchases are made. 

The credit on the account can be established via actual credit, something like a Dun & Bradstreet credit check, whenever the account is created. Other assessment factors can be considered when the account is created or registration is completed. There may be a detailed set of credit fields, collateral, or some enforceable legal agreement with the company to sign for and be liable for that credit. 

Once that's done, Clarity’s platform can establish a certain amount of credit for each company that's selectable and specifiable. Typically, this just means establishing the credit amount. This can also come from our integration to your internal ERP system or line of business application where that credit amount may be stored. This can be representative of a complex hierarchy where there are individual users, locations, divisions, or subsidiaries that have different credit amounts, and it can be updated in (virtually) real-time with the internal system serving as the source of record. 

Once the credit amount is established, your B2B eCommerce platform can show this to the users and allow them to add more credit by putting funds into the account to the parent level and distribute from there. So they could make a payment of $50,000, for example, and then that would give them an additional credit of $50,000, which they could then distribute to individual divisions. 

Invoicing

We can also notify them if they have invoices that are past due. If they have an agreement to pay net 30, then once 30 days have passed, the we can send notification and prevent additional purchases because they're over their credit limit. This can help to enforce that these payments are received within the net 30. 

Clarity’s eCommerce platform can also provide notifications and manual, direct transactional emails that go to the appropriate roles as reminders before their term is passed. We can provide them with notification of potential penalties or consequences if they don't pay on time, etc. This can be helpful for billing and collections as well, so a billing portal or a collection portal is going to be very helpful having these types of resources.  

Having credit on the account is a very powerful utility. This can be used for other aspects than just enterprise eCommerce. It can be used to allow consumers to purchase, rent, or lease-to-own types of scenarios. We worked with many companies that may need lease-to-own eCommerce and the user has a certain amount of credit. Once they've missed a payment, then the proper emails can be sent out before it is seized. 

Let Us Show You How It Works

Clarity has worked with hundreds of companies to make the most of their B2B eCommerce development. We can help you set up modules that make the most of your eCommerce framework and help customers keep their credit with you organized. 

If you’re ready to start solving the problems associated with credit, let us show you the B2B eCommerce solutions you’re looking for. Contact us today!