DBC: Spending Accounts

Setting up a Spending Account

On the customer site, log in as an admin, and click on "Work With Spending Accounts" from the Control Panel. A listing of the spending accounts setup for this customer will be displayed.

You can see the account name, description, default balance, whether the account is active, and the starting and (if applicable) ending dates for the account. You will then see some additional options.

For an active account, you will be able to deactivate the account, view the details, or copy the account. For an inactive account, you will have the option to activate it, edit its settings, delete the account, or copy the account.

At the top of this page, click the link to "Create a New Spending Account."

1. Name – Enter in the name for the new spending account.

2. Associated Cost Center – Select the cost center that this spending account should be related to.

   
   

   Note: The spending account itself will have no effect when the order is transferred to DB/d. The cost center selected here will be the location associated with the order, if this customer is sending the cost center to DB/d, instead of the ship to.

3. Description – Enter in a brief description to describe the purpose of this account.
4. Tooltip – The tooltip will be a hovering tip that can be used to give the user additional information beyond the regular description.
5. Start Date – Enter in the date this account should become active.
6. End Date – If this account should expire at some point, enter in the ending date.
7. No End Date – If this account should exist perpetually, check this box on.
8. Type – Select if the spending account should be Standard or Shared. Standard means that each user in the spending account will have their own balance to spend. Shared means that all users in the spending account will have to share the balance.

Click Continue to proceed to the User Association section.

User Association

Here you can define which users will have access to this spending account.

The system will use a combination of all your selections to determine which users will have access to this spending account:

1. Catalogs – selecting specific catalogs will allow users that can view those catalogs to have access to this spending account. Use the arrow buttons to move the catalogs to the appropriate column.
2. Groups – select the appropriate groups containing users that should have access to this spending account.
3. Users – after selecting your Catalogs and Groups, you can further define the list by selecting individual users if needed.

Click Continue to proceed to the User Budgets section.

Note: If you are selecting catalogs on this page, you are really indicating that users with access to those catalogs will have access to this spending account. It does not necessarily mean that those catalogs will be a part of the spending account.

This page is only for determining which users have access to the spending account, and not what the spending account can be spent on.

User Budgets

The User Budgets page is used for setting a default budget for the users.

Note: For standard spending accounts, you will see a list of all users that have been selected. For shared spending accounts, you will only see the default balance field and the current balance field.

You also have the option of entering a custom starting amount for each user. Pressing the "Update All Balances" button will update the starting balance for all users to the value you have entered in the field directly next to that button.

An alternate method for populating the information on this screen is to fill it out via a spreadsheet. You can use the Export Users link to download a .csv file containing the users in this list.

You can then fill in the starting balances for the users in a spreadsheet format. You can then upload that .csv file to populate the values on this screen.

Click Continue to proceed to the Reload Rules page.

Note: The users that are displayed on this page are a direct result of the selections you made on the User Association page. If users are displayed that should not be part of the spending account, you will need to go back and change your selections on the previous screen.

Reload Rules

The Reload Rules section allows you to designate if additional funds should be added to the users accounts over time.

To setup a reload rule, you will need to setup the following:

1. Frequency – Select how often this rule should be applied to the account.
2. Reload Amount – Select the amount that you would like to have applied to the account.
3. Reload Type – Select if the Reload Amount should be set as the new balance, or if it should be added on top of their existing funds.
4. Effective Date – Select the date the reload rule should come into effect for the account.
5. Press the Create Rule button to add this rule.

The rules can be changed or removed by using the Edit and Delete links.

Click Continue to proceed to the Item & Catalog Association page.

Item & Catalog Association

Here you have the option of limiting the available catalogs and items that the users will be able to use the funds in their account for. Above each of these sections you can choose to set your selections as what should be “included”, or what should be “excluded." Select your catalogs and items as needed.

Click Continue to proceed to Spending Limits.

Note: If on the User Association page, you selected to limit the users to only be people that have access to Catalog X, that does not mean that Catalog X is the only thing the spending account will apply to.

By default, the options shown above are set to “Exclude the following…”. So, if you do not tweak these settings to “exclude” certain catalogs/items, or to “include” certain catalogs/items, the users will be able to use the spending account for anything.

In other words, on this screen, you need to specifically select what the spending account should, or should not, apply to.

Spending Limits

In addition to having the overall budget on the spending account, you also have the capability of setting spending limits that can control how much of their account funds can be used per item, per order, or within a timeframe.

To setup spending limits, you will need to setup the following:

1. Type – Select from Per Item, Per Order, or Per Timeframe.
2. Amount – Enter the amount you would like to set the limit at.
3. $ or % - For per item and per order types, you can designate if the Amount you entered should be a dollar value, or if it should represent a percent of the spending account.
4. Timeframe – For per timeframe types, select if the timeframe should be weekly, monthly, yearly, or a certain number of days.
5. # Days – If you selected a timeframe with a number of days, enter in the number of days that should be used for the timeframe.
6. Press the Add Limit button to add your new spending limit rule.

Click Finish to complete the setup of the spending account.

User View

My Spending Account

When a user logs in to the site, they will be able to visit the My Account/Profile section and click on the "My Spending Accounts" tab to see a listing of the spending accounts available to them.

Clicking on the View Activity link will let them see a listing of transactions that have been posted against that spending account. This will include any orders placed using these funds, as well as any balance reloads, etc. The order transactions will show the order status as well.

Header Area

During the shopping process, a user can access their listing of available spending accounts by hovering over the dollar icon up by the Checkout button in the header area.

At Checkout

When checking out, the user will have the option of selecting the spending account at the Cost Center/Payment Method field. Once again, only spending accounts that match the criteria of the items in the cart will be displayed at this point.

1. Check the Item Assocation with the Spending Account:

   
   

   1a. If the item association is set to "Include the following items:" we check to see if the line item matches one of the items INCLUSIVELY (under Selected Items) associated with the spending account.

   
   

   If so, we consider the item VALID for use by this spending account (if no match is found among the INCLUSIVELY associated items, we proceed to the next set of logic).

   
   

   

   1b. If the item association is set to "Exclude the following items:" we check to see if the line item matches one of the items EXCLUSIVELY (under Selected Items) associated with the spending account.

   
   

   If so, we consider the item INVALID for use by this spending account (if no match is found among the EXCLUSIVELY associated items, we proceed to the next set of logic).

2. Check the Catalog Association with the Spending Account:

   
   

   2a. If the catalog association is set to "Include the following catalogs:," we check all the items directly within that catalog and if any of them match the line item in question, we deem the item VALID for use by this spending account (if we don't find a match among the items within the INCLUSIVELY associated catalog, we just move on to the next set of logic).

   
   

   

   2b. If the catalog association is set to "Include the following catalogs:" we check all the items directly within that catalog and if any of them match the line item in question, we deem the item INVALID for use by this spending account (if we don't find a match among the items within the EXCLUSIVELY associated catalog, we just move on to the next set of logic).

3. If we've reached this point and haven't found a match in either the associated items or the associated catalogs, we check to see if both the catalog and item associations are INCLUSIVE. That is, the spending account should only be valid for one of the listed items or items from one of the listed catalogs, in which case we would have found a match and confirmed the item's eligibility in step 1 or 2.

   
   

   So, if both the item and catalog associations for this spending account are set to INCLUSIVE, and we did not find a match in steps 1 or 2, we consider the item INVALID for use by this spending account.

   
   

4. If we've gotten this far and still haven't found a match in steps 1 or 2, and either the item or the catalog association is set to EXCLUSIVE (which would bypass the decision in step 3), we consider the item valid due to specific exclusivity.

   
   

   Once we've gone through these steps for all items, we check to see if any of them were valid and then use those in a series of calculations to determine the total amount that could be applied to this spending account for this order, which we make available at checkout IF:

   
   

   a. Split Billing is "disabled," and the maximum amount that can be applied to the spending account based on the valid items found is equal to or greater than the total order amount.

   
   

   OR

   
   

   b. Split Billing is "enabled," and the maximum amount that can be applied to the spending account based on the valid items found is greater than ZERO.