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User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
Operating
WebSphere Commerce Accelerator
Use the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to maintain online stores.
Business relationship management
To customize what a customer can do in a store use the business relationship management system. By using this system, you can entitle customers to various aspects of a store such as what products they can purchase, the price they pay, and what payment methods a store accepts.
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.
Managing 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.
Submitting contracts for approval
Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to submit a contract for approval.

User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
- Planning
  Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
- Installing
  Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Deploying
  The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
- Operating
  - IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce
    The IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce, or Management Center, is a suite of tools to support store management, merchandising, and marketing tasks for business users (Sellers, Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers, and others).
  - WebSphere Commerce Accelerator
    Use the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to maintain online stores.
    - WebSphere Commerce Accelerator user interface
      The WebSphere Commerce Accelerator interface consists of several notebooks, wizards, dialogs, and lists to help you complete your tasks.
    - Opening WebSphere Commerce Accelerator
      Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to maintain online stores by completing various store operations such as creating and maintaining orders and tracking store activities.
    - Changing a WebSphere Commerce password
      If you have the appropriate authority, you can change the WebSphere Commerce logon password for a WebSphere Commerce user or for yourself from any of these tools.
    - Managing the store
      The Seller sets up store-level functions within the site. The Seller can access all menu items under the Store menu.
    - Customer information
      If customers register with the store, you can maintain their registration profiles to track information. Maintain information such as the customer's logon ID, logon password, authentication information, store account status, title, name, preferred language, or currency.
    - Order management
      A typical order includes one or more products, billing and shipping addresses, payment details, and the total cost (including shipping charges and taxes, as applicable). Comments or price adjustments can also be included in an order.
    - Inventory
      Inventory includes anything that can be physically accounted for in a fulfillment center such as items, products, SKUs, bundles, and prebuilt kits.
    - Inventory returns and dispositions
      Customers return products to a fulfillment center for many different reasons. Returned inventory might be reintegrated into the pool of inventory available for order, or it might be discarded. This process is called disposition.
    - Returns and refunds
      A return is a record of a customer's request for a refund, to return merchandise, or both. The term is used whether an RMA is issued in advance of merchandise receipt or the transaction is begun at the time of merchandise receipt. You can use the return merchandise authorization (RMA) function in both available to promise (ATP) and non-ATP inventory-enabled stores.
    - Viewing account reports
    - Viewing contract reports
    - Request for Quote (RFQ)
      A buyer can create a Request for Quote (RFQ), by using the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, for unique variations of goods and services that are offered in a catalog. If buyers cannot find a product or category that match their needs within a catalog, they can select attributes from the personalized dictionary to precisely define the product specifications. A buyer can also create an RFQ by using the contents in their shopping cart, or add a shopping cart to an existing RFQ.
    - Business relationship management
      To customize what a customer can do in a store use the business relationship management system. By using this system, you can entitle customers to various aspects of a store such as what products they can purchase, the price they pay, and what payment methods a store accepts.
      - Business relationship model
        The key elements in the business relationship model include the different kinds of contracts, the various buying units, and the distinct customers who have access to your site.
      - Case Study: WebSphere Commerce contract modeling
        WebSphere Commerce contracts are the foundation for determining what customers can purchase in an online store, and at what price. The contracts functions are flexible in that it can support many types of e-commerce business models and their complex business requirements. This flexibility is powerful, and an optimal contract design can minimize the amount of effort that is required to manage business accounts and contracts. As well, an optimal design can minimize the amount of system resources that are required and thus enhance system performance.
      - Managing business accounts: an overview
        Managing a business account involves tasks that create and modify business accounts. The various tasks that are involved in managing a business account are performed by different roles.
      - 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.
        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 you can change the look of display pages in your 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. You can use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator or XML format to create contracts.
        Managing 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.
        Approving or rejecting a draft contract
        Draft contracts can be approved or rejected by approvers and administrators with appropriate access. The process for approving or rejecting a contract is the same process that is used for all approvals in WebSphere Commerce.
        Changing a contract
        Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to change a contract. The procedure applies to B2B stores only.
        Changing the shipping charges for a contract
        Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to change the shipping charges for an account or a contract.
        Canceling contracts
        Canceling a contract permanently prevents a buyer organization from purchasing under that contract. The contract stays in the WebSphere Commerce database for reference and can be viewed or used to create a duplicate contract. A canceled contract cannot be resumed.
        Creating an attachment for a contract
        You can attach any additional information to the contract, which might include images, documents, spreadsheets, or other materials.
        Deleting a contract
        Deleting a contract marks the contract for deletion the next time the WebSphere Commerce database is cleared of all objects that were marked for deletion. A contract that is marked for deletion cannot be duplicated, resumed, or used to create a new version of a contract. Both account representatives and sales managers can delete contracts.
        Duplicating contracts
        Duplicating a contract creates a new draft contract with the same information of the original contract except for the name of the contract. An account representative can modify the duplicate contract and then submit the contract for approval. When the duplicate contract is deployed, both the original contract and the duplicate contract can be active.
        Exporting contracts
        Exporting a contract or service agreement removes a service agreement in XML format from the WebSphere Commerce Server.
        Importing contracts
        Importing a contract or service agreement uploads a service agreement in XML format from your local client to the WebSphere Commerce Server and deploys the service agreement in WebSphere Commerce.
        Redeploying contracts
        Deployment of a contract normally occurs automatically after a contract is approved. If deployment of a contract fails, you can attempt to deploy the contract manually. Only contracts in the DeploymentFailed state can be redeployed.
        Resuming suspended contracts
        When the account representative wants to allow the buyer organization to purchase under the suspended contract again, they can resume the suspended contract.
        Submitting contracts for approval
        Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to submit a contract for approval.
        Suspending active contracts
        Occasionally, there is a need to prevent a buyer organization from purchasing under a contract for a brief time. An account representative can suspend a contract at any time.
        Viewing contract summaries
        An account representative or sales manager can review an existing contract at any time by looking at the contract summary.
        Unlocking contracts
        A Site Administrator, Sales Manager, or Seller can unlock a contract for a user. For example, if a user's system stops while the user is editing the contract, the contract might be locked on the system. Also, if one user is editing a contract, this contract locks and prevents other users from editing it.
        Finding contracts
        Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to find contracts. The procedure applies to the B2B stores only.
        Refreshing the contracts list
        If you change the status of items in the contracts list (such as adding or removing a contract), you might want to refresh the list.
      - Catalog filtering
        You can filter the catalog to a specific set of users and exclude any products in the master catalog that you do not want to sell at your store. Use the Catalog Filter on B2B contracts and hosting contracts.
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
- Tutorials
  WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
- Developing
  The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
- Troubleshooting

Submitting contracts for approval

Use WebSphere Commerce Accelerator to submit a contract for approval.

Procedure

Open WebSphere Commerce Accelerator
Click Sales > Accounts. The Account List page displays, containing business accounts currently defined for the selected store.
Select the check box to the left of the contract you want to approve. Click Contracts. The Contracts list displays, containing contracts that are currently defined for the selected business account.
Select the check box to the left of the contract that you want to submit for approval. Click Submit. The page displays the updated status of the contract.
The Submit button is enabled only when a contract is unlocked. Before you submit the contract for approval, you must unlock it.