B2B Edition Buyer Roles and Permissions

With B2B Edition, your B2B customers, or buyers, access their Company’s Buyer Portal from the storefront to manage orders, request sales quotes, and pay invoices. Each buyer has a user account with an assigned role that determines what they can view and configure within the Buyer Portal.

B2B Edition allows you to create custom user roles with unique permissions to support specific workflows for buyers. These can be assigned to buyers in any Company account.

By default, the following buyer roles are available to all Company accounts:

• Junior Buyer — can request quotes and submit Shopping Lists for approval. Junior Buyers cannot make purchases on their own. This role is useful for Company employees that require approval to make purchases for their business.
• Senior Buyer — can approve Shopping Lists from other buyers or create their own. Senior Buyers can also place orders on the storefront and view Company order history. This role can be used for Company managers that regularly make purchases on behalf of their business, or who oversee a team that creates purchase lists to be approved.
• Admin — In addition to the actions available to Senior Buyers, Admins can manage other aspects of their Company account, such as setting up business addresses, adding new users, and paying invoices. This role should be assigned to individuals that manage the entire Company account.

In addition to the predefined user roles, you can create custom roles with their own set of permissions from the Settings › Company users and roles area of the B2B Edition control panel. Custom roles are universal, and cannot be restricted to a subset of Company accounts.

You can also perform the following actions in Settings › Company users and roles:

• View and edit buyer accounts from all Companies
• Duplicate predefined or custom roles
• Edit or delete existing custom roles

In order to access Company users and roles settings, you must be using B2B Edition’s Buyer Portal experience.

Your user account must have the following permissions to perform various buyer role actions in the B2B Edition control panel:

• To access Settings › Company users and roles of the B2B Edition control panel:
  • View Company Users and Roles
• To view or edit buyer users:
  • View Companies
  • View Company Detail
  • View Company Users
  • Update User
  • View Company Users and Roles
  • View Users
• To view buyer roles:
  • View Company Users and Roles
  • View Roles
• To add, edit, duplicate, or delete buyer roles:
  • View Company Users and Roles
  • View Roles
  • Add New Role
  • Update Role
  • Delete Role

Note that your buyers cannot create their own custom roles — you must create them on the buyer’s behalf.

The following users can assign roles to buyers from the Buyer Portal:

• Super Admins
• Buyers assigned the Admin role
• Buyers assigned a custom role with the following User management permissions:
  • View
  • Create, edit, delete

Custom buyer roles must have a unique name.

Predefined and custom roles are assigned when creating a new buyer user account, or by editing an existing account. B2B Edition users and buyers with the appropriate permissions can assign or reassign roles to buyer users via one of the following methods:

• Editing individual users
• Bulk editing via CSV file
• Assigning from the Buyer Portal

Editing Individual Users

While viewing a Company's account information, you can view the associated buyers and edit their user accounts. Assigning roles this way is helpful when you want to apply a custom role meant for a small group of buyers.

From the Companies area of the B2B Edition control panel, locate the desired Company. After clicking the Company name, navigate to the Company users tab and select the Edit action for an existing buyer, or create a new one by clicking Add new.

In the Edit user pop-up, select the desired buyer role from the Role dropdown and save your changes. The next time the buyer user logs in, they will have the Buyer Portal permissions available in their role.

Alternatively, you can locate specific buyers in the Users tab of Settings › Company users and roles. This allows you to view users across all Companies, and provides an easy means of assigning select roles to buyers across multiple Companies.

In the list of users, locate the buyer user account you wish to update. Use the search bar to find a user by their name or email address, or to filter by Company account or currently-assigned role. Select Edit from the Action menu to be taken directly to the Edit user pop-up in the Company account’s details.

Bulk Editing via CSV File

If you want to assign buyer roles in bulk, you can export Company account information to a CSV file. This is a great way to apply a global buyer role to multiple users across different Companies.

In your CSV file, locate the Company User Role column and update their buyer role. When assigning roles via the CSV file, keep the following considerations in mind:

• Make sure that the role name is spelled correctly. If the entered name does not match the role’s name, the buyer will keep their current-assigned role.
  • If you are creating a new buyer user account via CSV import, misspelled role names cause the buyer to be assigned the Admin role.
• If the Company User Role is left blank, buyers are automatically assigned the Admin role.

After you’ve made your changes in the CSV file, import it from the Companies area of the B2B Edition control panel. Once the import is complete, go to the Notifications area of the control panel and check the Company Upload Summary Notification for any import errors.

Assigning from the Buyer Portal

In addition to assigning roles from the B2B Edition control panel, buyers with the required permissions can manage user roles from the User management area of the Buyer Portal. While editing a buyer user account, they can select a predefined or custom role from the User role dropdown.

Custom buyer roles enable your B2B customers to support specialized workflows for their staff members. Use the steps below to create a custom role.

1. In the B2B Edition control panel, navigate to Settings › Company users and roles and click the Roles tab.

2. Click Create role, or Duplicate an existing role from the list to work from a template. You can duplicate both predefined and custom buyer roles.

3. In the Create role page, give your new role a name. Select the permissions you want the role to have, or check the box next to Permissions to assign all permissions to the role. You can use the search bar to locate specific permissions in the list, and collapse permissions sections by clicking the side arrow (›).

Note that certain permissions have prerequisite permissions which must first be enabled. See Buyer Permissions for more information.

When enabling a permission for a custom role, specify the scope of the permission by selecting the Level. For example, you can specify whether buyers assigned to the custom role can view their own orders, or all orders in the Company account. The following permission levels are available:

• None — This is only used when a permission is disabled for the buyer role.
• User — The buyer can only view or manage records associated with their own user account.
• User Team — The buyer can view or manage all permission-specific records in the account

4. Save your changes. The role can now be assigned to buyers in any Company account.

Once you’ve created a custom buyer role, you can edit it at any time to change its name, permissions, and permission levels. Note that predefined buyer roles cannot be edited, but you can review their permissions by clicking the role name or selecting View from the role’s Action menu.

To edit a custom buyer role, go to the Roles tab of Settings › Company users and roles and locate the role you want to edit. You can use the search bar to narrow your results by role name. Click the role’s name, or select Edit from the role’s Action menu.

While editing an existing role has the same configuration settings as creating a new role, there are some differences in how they can be used. Take note of the following considerations:

• When renaming a buyer role, make sure that it does not match the name of an existing role.
• When you save your changes, buyers assigned to the role will have any newly-applied permissions the next time they log in.

The table below lists the available permissions for buyer users in B2B Edition. The Requires column indicates any prerequisite permissions that must be enabled in order to assign a particular permission to a user role, and the Level column lists the permission’s available levels except None, which is present for all disabled permissions.

Note that while creating or editing a custom buyer role, checking the box next to a permission will automatically enable any prerequisite permissions.

Permission	Effect	Level	Requires
User management
View	View the User management area of the Buyer Portal	User Team
Create, edit, delete	Manage Company users in the Buyer Portal	User Team	User management - View
Shopping list
View	View the Shopping lists area of the Buyer Portal	User User Team
Create, edit, delete	Manage existing Shopping Lists and add new ones	User User Team	Shopping list - View
Submit draft status for approval	Submit Shopping Lists to users with the Approve draft status list permission before they can be purchased	User	Shopping list - Create, edit, delete (User level)
Approve draft status list	Approve Shopping Lists created by users with the Submit draft status for approval permission	User Team	Shopping list - Create, edit, delete (User team level)
Addresses
View	View the Addresses area of the Buyer Portal	User Team
Create, edit, delete	Add and update addresses in the Company address book. You must enable Allow company users to edit addresses in your General settings before buyers with this permission can make changes to their Address Book.	User Team	Addresses - View
Quotes
View	View the Quotes area of the Buyer Portal	User Team
Request for quote	Submit a draft quote to be processed in the B2B Edition control panel	User Team	Quotes - View
Convert to order	Purchase a finalized quote	User Team	Quotes - View
Orders
View	Access the Orders area of the Buyer Portal and view order details. If you select the User Team level for this permission, assigned buyers can view the Company orders area of the Buyer Portal as well.	User User Team
Invoices
View	View the Invoices area of the Buyer Portal	User Team
Pay Invoices	Pay the outstanding balance of one or more invoices	User Team	Invoices - View
Others
Purchasability	Place orders from the storefront, repurchase line items from an existing order, and order the contents of an approved Shopping List	User

How do I delete a custom buyer role?

Before deleting a custom buyer role, you must reassign all buyers from that role. While viewing the Roles tab of Settings › Company users and roles, open the action menu of the role you want to delete, then select Delete.

Can I customize the Buyer Portal permissions of Super Admin users?

No, staff assigned as Super Admins cannot be assigned to a unique buyer role for the purpose of restricting Buyer Portal access while using the Masquerade feature.

Can I create storefront-specific buyer roles?

No, predefined and custom buyer roles apply to all storefronts.

Can I create customized permissions that can be assigned to a buyer role?

Yes, you can use the API to build unique permissions that can be assigned to custom buyer roles. Custom permissions cannot be created or assigned to roles from your B2B Edition control panel. See our API documentation for more information.

Why am I getting a “Can Not Update Company User Role” error when changing a buyer’s role?

This error occurs if you are reassigning a buyer from the predefined Admin role to a different role, and there are no other users in the Company account assigned as an admin. Each Company account must have at least one Admin user.