In order to get your business up and running you will need to add and manage customers.
These customers are either private or business entities that help build your network. They are important to define the hierarchy for your business, to manage location ownership and, potentially, financial processes. And, from now you can handle the management of Customers in Connect platform.
The overview of Customers
Users with the role of Operator and Editor can see the overview of customers, either as a general overview or under a specific account.
The table includes the ID, name, type, owner, billing address, the date of creation and the number of locations owned by this customer.
CPO's and Editors can see all the customers that live under their specific account and filter by owner.
The users can search for any of their customer, can filter by type, owner and creation date and can sort the data by ID, type, owner and creation date.
Customer Details Page
You can access any customer’s detail page directly from the Customers overview table by clicking anywhere on the row.
On this page, you can see the main information that was saved regarding the customer.
In the Customer details page, you can see a field called Spirii Business Customer. This is a hyperlink that will redirect the user to the Customer’s account in the Spirii Business Platform.
Why is that? Migrating the Customer Management from Spirii Business to Connect is an iterative process, designed to ensure a seamless transition. For the time being, key features such as Billing Settings, Orders, and Subscriptions remain accessible through Spirii Business only. |
On the Customer details page, you also have access to an overview of locations where this customer was assigned as an owner. You can navigate to any location by clicking on the row, and will get redirected to its page.
How to create a Customer
Users with the Opertor role have access to create new customers directly in the Connect UI. You can do this by using the ‘+’ button in the top right corner of the Customers page. You will be redirected to a new page where you’ll have to input specific data.
If you wish to create a location that is not owned directly by you, make sure to create the customer before hand so it can be selected later on. |
-
Customer details
-
All customers must have an owner. You can own customers directly or choose a subsidiary or any of your business customers.
Note, private customers cannot own other private or business customers.
If you wish to update the owner of a customer after its creation, please bear in mind that there might be dependencies regarding location ownership and financial agreements. Ensure that changing the owner of a customer is accurately reflected in all relevant entities. - Give your customer a fitting name. For private customers aim for the full name of the person (e.g. Maria Herlitz), and for the business customers aim for the company name (e.g. Laguna Logistics).
- Select the type of your customer. It can be either a business or private customer.
If a subsidiary is needed for this specific customer, please reach out to your Spirii Account Manager or Solution Rollout Manager.
- Select the origin country of your customer. A customer can only have one country.
- Use the external ID field to create a reference for the customer that can be used in your internal systems or for billing purposes.
-
-
Contact details
We always need to have a contact person who we can reach in case of any concern regarding the customer (e.g. issues with invoicing, customer details, etc). This applies to both private and business customers.
For the customers created via onboarding flows these details get populated from the customer information section.
-
Financial details
When you are creating a customer there is the possibility to add billing and payout information by toggling the sections on and off.
- If Spirii provides financial services to the CPO that owns this customer, these sections become mandatory and user will have to input all details in order to make sure that the billing process and the reimbursement is done correctly.
- If no financial services are provided the user has the option not to use these sections. However, if one still choses to fill these inputs, note that the information will not be used in any payment flow and is purely informative.
-
Billing details
The billing details define how and where Spirii can bill the customer. This section ensures that invoices reach the right people and payment can be made for the services.
-
The payment method for billing is invoice by default and cannot be changed. This defines how the customer is billed.
Note, customers created through onboarding flows can also have "Credit card" as a payment method displayed in the customer overview, depending on how the onboarding flow was configured. This creates a link to the payment provider Stripe. - VAT number is required for all business customers. If you are creating a private customer with billing details, the VAT field will not be displayed.
-
Invoice format defines the method through which invoices are sent for billing. There are 2 options that the user can navigate between:
- Email: Tthe invoice gets send as a PDF file via one or multiple email addresses - the field can store up to 5 emails.
- GLN (Global Location Number): Enables sending electronic invoices in XML format.) Only available for Business Customers.
The user can only choose one method. Invoice by email will display the invoice email field while choosing GLN will display the GLN field.
GLN is a unique 13-digit electronic address for identifying businesses, as defined by GS1 standards. It's internationally recognised and has replaced the older EAN (European Article Numbering). The GLN is more commonly used for public institutions or municipalities, but private businesses can also be registered. - Address line, zip code and city build the physical address where invoices can be sent for the customer.
-
The payment method for billing is invoice by default and cannot be changed. This defines how the customer is billed.
-
Payout information
Payout information helps us to reimburse money to our customers, depending on the specifics of the Financial Agreement. (Financial Agreements are currently defined in Business Portal).
The payout information required varies depending on the country of the customer.
- If the selected country is Denmark, we require a Bank Reg and Account number.
-
If the customer has any other country than Denmark, IBAN and Swift Code will be presented.
We always need the Bank account holder name.
-
Financial setup
The financial setup defines the terms of the invoicing process.
- In what currency the invoices gets sent.
- In what language they are sent.
How to edit a Customer
You can edit a customer directly from the overview table by clicking the Edit-icon or from the customer’s details page. Any customer can be edited after it was created. The user has freedom to update almost every field, except the payment method.
When updating the Owner of a customer, the hierarchy will update automatically, but other elements like Agreements or Locations won’t, so make sure to check that the changes you are doing will not cause any billing/payment issues down the line. |
Order management, agreements and billing settings
The entire order management linked to the customer as well as billing settings, are still handled in the Business Portal. If you wish to add/change anything related to orders, products, subscriptions, transactions or billing settings, you will need to navigate to the customer’s BP page. You can access that through the active link in the customer’s overview page in Connect. Ask Spirii for help, if you do not have access to this.
Same goes for agreements. When you create a new customer and need a new agreement, it needs creation in BP, and it needs to be linked to the right locations of the customers.
How to delete a Customer
A customer can only be deleted (soft delete) by an Operator if it does not own any locations (it does not matter if the locations are live or not) or any customers. This is why you can see the Delete functionality only next to the location items that have 0 locations.
Deleting customers in Connect will delete them in Business Portal as well and vice versa. |
Customers API
- With the Customer management in Connect, we're also introducing new endpoints for the Spirii developer hub: https://developer.spirii.com/reference/customer-v2.
- We'll support the following endpoints for the basic CRUD operations of managing customers:
- Create a new customer.
- Get list of customer.
- Get one customer by ID.
- Update a customer.
- Delete a customer.
If you want to read more about our Spirii API's, click here: Introducing Our API Help Center: Spirii Developer Hub.
If you have any questions to this, you are always welcome to reach out to us through your Spirii Account Manager or Solution Rollout Manager.