The "BIY" or "Buy-it-Yourself" process of selling products and services refers to clients purchasing and activating products on their own. See how it works.
This self-serve method encourages customers to purchase their own products and services, but some Partners may find it unsuitable for their business model, or incompatible with cashflow management. When a Sales Order is initiated by a client and has a successful retail payment event, the auto-activation process begins by charging the partner the wholesale total for the products ordered. This is a very efficient, seamless process for businesses set up to accommodate purchases at any time. If they would prefer to control when funds leave their wholesale account, or the wholesale payment method lacks enough funds at that particular moment (causing the retail order to fail), the fully self-serve BIY experience should not be offered to their customers. Note: Products and services that are offered for free are not part of the BIY experience.
How to Build a Custom Purchasing Experience
- Navigate to Partner Center > Administration tab > Customize > Sales dropdown and Configure Orders and Sales Processes > Scroll to the section you can add Default Content > Custom fields to Orders. (Note - If you have more than one market assigned to your account, you can choose the one you want. Feel free to make your selection prior to this step. More about Markets.
- This is where Partners can create Order Form questions that need to be filled out before orders can go through. These are included in the Administrative Questions section of the Order Form, but there is a way to hide them from the Clients - Partners can mark the questions as required and hidden from end users so only partner users would see them (screenshot below).
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This way, when a Client in the Business App clicks Buy and enters their credit card to purchase, the Sales Order created will immediately go into Awaiting Partner Approval status due to that order form question being required.
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It could be as simple as a checkbox saved as “this order is approved” to give the Partners time to do whatever they need with the order.
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When the partner is ready, they can fill that field in and click to Approve the order, and it will immediately go into an Awaiting payment status and charge the client, then auto-activate.