Online Checkout in Paperless Parts
Paperless Parts gives you the ability to offer online checkout to your customers! This resource goes over all you need to know to set this up in Paperless Parts, including:
- Online checkout vs. order facilitation
- How can my customers check out?
- What checkout options are available?
- Credit card
- Purchase orders
- Credit card and purchase orders
- No checkout options
- How do I set up the desired checkout options?
- Are credit cards set up for your Paperless Parts account?
- Is the contact assigned to an account?
- What are the settings on an account?
- Changing account settings for one existing account
- Changing account settings for multiple existing accounts
- Establishing account settings for future accounts
- How do I know which checkout options are available for the quote I am working on?
Online checkout vs. order facilitation
There are two ways an order can be created in Paperless Parts: order facilitation and online checkout.
1. Online checkout: Online checkout is when a customer (NOT a Paperless Parts user) places an order from the quote you sent to them in Paperless Parts. This article is focused on how your customers can do this and how to set this up so your customers are correctly checking out. It is important to set up your Paperless Parts account with your allowed payment options to avoid payment issues if your customers check out incorrectly.
2. Order facilitation: Order facilitation is when a Paperless Parts user on your team (NOT a customer) creates an order from a quote sent out in Paperless Parts. The most common use case here is if your customer sends over a PO via email and you want to mark that the quote you created in Paperless Parts was won. This is useful to do because it keeps your dashboard in Paperless Parts accurate and allows you to track your shop's analytics in the platform. In addition, if you have an integration with Paperless Parts and your ERP integration, you must facilitate orders in Paperless to bring the data from Paperless Parts into your ERP system. Learn how to facilitate orders here.
When you facilitate an order, you will be able to select a Payment Method: Not Provided (useful if you want to create an order without entering any payment information), Purchase Order, or Credit Card. Credit cards will only be an available payment method if you have set up a Stripe account here (learn more about setting up credit card payments here). You will be able to facilitate an order with a purchase order regardless of the checkout options assigned to the account. The only time you will not be able to facilitate an order with. purchase order is if there is no account tied to the contact for the quote you are trying to facilitate. In this case, assign the contact to an account in order to facilitate the order with a PO.
How can my customers check out?
When you send a quote in Paperless Parts, you send your customer an email with a link to a digital version of the quote that we call the “Digital Quote”. You can see what the Digital Quote looks like before you finalize the quote by clicking “Preview”:
The Digital Quote includes your shop’s information, the customer’s contact information, the quote number, salesperson of the quote, and the quantities, prices, lead times, and notes for each quote item:
If your shop would like to offer online checkout, customers can select the desired quote items and lead times and click “check out”, which brings them to a checkout page where they can fill out their information and place an order:
If they do not want to check out online and prefer to place an order the way they have done without Paperless Parts, they are able to do that as well. Then, you can mark the quote as won by facilitating the order.
Learn more about how to control what is displayed on the Digital Quote here.
Check out a video walkthrough of the Digital Quote here.
What checkout options are available?
The checkout options available to your customers depends on what you want to offer them. This diagram illustrates what options are available:
Let's break down what each option looks like for your customers checking out:
Credit card
Customers will only be able to check out online with a credit card (learn more here):
Purchase orders
Customers will only be able to check out online with a purchase order:
Credit card and purchase orders
Customers will be able to select if they want to check out online with a credit card or with a purchase order:
No checkout options
Customers will not be able to check out online using the Digital Quote. Instead, the Digital Quote will communicate that they must contact you shop to place their order:
How do I set up the desired checkout options?
Let’s walk through each of the questions from the above diagram.
Are credit cards set up for your Paperless Parts account?
As a Paperless Parts customer, you have the ability to collect credit card payments in the platform via Stripe, our 3rd party secure and convenient processing provider. For more information about how to set up accepting credit cards and some frequently asked questions about the workflow, see our article on Accepting Credit Cards in Paperless Parts.
Is the contact assigned to an account?
Checkout options and payment terms are set on the account level, not the contact level. If the contact is not assigned to an account, we will not allow the contact to check out by uploading a PO, since there is no way to set payment terms without being tied to an account. To assign a contact to an account, navigate to the contact in the Contacts page, and click “Edit” next to “Account”:
You can either assign them to an existing account or create a new one.
What are the settings on the account?
Checkout options are set at the account level.
Changing account settings for one existing account
Navigate to the account’s page, where you can enable / disable accepting purchase orders and set the Payment Terms. If you have credit card payment set up for your Paperless Parts account, credit cards can be turned on / off for specific accounts.
Changing account settings for multiple existing accounts
If you want to change the checkout settings for multiple accounts at once, select the accounts, click “Edit”, and select the desired checkout settings:
Learn more about the bulk updating your contacts in our article on the Contacts Page.
Establishing account settings for future accounts
If you want to ensure future accounts created in the Paperless Parts platform have the correct checkout settings, go to the Default Checkout Methods section in the Settings Page. Select the default payment options and terms for new accounts:
Learn more about the contacts page and how to edit contacts and accounts here.
How do I know which checkout options are available for the quote I am working on?
The available checkout options for the quote are displayed on the Build-a-Quote page where the rest of the account and contact information are displayed:
Have more questions? Reach out to support@paperlessparts.com