Review new sign-ups and keep fake accounts out

A new sign-up is a full customer account the moment it's created, so the job is to find out about it fast, decide what kind of customer it is, and set its tag, terms and limits before its first order ships. Two triggers do most of the work: one tells someone on your team, and one tags every sign-up so the right prices apply from the first page they open. The same routine clears out fake accounts.

Applies to: every shop that lets customers sign up. Price adjustments need Manage Financial Settings; deleting a company needs Delete Companies.

In this article

Get told about every sign-up
What to check, then tag, set terms or deactivate
Price new sign-ups automatically
Hold first orders
Fake sign-ups
Things to know

Get told about every sign-up

You can't choose which permissions a new sign-up starts with; they're set automatically. What you can do is make sure a person looks at every one. Most shops have a trigger that notifies someone on the team when a new company is created so they can go verify it.

Go to Settings > Operations > Triggers and create a trigger on the New Company Created event.
Choose the action: email, text, announcement or task, sent to the employee who reviews new accounts. A task stays on their home page until it's done.
Create a second trigger on the event for a new individual account. A personal sign-up doesn't fire New Company Created, so one trigger alone misses every homeowner who signs up.

For the steps, see Intro to triggers.

What to check, then tag, set terms or deactivate

Open the new company (or individual account) and look at the name, email, address, phone number and website. A real business usually has a real address and a domain email; a fake one has none of those, or random letters.

If it's a real customer, finish the setup: give them the right tags, set their payment terms, credit limit and order limit, and check their contact can sign in. See Create and assign payment terms and Credit limits and order limits. If it isn't, see Fake sign-ups below.

Price new sign-ups automatically

Some shops sell mainly to dealers and don't want a random sign-up to see base pricing. Tag every sign-up as it arrives and aim a price adjustment at the tag.

Create a tag for sign-ups, for example RetailCustomer. You can call it whatever you want.
Create a price adjustment aimed at that tag: on Settings > Operations > Price Adjustments, set Company to Use Tags, pick RetailCustomer, and set a surcharge (for example 15%). The steps are on Price adjustments.
Create a trigger on New Company Created with the Add Tags action, adding RetailCustomer. Do the same for the individual-account event; a tag added to a new individual is also added to its company, which is what the adjustment reads.

Not every new account is a retail customer, but this stops a customer from seeing your base price when they would in fact be charged more. The employee who reviews each sign-up changes the tag as needed, and the price follows the tag. It works in either direction: a surcharge for a retail tag, or a discount for a dealer tag on a catalog priced for walk-in customers.

Worked example: a cabinet whose formula gives $400.00 shows $460.00 to a RetailCustomer sign-up with a 15% surcharge ($400.00 plus $60.00). When your employee swaps the tag for Dealer and a 10% Dealer discount applies instead, the same cabinet shows $360.00. Adjustments are worked out on the formula price, so the two never compound.

Hold first orders

A sign-up can order right away. The usual approach is to let them, and not verify the order until someone has made contact: orders wait at Ordered until an employee moves them to Verified, so nothing reaches the shop floor before you've spoken to the customer. If auto-verify is on, new orders skip that wait, so review sign-ups before their first order lands. See Move an order to the next status.

If you'd rather a sign-up can't order until you've checked them, open the new person's contact (not the company) and set Deny on Submit Orders. Sign-up saves an Allow on the contact itself, and a person's own setting beats the company's, so a Deny on the company would do nothing. Turn it back on after your review. See What your customers see and can do.

Fake sign-ups

Bots creating fake accounts are common across the internet and exist for many reasons; most are there to collect data. They come in waves and aren't targeted at you for any strategic reason: they found your site, tried it, and move on when there's little to be gained. Allmoxy checks that a sign-up's email address can receive mail and allows one sign-up per internet address, which slows most of them down without putting a puzzle in front of real customers.

Still, a fake sign-up is a full customer account: it can browse your catalog with the prices that apply to its tag, create bids, submit orders and pay invoices, and see reports about its own company. It can't see other customers' records or anything else in your site. The real risk is an illegitimate order, which is why you review before you verify.

To clear one out:

If the company has no orders, invoices, supplied items or subscriptions, open it, click Edit and use Delete This Company (needs Delete Companies). The success message offers an Undo, which restores the status only. A fake individual account is deleted the same way (the person and their hidden company both go).
If it has already submitted an order, it can't be deleted. Set the company's status to Inactive instead, which also turns off sign-in for every contact at it. See Edit, deactivate, merge or delete customers.

Things to know

Personal sign-ups fire a different event. Build every sign-up trigger twice, once for New Company Created and once for the individual-account event.
Public Ordering changes the picture. With Public Ordering on (Settings > E-commerce > Order Settings), visitors who haven't signed in can start an order, and no tag adjustment can apply to someone with no company to carry the tag. If nobody unreviewed should see your base prices, keep it off.
Deny goes on the person. Anything you take away from a self-signed-up customer goes on their contact, because sign-up wrote an Allow there.