This posting explains the following new features in some detail:
- Sub-Accounts
- Mass Invoice Payments
- Multiple Domain Renewals
1) SUB-ACCOUNTS
An extension of the Contacts feature within the Customer Portal, Sub-Accounts allow clients to create sub-users under their main account, which then allows that contact to login, and carry out various actions that the main account holder has permitted them to.
We call the primary login the master account owner, and any users they create under their account Sub-Accounts.
Why would you use this feature?
Each section of the client area within the Customer Portal has it’s own permission so the access rights can be fine tuned by the master account holder (and any sub-accounts given permissions to manage contacts) to create different logins for different purposes.
Just a couple of examples where this might be useful are:
- Billing Department – corporate customers may have a dedicated billing department who should be given access to pay invoices and place new orders while the web/technical staff would only be given access to view current products & services and submit support requests, which was previously impossible
- Web Developers – you may be employing a web developer to build and maintain your website so might want to give that developer access to create tickets and correspond on your behalf, without being able to access any billing information or change account details
As before there’s also the email preferences for a contact so you can also choose which emails the contact should receive.
How do Support Tickets work under this new system?
If a sub-account user opens a support ticket, then they will be CC’d any replies relating to that ticket by email along with the master account holder. Contacts can also open tickets simply by emailing if piping is enabled, and the emails from them will be automatically collected and assigned to the master client account.
One contact user will not receive email updates about the tickets submitted by another contact, but they can still view all the tickets belonging to the master account holder when logging in.
What does the Sub-Account user see?
When the Sub-Account user logs in, they see exactly the same client area that the master account owner would see, albeit they can’t view areas that they don’t have permissions to access.
If a Sub-Account user tries to access an area that they don’t have permission for, rather than simply dead-ending them with an access denied error it gives them an explanation of what areas they can access and what to do in the case they think this is incorrect.
2) MASS INVOICE PAYMENTS
This feature allows you to pay for multiple due invoices in a single payment attempt. This is especially useful for those who wish to pay us by Paypal/Payzone or some other online payment type that we may offer. It’s main advantage is:
It is easier for you
When you log in to your Client Portal, you will see a list of due invoices with the new feature – new checkboxes next to them, a Pay Selected button to click after selecting the invoices you want to pay, and a Pay All quick link next to the total due.
Following making the invoice selections and continuing to the next step, you are presented with a summary of all the selected invoices, each line item they contain, the total tax due, credits applied, and any partial payments already made, and then the final total due.
If you are happy to proceed, simply choose the desired payment method for the invoices and submit at which point you will be prompted for your payment method of choice, and then make payment.
3) Multiple Domain Renewals
When you visit our Ordering System from within the Customer Portal will now see a new category, called ”Domain Renewals”. Within this section, you will be able to see all the Active & Expired domains you have with us, the days until expiry (billing due date with us) and the options which you have for renewal.
This allows you to order domain renewals at any time you wish, for example early before our regular automatic invoicing has sent an invoice for the domain being due soon.
Then after selecting the domains you want to renew and choosing the period for each one, submitting will add those renewals to the cart and show the usual cart summary page. You may then continue shopping for more items, go back and renew other domains or change the renewal period you have chosen, or checkout & pay to complete the process.
Tags: customer portal, domain renewals, invoice payments, new features, sub-accounts