Account Administration

ShopWiki administrators can manage all of the merchant accounts from the Merchant Account Summary page. The main summary screen displays all merchants that are configured for bidding in the Merchant Center. Clicking on the merchant URL in the summary table will give specific account information for the merchant.

Merchant Account Information

The Merchant Information page contains the following information. * Authorize.net ID's: The customer ID and payment profile ID are created when they add or change their Credit Card information. The Customer ID is only created if needed. This information is really only needed for the credit card billing (done automatically), but is displayed here for reference. * Payment Method: These options are described below. Be careful when changing types. * Minimum charge: This value is used to determine what the minium dollar amount (in the merchants local currency) value when considering whether to send the merchant an invoice. * Credit Limit:This value is used to determine the maximum (in the merchants local currency) value that the account can accumulate before being notified and ultimately cut off. * Account Balance; Status: Displays a general status message about the account. * Account Balance; Running Balance: This is the total of all CPC costs minus any payments received. There are 3 types of payment methods that a merchant can be configured for. Except for the '''Accrual''' method, the merchant establishes their preference when they accept the T&C on the '''Bid Management''' tab in the Merchant Center. Specifics on the three payment methods are described below. All billing methods require the merchant to have configured their billing address in the system (the system requires this when agreeing to the T&C). Without the billing address, we are unable to send them email notifications. If the billing email address is not configured, it will be indicated as an error in the ShopWiki admin status email.

Adding Payments and Credits

For Pre-payment and Accrual accounts, payment information must be entered into the system to credit the merchants account. This is done by selecting the '''Add New Item''' link at the bottom of the Account History table when viewing a particular Merchants account. Select either '''Paid Credit''' or '''Free Credit''', enter a dollar value (in merchants local currency), enter any optional comments and press the '''Add''' button. It is important to use the '''Paid Credit''' option when submitting payment information from Pre-payment accounts. This will reset their account has having been paid and allow for future notification emails to be sent to the merchant when their account balance is nearing or has exceeded their limit (we only send one of each types of emails and then mark the account in such a way that we won't continue to send the same messages until paid). For Accrual accounts, it will release the hold on the campaign allowing it to continue. The '''Free Credit''' option can be used to adjust the balance of a merchant account without having actually received payment from the merchant. It can be used for make-goods, special offers, or any other reason. You can even enter negative values to increased the account balance.

Deleting and Creating Invoices

To delete an invoice, simply click the '''Delete Invoice''' next to the invoice in the Account History table. This will delete the reference to the invoice from the merchants view of their history. It will keep the record in the system to show that it had been created along with a link to the original invoice. To create a new invoice, simply click the '''Create Invoice''' link (only shown if there is a running account balance). The invoice will be created for the remaining account balance. It will NOT be automatically sent to the merchant. !

Customizing the Invoice

The format of the Invoice is mostly static and can not be modified without code changes. However, the footer can be customized using this wiki. The''' Invoice Increment''' can also be adjusted from the Admin Options section on the '''Merchant Account Summary''' page. The Invoice Increment is simply the value in which the invoice number is incremented for each invoice. It's really a dumb thing to make it look like our billing runs are larger than they really are.

How Billing Is Generated

Billing is automatically generated by the CPCInvoicer cron launched on the DEV server. Configuration for this is found here. Each billing run will perform billing for all merchants, regardless of the type of account it is configured for.

ShopWiki Admin Email

After each billing run, the CPCInvoicer will send a status message to the list of emails (comma delimited list) configured in the '''Status Messages''' field under the Admin Options of the Merchant Account Summary page. Errors will be listed in red and should not be disregarded. An error may indicate a merchant can not be billed for some reason.

Merchant Center Billing