CSX Playbook: How can I enable users to share inventory between their custodies without transferring?
What’s the goal?
In this playbook we’re going to guide you through how you can share inventory among multiple field users within your organization. Typically when inventory is being shared, i.e. shared custody, between multiple users this occurs within a single Distributorship, so ConnectSx is built to facilitate that (read more about that here).
However, what if you are a distributor organization and you want to share inventory between just a few of your reps who function as a team, separate from the rest of the organization? Or what if you are a manufacturer organization wanting to allow independent sales reps to share inventory, although they are not part of a distributorship? Well, we have answers!
How to solve for this:
To accomplish this we’re going to draw on a handful of useful features that ConnectSx offers, namely: shared distributor inventory and custodian-only users. What we’ll want to do is set up a custodian-only distributor user for you to link your sales users with and allow them to share inventory custody as if they were part of a distributorship with each other. A custodian-only user is a user who will never log into the system or take action on their own, so in this instance it will function as a sort of “dummy” distributor for us to use to create a link with your sales users.
Important Reminders:
Only a Distributor User may Share Inventory: The user sharing inventory MUST be a distributor user sharing with sales users. You may not set up an inventory-sharing relationship with any other type of user. The original idea is that a singular distributor is able to share their inventory with the sales users linked to them in their distributorship, so they don’t have to do excessive transferring with each other when inventory changes hands.
Assign Sales Users Only: This method may only be used to connect Sales Users, you may not include distributor users in a another distributor group.
Inventory Must be in the Distributor’s Custody to be Shared: Once sharing is enabled for these users all inventory that is meant to be shared must be transferred into the custody of the “custodian-only distributor”. All inventory will be held by the distributor user and the sales users will be granted rights to use that inventory from the distributor’s custody. To set this up follow the steps below:
What should you do?
Create your Custodian-Only Distributor User
First create your custodian-only user. If you do not have access to these screens, contact an Organization Admin user for assistance.
Navigate to the Users tab
Click “Add Users”
Select the tab “Add new user”
Enter an email address for the user. If you need to create a dummy email address, we have some information here to help you.
Select the role: Distributor
Check the box for “Custodian Only”. (If you miss this step, you can circle back and set it in the User Settings after the user is created)
Enter a name for this user, such as “Dummy user for shared inventory” or some other contextual clue which will help you to remember and manage this user.
Lastly, click “Add User” and your user will be created.
There is no need to set any password or send the logins to anyone, because this user will never be logging in to their account. You can now treat them like any other user, transferring inventory to them, but they will not be actively using the account.
Next, assign your sales users to your Non-Custodial Distributor
Click on the User you just created in the User’s page to open its detail screen
Scroll down to the section called “Assign Users”
In the field provided, type ahead to select the appropriate sales users from the drop down list.
After assigning your users, make sure to check the box to allow “Access to Distributor’s Inventory”. This will allow the sales users to access all inventory in the distributor’s custody.
After this is complete you are free to transfer inventory to the distributor user so the connected sales users may take action on it.
Next, help your sales users view their shared inventory.
Your users will immediately be able to see inventory in their own custody as well as inventory in the shared distributor’s custody. To view inventory:
Log in as one of the connected Sales Users
Navigate to the All Inventory screen
Note the custody of each device in the custody column. Click on the column heading to sort it in both directions. As long as there is inventory in both users custodies, you should see different custodians in this column. For instance in the image below you can see inventory in the Sales user’s custody as well as inventory in the shared distributor’s custody.
Lastly, just remember that when you’re marking used inventory or recording sales in an Event, you will need to change your custody filter in order to control which inventory you can see. Be sure to pay attention to this setting to ensure you’re selecting the right inventory in your case!!