Managing Purchasing Groups

Purchasing groups allow a group of customers to be able to be grouped for purposes of automating special pricing for those customers. For example, you can define a purchasing group of conference speakers to provide them with a registration discount.

You may want to give special pricing or discounts to a group of people based on some characteristic not related to membership, customer class, or the purchasing of an advertising, exhibition, or fundraising product. In that situation, you can create a purchasing group and add specific customers to the purchasing group. Purchasing groups can then be linked to rate structures and/or discounts so that customers in the purchasing group will automatically get those rate structures and/or discounts when they place an order, assuming that the customer doesn’t qualify for a better rate structure or discount.

From the Purchasing Groups screen, you can create a new purchasing group, edit an existing purchasing group, add members to a purchasing group, and reload purchasing group members.

To access the Purchasing Groups screen:

1. From the left navigation, select Manage Purchasing Groups from the Orders menu.
   OR
   From the Orders Central page, select Manage Purchasing Groups.
2. The Purchasing Groups screen displays as shown below:
   

Create a New Purchasing Group

To create a new purchasing group:

1. From the Purchasing Group screen, select New Purchasing Group.
2. The Add Purchasing Group screen displays, as shown below.
   
3. Enter the Purchasing Group name.
4. Enter a Description of the purchasing group.
5. Search for and select a Marketing List to populate the purchasing group with.
   As of ThreeSixty version 7.7.0, you can populate a purchasing group using a marketing list. You must be on ThreeSixty version 7.7.0 to use this feature.
6. Click Save.
   The purchasing group is created and the members are populated from the Marketing List. To view the members, please see Reload Purchasing Group Members.
   If you did not select a Marketing List to populate the purchasing group, you must add members.

Edit a Purchasing Group

Updating or changing to a different Marketing List will run the Purchasing Group Process and populate members. To reload the members for the existing Marketing List, select Reload Members in the Purchasing Group Grid.

To edit a purchasing group:

1. From the Purchasing Group screen, click the edit pencil icon in the grid next to the purchasing group you would like to edit.
2. The Edit Purchasing Group screen displays, as shown below.
   

Add Members to a Purchasing Group

To manually add members to a purchasing group:

1. From the Purchasing Groups screen, search for your purchasing group and select View Members from the additional options menu.
   
2. The Purchasing Group members screen displays. Select the New Member link.
   
3. From the Add New Member screen, search for the Member you wish to add to the purchasing group.
4. By default, the Begin Date is set to today's date.
5. If necessary, select an End Date.
6. Click Save to add the member to the purchasing group.
   

Reload Purchasing Group Members

As of ThreeSixty version 7.7.0, you can populate a purchasing group using a marketing list. You must be on ThreeSixty version 7.7.0 to use this feature.

If you make changes to the marketing list, you must reload the group members using the Reload Members option on the Purchasing Groups screen.

To reload group members:

1. From the Purchasing Groups screen, select Reload Members from the additional options menu within the search grid.
   
2. The members are reloaded and the purchasing group is opened to the View Members screen.