Handling connections and pre-approval to catalogs with your customers

How to get customers connected to your pricing, and how to automate access to certain price catalogs

Matt Govett avatar
Written by Matt Govett
Updated over a week ago

Audience: Supplier / Dealer

Read / Watch time: 10 min read / 14 min watch

Contents: Steps on handling connection with your customer

This entire article is summarized in the video below, if you prefer to go through the step-by-step points, those are below the video.

The video covers:

  • Managing incoming connections from your customers

  • Pre-approving customer access to catalogs

  • You as a supplier inviting customers


Managing incoming connections from your customers

When a customer selects you as their preferred supplier a dialog box opens, pre-populates a form and prompts them to enter their account number with you. When the customer Submits this information it is sent directly to your Buildxact account.

  1. In the left-hand navigation menu in the Clients section you will see a number icon notifying you of a connection request. Click on Clients in the left-hand navigation menu

  2. Then Connections from the pop out menu and you will see who is making the request.

  3. If you recognize the client and their account information is correctly listed you may Approve the request with one click. (If you do not recognize the person or organization you may elect to Decline the request until you have verified information to proceed)

  4. Once you have approved a connection request to customer will be able to subscribe to any Public catalogs you have published in Buildxact, you can click on the customer line item/ Customer Name and view their details and what catalogs they have access to subscribe to.

  5. Click on the connection management tab to manage Price file/ Item catalog access and Grant Access to any Managed catalogs that you want to make available for subscription to that particular customer.

    Note: You can bulk approve access to managed price catalogs. Click here to jump to section relevant to this.

  6. Once you have Granted Access, the customer is able to subscribe and use your Price file/ Item catalog information when preparing estimates for their clients and for submitting material/purchase orders to you.

    Note: You can revoke access easily if needed. Click here to view the article.


Pre-approving customer access to catalogs

Buildxact supports the management of price files / item catalogs allowing you to set up who will have access and how long they will have access for. This helps save you time as the access list automatically approves or declines user access rather than you having to manage each request individually. This article covers the steps to manage this successfully.

Important - Prior to completing the upload you must create your access list in excel format to be uploaded into Buildxact. You must have two columns in your spreadsheet, column A should have you customers reference number and column B should have a Yes or No, meaning, Yes they have approved access or No, they don't have approved access. See blow example. (If you manage your customer accounts through other means, such as email please contact us at [email protected])

How to upload your access list to automatically manage access to your price file/item catalog

  1. In left-hand navigation menu click on Catalogs, then click on the underlined price file/ item catalog name to open.

  2. You will come to the catalog details screen where you will be able edit the Catalog Details and Catalog Availability. To edit the Catalog Availability begin with Scope (This is where you determine who sees your price file/ item catalog.) -

    1. Public Catalogs allow any Buildxact user (including subscribers and trials) to initiate a connection with your business and subscribe to your public catalogs.

    2. Managed Catalogs allow Buildxact users that have been explicitly granted access by your business to a your managed catalogs.

    3. Hidden Catalogs are used when you need to remove price file/ item catalog from view to all who have subscribed.

  3. Under Scope select Managed from the drop down list to designate individuals and groups who qualify for contract level pricing. Assign an Effective and Expiry date and Status. When you select Managed from the scope section a new tab will appears called Access Control List.

  4. Click the Access Control List tab and click the green Import button to upload a list of pre-approved customers you want to grant access to you list. Your list will need to include a Pre Approved Connection Request and/or account holder numbers/customer numbers.

  5. On the next pop out dialog box you will see you will be Importing To at the top. This should be the name of the Price file / Item catalog you wish to manage access on. Click the green button Start Import at the bottom of the dialog box to begin.

  6. An Import catalog items popup will appear. Click the green Upload data from file button.

  7. Your file explorer on your computer will open. Navigate to where your customer list is stored, select the file you want to upload and click the Open button to upload it.

  8. A popup will appear asking you to confirm/select the sheet/tab from that file. Confirm your selection using the drop-down menu and click the green Continue button.

  9. The next screen will ask you to confirm the top row contains the column headers/ field names. Click the green Yes button. You are now ready to map the fields in your uploaded file to the platform.

  10. In the same screen, you will see a column of data from your spreadsheet and a column of data you will want to map to/match up in Buildxact. Use the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the information columns to map to/match up . When done, click the green Confirm Mapping button (A). You may also have information imported from your Excel file that you do not need. When this occurs, you should click Ignore This Column which appears in the right-hand side of the popup box. Click the green Review button to proceed. You will now see all your data in expanded view (B).

  11. When satisfied with your mapping, click the green Continue button in the bottom right corner of your screen.

  12. Another small popup will appear asking if you're ready to submit, click the green Yes button (A). A notification popup will appear acknowledging the bulk import will be completed in the background (B).

  13. Your customer access list is now uploaded and shows who will have access to your managed price file/ item catalog.

Did this answer your question?