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HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
Operating
Topics in the Operating category highlight tasks that are typically performed by business users, customer support representatives, to complete their day-to-day tasks in the operation of the HCL Commerce site.
HCL Commerce Accelerator
Use the HCL Commerce Accelerator to maintain online stores.
Business relationship management
To customize what a customer can do in a store use the business relationship management system. By using this system, you can entitle customers to various aspects of a store such as what products they can purchase, the price they pay, and what payment methods a store accepts.
Contracts
Contracts enable a customer organization or a customer group to purchase products from a store at a specified price for a specified time under specific conditions.
Managing contracts
Managing a contract involves tasks that take the contract from creation to the end of the contract's lifecycle. The various tasks that are involved in managing a contract are performed by different roles.

Documentation
HCL Commerce is a high-availability, highly scalable and customizable e-commerce platform. Able to support hundreds of thousands of transactions per day, HCL Commerce allows you to do business with consumers (B2C) or directly with businesses (B2B). HCL Commerce uses cloud friendly technology to make deployment and operation both easy and efficient. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels. Business users can also use AI enabled content management capabilities.
- Getting started
  HCL Commerce has different advantages for business users, administrators and developers. HCL Commerce targets each of these roles with a tailored set of offerings so that each of your users can get maximum benefit.
- Installing and deploying
  Learn how to install and deploy HCL Commerce development environments and HCL Commerce production environments.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to HCL Commerce Version 9, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Operating
  Topics in the Operating category highlight tasks that are typically performed by business users, customer support representatives, to complete their day-to-day tasks in the operation of the HCL Commerce site.
  - Management Center for HCL Commerce
    The Management Center for HCL Commerce, is a suite of tools to support store management, merchandising, and marketing tasks for business users (Sellers, Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers, and others).
  - HCL Commerce Accelerator
    Use the HCL Commerce Accelerator to maintain online stores.
    - HCL Commerce Accelerator user interface
      The HCL Commerce Accelerator interface consists of several notebooks, wizards, dialogs, and lists to help you complete your tasks.
    - Opening HCL Commerce Accelerator
      Use HCL Commerce Accelerator to maintain online stores by completing various store operations such as creating and maintaining orders and tracking store activities.
    - Changing an HCL Commerce password
      If you have the appropriate authority, you can change the HCL Commerce logon password for an HCL Commerce user or for yourself from any of these tools.
    - Managing the store
      The Seller sets up store-level functions within the site. The Seller can access all menu items under the Store menu.
    - Customer information
      If customers register with the store, you can maintain their registration profiles to track information. Maintain information such as the customer's logon ID, logon password, authentication information, store account status, title, name, preferred language, or currency.
    - Order management
      A typical order includes one or more products, billing and shipping addresses, payment details, and the total cost (including shipping charges and taxes, as applicable). Comments or price adjustments can also be included in an order.
    - Inventory
      Inventory includes anything that can be physically accounted for in a fulfillment center such as items, products, SKUs, bundles, and prebuilt kits.
    - Inventory returns and dispositions
      Customers return products to a fulfillment center for many different reasons. Returned inventory might be reintegrated into the pool of inventory available for order, or it might be discarded. This process is called disposition.
    - Returns and refunds
      A return is a record of a customer's request for a refund, to return merchandise, or both. The term is used whether an RMA is issued in advance of merchandise receipt or the transaction is begun at the time of merchandise receipt. You can use the return merchandise authorization (RMA) function in both available to promise (ATP) and non-ATP inventory-enabled stores.
    - Viewing account reports
    - Viewing contract reports
    - Request for Quote (RFQ)
      A buyer can create a Request for Quote (RFQ), by using the HCL Commerce Accelerator, for unique variations of goods and services that are offered in a catalog. If buyers cannot find a product or category that match their needs within a catalog, they can select attributes from the personalized dictionary to precisely define the product specifications. A buyer can also create an RFQ by using the contents in their shopping cart, or add a shopping cart to an existing RFQ.
    - Business relationship management
      To customize what a customer can do in a store use the business relationship management system. By using this system, you can entitle customers to various aspects of a store such as what products they can purchase, the price they pay, and what payment methods a store accepts.
      - Business relationship model
        The key elements in the business relationship model include the different kinds of contracts, the various buying units, and the distinct customers who have access to your site.
      - Case Study: HCL Commerce contract modeling
        HCL Commerce contracts are the foundation for determining what customers can purchase in an online store, and at what price. The contracts functions are flexible in that it can support many types of e-commerce business models and their complex business requirements. This flexibility is powerful, and an optimal contract design can minimize the amount of effort that is required to manage business accounts and contracts. As well, an optimal design can minimize the amount of system resources that are required and thus enhance system performance.
      - Managing business accounts: an overview
        Managing a business account involves tasks that create and modify business accounts. The various tasks that are involved in managing a business account are performed by different roles.
      - Contracts
        Contracts enable a customer organization or a customer group to purchase products from a store at a specified price for a specified time under specific conditions.
        Contract states
        A contract passes various states from the time it is created until the time it is deleted. In most cases, the change of state is triggered by actions you take. Some state changes occur automatically.
        Contract referral
        A base contract is a contract that can be referred to by other contracts. For example, contract B refers to (base) contract A. Thus, a buyer who is entitled to the terms and conditions in contract B is also entitled to all the terms and conditions in contract A. Multiple customer contracts can refer to the same base contract so that all the customer contracts can share a set of terms and conditions.
        Display customization
        Through the HCL Commerce you can change the look of display pages in your store for every business customer by specifying the DisplayCustomizationTC term and condition in the business account definition. This display customization can be as simple as adding a different logo, or as complex as having a custom store name and message, for each customer.
        Creating contracts
        There are two methods to create contracts in HCL Commerce. You can use HCL Commerce Accelerator or XML format to create contracts.
        Managing contracts
        Managing a contract involves tasks that take the contract from creation to the end of the contract's lifecycle. The various tasks that are involved in managing a contract are performed by different roles.
        Approving or rejecting a draft contract
        Draft contracts can be approved or rejected by approvers and administrators with appropriate access. The process for approving or rejecting a contract is the same process that is used for all approvals in HCL Commerce.
        Changing a contract
        Use HCL Commerce Accelerator to change a contract.
        Changing the shipping charges for a contract
        Use HCL Commerce Accelerator to change the shipping charges for an account or a contract.
        Canceling contracts
        Canceling a contract permanently prevents a buyer organization from purchasing under that contract. The contract stays in the HCL Commerce database for reference and can be viewed or used to create a duplicate contract. A canceled contract cannot be resumed.
        Creating an attachment for a contract
        You can attach any additional information to the contract, which might include images, documents, spreadsheets, or other materials.
        Deleting a contract
        Deleting a contract marks the contract for deletion the next time the HCL Commerce database is cleared of all objects that were marked for deletion. A contract that is marked for deletion cannot be duplicated, resumed, or used to create a new version of a contract. Both account representatives and sales managers can delete contracts.
        Duplicating contracts
        Duplicating a contract creates a new draft contract with the same information of the original contract except for the name of the contract. An account representative can modify the duplicate contract and then submit the contract for approval. When the duplicate contract is deployed, both the original contract and the duplicate contract can be active.
        Exporting contracts
        Exporting a contract or service agreement removes a service agreement in XML format from the HCL Commerce Server.
        Importing contracts
        Importing a contract or service agreement uploads a service agreement in XML format from your local client to the HCL Commerce Server and deploys the service agreement in HCL Commerce.
        Redeploying contracts
        Deployment of a contract normally occurs automatically after a contract is approved. If deployment of a contract fails, you can attempt to deploy the contract manually. Only contracts in the DeploymentFailed state can be redeployed.
        Resuming suspended contracts
        When the account representative wants to allow the buyer organization to purchase under the suspended contract again, they can resume the suspended contract.
        Submitting contracts for approval
        Use HCL Commerce Accelerator to submit a contract for approval.
        Suspending active contracts
        Occasionally, there is a need to prevent a buyer organization from purchasing under a contract for a brief time. An account representative can suspend a contract at any time.
        Viewing contract summaries
        An account representative or sales manager can review an existing contract at any time by looking at the contract summary.
        Unlocking contracts
        A Site Administrator, Sales Manager, or Seller can unlock a contract for a user. For example, if a user's system stops while the user is editing the contract, the contract might be locked on the system. Also, if one user is editing a contract, this contract locks and prevents other users from editing it.
        Finding contracts
        Use HCL Commerce Accelerator to find contracts.
        Refreshing the contracts list
        If you change the status of items in the contracts list (such as adding or removing a contract), you might want to refresh the list.
      - Deprecated feature: Catalog filtering
        You can filter the catalog to a specific set of users and exclude any products in the master catalog that you do not want to sell at your store. Use the Catalog Filter on B2B contracts and hosting contracts.
  - HCL Customer Service for HCL Commerce JSP stores
    HCL Customer Service for HCL Commerce provides customer service enhancements that enable a customer service representative (CSR) to resolve common issues and capture orders. These capabilities are built into the HCL Commerce Aurora storefront and enable a CSR to complete key tasks on behalf of a guest and registered customers for both B2B and B2C stores. Customer Service for HCL Commerce is offered for both Professional and Enterprise editions.
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using HCL Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
  Topics in the Administering category highlight tasks that are typically performed by the Site Administrator, to support daily operations of the HCL Commerce site.
- Customizing
  The topics in the Customizing section describe tasks performed by an application developer to customize HCL Commerce.
- Tutorials
  HCL Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your HCL Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
  Topics in the Samples category highlight the various samples that are provided with HCL Commerce.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage HCL Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of HCL Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
  Topics in the Performance section describe the means by which to plan, implement, test, and re-visit the optimization of HCL Commerce site performance.
- Troubleshooting
  Topics in the Troubleshooting section highlight common issues that are encountered with HCL Commerce, and how they can be addressed or mitigated.
- Reference
  Topics in the Reference section contain all of the HCL Commerce reference documentation.

HCL Commerce Enterprise

Managing contracts

Managing a contract involves tasks that take the contract from creation to the end of the contract's lifecycle. The various tasks that are involved in managing a contract are performed by different roles.

An account representative who is assigned to work with the buyer organization creates a new contract.
When the contract is complete and the account representative checked the contract by viewing a summary of the contract, the account representative submits the contract for approval. When the contract is submitted, an email notice is sent to the sales manager.
The sales manager checks the list of approval requests awaiting approval and approves or rejects the contract. The sales manager can add comments. If the contract is rejected, the account representative can perform any of the following tasks:
- change the contract and resubmit the contract for approval
- cancel the contract
- deleting the contract
- duplicate the contract
If the contract is approved, the contract is automatically deployed. The terms and conditions in the deployed contract take effect on the start date of the contract.
If deployment of the contract fails, the sales manager or account representative can redeploy the contract.
There is no specific order to the tasks required to manage a contract once it is deployed. Once a task is deployed, the following tasks are used to manage a contract by using the Business Relationship Management tools available in the HCL Commerce Accelerator:

Before you begin

Before you create a new contract for a buyer organization, the buyer organization must have a business account with your store. For information about managing a business account, see Managing a business account.