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Using price plans, licence plans and subvendors
When a product or file is purchased from an IMS site, there are three main pieces of information which are stored with the order and could affect the price, the products sold or the way the profit is accounted:
- Price plan
For prints, the price plan determines which products are available, and at what cost. Since multiple price plans can be configured, this is a way to offer discounts, or vary prices from customer to customer.
- Licence plan
For licenced downloads, the choice of licences available is determined by the licence plan. This is normally used to ensure that only relevant licences are sold, and typically varies by sector or geography.
- Subvendor
Subvendors are used to optionally group the sale under an account with other sales (usually in order to calculate commissions). IMS can also calculate profitability in this way.
Price Plans, Licence Plans and Subvendor settings start as "default", which means they are not set to any specific option. However, they can be changed by either changing the user preferences for your users, or by changing the album preferences for the pictures.
To assign settings to an album, login with your admin account and click the edit icon for the album. Open the 'e-Commerce Options' tab to reveal checkboxes and pull-down settings. This also applies to Smart Folders and Collections.
To assign settings to a user, login with your admin account and select the Users & Events -> Manage Users page. Click on the user, then open the 'e-Commerce Options' tab to reveal checkboxes and pull-down settings. This also applies to Events.
Tip: Normally, price plans and licence plans will be set for users, while subvendors will be set for albums. This is because prices tend to vary by user, but the commission paid (subvendors) is usually determined by the pictures, not the buyers. It is therefore simplest to assign subvendors to albums.
If both a user and an album have any of these options - price plan, licence plan or subvendor set - then the user option takes priority. This is described visually in the diagram (click to enlarge).
Added Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:15:19 +0100