What is the shared cart and how does it work?

The basic idea

Normally, every user places their articles in their personal shopping cart and orders them themselves. With the shared cart this works differently. Several users report their requirements into a shared cart. The order is placed later and only by a person designated for this.

Typical use cases:

• A department collects its requirements over the week and orders once in a bundle.
• Several sites or teams report their requirements to a central purchasing department.
• A foreman collects the requirements of his shift and releases the order.

Every account can run several shared carts in parallel, for example per department, per project or per site.

The two roles

The shared cart works with two roles. The role is assigned per shared cart. A user can therefore be the buyer in one collective cart and a contributor in another.

Buyer

• Sees all articles in the shared cart, regardless of who added them.
• May change quantities, delete articles and set account assignments, including for articles of other users.
• May set the account assignment, requested delivery date, own order number and order comment at cart level.
• May empty the entire cart.
• May place a partial order and order individual items.
• May move articles back into the personal cart of the user who added them.
• Triggers the checkout.

Contributor

• Also sees the entire content of the shared cart.
• May only edit the articles they added themselves. This applies to quantity, account assignment, comment and deletion.
• May not trigger a checkout, start a partial order or empty the cart.
• Cannot set any details at cart level, so no requested delivery date, no own order number and no cart-wide account assignment.

If a contributor hovers the mouse over a blocked function, a note explains the reason. On the order button, for example, a note appears stating that the checkout is not available because the contributor role is currently assigned.

Important: Every shared cart needs at least one buyer. Without a buyer the shared cart cannot be saved.

The process at a glance

1. An administrator creates the shared cart and assigns the users together with their role.
2. The assigned users search for articles as usual and place them in their personal cart.
3. From the personal cart they move the articles into the shared cart, optionally with a comment.
4. The buyer checks the collected content, adjusts quantities and account assignments and adds the details at cart level.
5. The buyer triggers the checkout. Afterwards the shared cart is empty again and the next collection round can start.

Traceability

For every article in the shared cart it is visible who added it and when this happened. In addition there is the comment that the user entered when moving the article, for example an intended use or a machine number. For every item the buyer therefore knows who and what it is intended for.

In the administration area the administrator additionally sees when the shared cart was last edited, how many articles from how many vendors it contains and when the last checkout took place.

Budgets in the shared cart

Budgets also remain effective when ordering in bundles. The “Budget limit” button opens an overview of all budgets that are relevant for the content of the shared cart:

• Account-assignment-based budgets, that is budgets on cost centres and other account assignment values.
• Individual budgets of the members, grouped by the respective user. Your own budgets are marked with “From me”.

Exceeded budgets are shown separately. There you can see which articles exceed the respective budget.

When an article is moved, the platform points out that at checkout the individual budget of the user who added the article is used. In budget terms the requirements therefore remain assigned to the originator, even if another user places the order.

Note: Users without authorisation do not see the budget figures. At that point a note appears stating that there is no access to this information.

What else applies

• The same cart rules apply to the shared cart as to the personal cart. Errors and warnings are shown in the header area. As long as a blocking error exists, the order button is not active.
• Articles from a request for quotation (RFQ) cannot be moved into a shared cart.
• The shared cart is part of the marketplace package. If the function is not included in your licence package, a note appears instead of the administration area, offering the option to arrange an appointment with the consulting team.

Summary

The shared cart bundles the requirements of several users in one shared cart. Contributors add their articles and maintain only their own items. The buyer sees everything, tidies up and places the order. Every item remains assigned to the user who added it, including comment and individual budget. After the checkout the shared cart is empty again.