Explore the B2B sample data

Understand the sample data to know how to adapt it to your needs.

The sample data is designed to reflect realistic commerce scenarios for an example shop—The Store Launchpad for B2B Manufacturing—offering heavy machinery and spare parts products. Regardless of the type of products you sell, the sample data helps explore the capabilities of Composable Commerce for B2B.

The Merchant Center provides a good overview of the sample data. However, if you prefer working with APIs, set up your first API Client with the Merchant Center before you begin.

To get started with Composable Commerce, the workflow is as follows:

Project configuration
Product data model
Discounts configuration
Business Units
Associates
Orders and Quotes management

Project configuration

To view the settings for your Project in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings.

You can configure several aspects of your commerce setup using Project settings, such as:

Countries, languages, and currencies for your Products
Shipping Methods and supply or distribution channels
International tax settings
Roles and permission for Associates in Business Units

Internationalization

To showcase internationalization options, the sample data set supports France, Germany, Spain, the UK, and the US.

Countries

The countries set up for your Project determine where your Products can be sold. It also lets you set up different Tax Categories and Prices for each country, allowing a single site to serve different countries and/or geographic regions. The countries set up in the sample data include France (FR), Germany (DE), Spain (ES), the United Kingdom (GB), and the United States (US).

To change the languages for your Project in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings.

Currencies

To support the five countries, the following currencies are set up in the sample data: Euros (EUR), British Pounds (GBP), and US Dollars (USD). You can use these currencies when adding Prices, configuring taxes and shipping costs, or setting up promotions.

Languages

Localizable fields can store values for each language that is set up for your Project. The sample data has American English (en-US), British English (en-GB), Australian English (en-AU), New Zealand English (en-NZ), German (de-DE), French (ft-FR), Spanish (es-ES), Italian (it-IT), Portuguese (pt-PT), and Dutch (nl-NL) readily set up.

Zones

Zones are used to group countries that share Shipping Methods and costs.

The Zones set up in the sample data include the following:

Europe: includes Germany (DE), France (FR), Spain (ES), and the United Kingdom (GB)
North America: includes only the United States (US)

Taxes

To view tax settings in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Taxes.

Tax Categories determine how your products are taxed in different countries. You can assign one Tax Category to each Product, specifying which tax to apply. Each Tax Category has Tax Rates that determines the tax percentage for a country. The Tax Category set up in the sample data, Standard Tax, includes Tax Rates for the countries set up for your Project. Tax Rates are defined as decimal numbers; 19% is set as 0.19. The Tax Rates for each country is as follows:

Germany: 0.19
France and the UK: 0.2
Spain: 0.21
The US has two Tax Rates for two of its states: 0.0475 for North Carolina and 0.04 for New York

The US tax setup is for illustrative purposes only and is not representative of an actual tax setup. Taxes for complex countries, like the United States, are best implemented using a third-party tax provider. To override the basic tax for an advanced tax calculation, you can integrate a third-party tax calculation provider.

If you want all prices of your Products in a given Tax Category to be tax-inclusive (gross prices), select Included in price. This is well suited for countries like the UK and member states of the EU. If you want to display net prices, as is common for B2B or certain countries, do not select Included in price for the specific Tax Rate.

Shipping Methods

To view Shipping Methods in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Shipping methods.

The sample data contains two Shipping Methods: Premium Shipping Method for Europe and Standard Shipping Method for Europe and North America. Each Shipping Method has an assigned Zone and Tax Category, Standard Tax, since tax also applies to shipping costs.

Channels

To view Channels in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Channels.

The sample data includes eight Channels:

Default, US Medium Customers, US Large Customers, Spain, and Germany, France and United Kingdom: to set different prices for the same SKU (with each Channel having a corresponding Price). These channels have the Product Distribution role.
Default warehouse, North America warehouse and Europe warehouse: to represent two warehouses and track different stock levels for the same SKU (with each Channel having its own inventory management capability). These channels have the Inventory Supply role.

Stores

To view Stores in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Stores.

A Store can be used to model physical retail locations, brand stores, or country-specific stores, and can hold its own Products, Customers, Carts, and Orders. It can be used to define the subset of resources available for a Store.

The sample data includes five Stores:

Default: assigned to the Default and Default warehouse Channels.
US Medium Customers: assigned to the US Medium Customers and North America warehouse Channels.
US Large Customers: assigned to the US Large Customers and North America warehouse Channels.
Spain: assigned to the Spain and Europe warehouse Channels.
Germany, France and United Kingdom: assigned to the Germany, France and United Kingdom and Europe warehouse Channels.

Product Distribution Channels determine the Prices that a Customer shopping in the Store will see, while Inventory Supply Channels determine the inventories that a Customer shipping in the Store will see. The Default and US Medium Customers Stores only include Products from the Default and US Medium Customers Catalog Product Selections. Product Selections determine the product assortment that a Customer shopping in the Store will see.

Associate Roles

Associate Roles provide a way to group granular permissions and assign them to Associates within a Business Units.

To view Associate Roles in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Project settings > Business units.

The sample data includes three Associate Roles—Admin, Buyer, and Approver—each having its own set of granular permissions. For example, an Approver can view and update their own Carts and view others' Carts in the Business Unit.

Product data model

The product data model in Composable Commerce contains the following elements: Product Types, Attributes, Products, Product Variants, Categories.

To view the Product Types and Attributes in the Merchant Center, go to Settings > Product types and attributes.

The sample data includes three Product Types: Generic Product, Heavy Earthmoving and Construction Equipment, and Heavy Lifting and Specialized Equipment.

Products and pricing

To view the Products that are part of the sample data set in the Merchant Center, go to Products > Product list.

The sample Products contain localized information in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch. Most Products have multiple variants, and each SKU or Product Variant has individual prices and inventory availability.
For example, the OO789 UV Wheeled Excavator for Mining Product has three variants, each with its own country-specific pricing. You can view the Product Variants in the Variants tab of a selected Product.

You can choose between Embedded or Standalone Prices in Composable Commerce, or decide to use an external pricing solution.

Since it is common to define complex pricing models such as customer-specific pricing in B2B commerce, we recommend using Standalone Prices for more flexibility.

To view Standalone Prices in the Merchant Center, go to Prices > Standalone Price list.

The sample data contains Prices for Product Variants in each of the defined Channels; for example, the oo789-uv-2015 Product Variant has a price of €20,000.00 in France, defined for Spain Channel and country.

Product Selections

To view Product Selections in the Merchant Center, go to Products > Product Selection list.

Product Selections let you manage your assortments or product catalogs for any of your sales channels, such as brand sites, regional shops, or brick-and-mortar stores.

The sample data includes two Product Selections:

Default: includes all Products
US Medium Customers Catalog: includes Products with the Heavy Lifting and Specialized Equipment and Generic Product Product Types

For more information, see the Product Selections API documentation.

Discounts configuration

Product Discounts

To view Product Discounts in the Merchant Center, go to Discounts > Product discount list.

Product Discounts are used to present a reduced price next to a stricken-out original price on Product List Pages (PLPs) or Product Detail Pages (PDPs).

The sample data includes two Product Discounts:

15% off on all dump trucks, which discounts all Products in the Dump Trucks Category branch by 15%.
5 EUR off on all spare parts, which discounts all Products in the Spare Parts Category by 5 EUR.

Cart Discounts

To view Cart Discounts in the Merchant Center, go to Discounts > Cart discount list.

Cart Discounts are used to discount all or some items in a Cart. It can be used for promotions like buy-one-get-one-free, free gifts, or free shipping.

The sample data includes two Cart Discounts:

Buy One Tower Crane and Receive the Second for Free, which offers the cheaper item of Category Tower Cranes for free, when at least two items of this Category exist in the Cart. This Cart Discount requires a Discount Code.
Free Shipping when you spend 50000 GBP, which applies free shipping to an Order shipped to the UK when the Cart value is 50 000 GBP or more.

Discount Codes

To view Discount Codes in the Merchant Center, go to Discounts > Discount code list.

Also known as promo codes or coupon codes, Discount Codes can be shared with customers. When the customer enters the correct code during checkout, they can receive a Cart Discount.

The sample data includes one Discount Code, BOGO. When it's used during checkout, the linked Cart Discount, Buy One Tower Crane and Receive the Second for Free, takes effect on the Cart.

Business Units

A Business Unit represents a Buyers organization, and can be used to model the structure of a business. The Business Unit can be defined as a Company (top-level unit) or Division (child unit) to represent a hierarchical structure of a business. It also determines which Associates can act on behalf of the company.

To view Business Units in the Merchant Center, go to Customers > Business unit list.

The sample data includes six Business Units—three Companies and three Divisions.

On the Addresses tab, you can view or manage shipping and billing addresses of the Business Unit. When an Associate creates an Order on behalf of the Business Unit, the country in the shipping address will be used to calculate the shipping costs for deliveries to this address.

On the Associates tab, you can view or manage which Associates have roles within this Business Unit. In the sample data, each Business Unit has an Admin, a Buyer, and an Approver. In certain cases, these roles are configured to be inherited from a parent unit to its child units.

On the Orders tab, you can view all Orders placed by Associates on behalf of this Business Unit. Although you can add new Orders manually using the Merchant Center, this process typically happens through customer interactions on your storefront.

Associates

To view Associates in the Merchant Center, go to Customers > Customer list.

In Composable Commerce for B2B, Associates—who act on behalf of a company—are represented as Customers. The sample data includes 15 Associates. Although you can create more Associates manually in the Merchant Center, the process typically happens through registration on your storefront.

On the Orders tab, you can view all Orders placed by the Associate. Although you can add additional Orders using the Merchant Center, this process typically happens through your storefront.

On the Business units tab, you can view all Business Units to which the Associate is assigned.

Orders and Quotes management

To view Orders in the Merchant Center, go to Orders > Order list.

The sample data includes 12 Orders—two from each Business Unit where one Order is created from a Cart and the other from a Quote. Orders created from Quotes might include Direct Discounts that were given during the Quote negotiation process.

To view Quotes in the Merchant Center, go to Orders > Quotes.

The sample data includes six Quote Requests, six Staged Quotes, and six Quotes—one from each Business Unit. You can view Quote Requests on the Request for Quote tab. You can view Staged Quotes and Quotes on the Quote list tab in the Draft quotes and Final quotes section respectively. For more information about Quotes and its intended workflow, see Quotes overview.