Account Types in the Checkout

Overview

The gaiia checkout can ask customers what type of service they are looking for, such as Residential or Commercial, and then show only the plans that match that answer. The customer's selection carries through the rest of the checkout flow, and once their order is processed, the Account Type is saved to their account.

In the Client Portal, this Account Type determines which plans the customer can view when managing or upgrading their services.

Account Type filtering relies on three things working together: the Account Types configured in your instance, the checkout setting that displays them, and the Account Types associated with each of your products. This article covers all three, what customers see in the checkout, and how to troubleshoot plans appearing to the wrong audience.

Once an Account Type is set for a customer, they will need to contact your team to have it changed.

How account type filtering works

When a customer submits their service address, gaiia builds the list of plans to display by applying the following rule to every product available at that address:

A product with no Account Type is treated as available to everyone, not as unavailable. This is the most common reason commercial plans keep appearing for residential addresses: the plans were never associated with an Account Type, so the filter has nothing to exclude them on.

Configuring your Account Types

The first step is making sure your instance has the Account Types you want to offer. To configure them, see Configuring Account Statuses, Types and Groups.

Once your Account Types exist, you can enable the selection in the checkout and connect the Account Types to your products.

Enabling account type selection in the checkout

The Account Type question only appears in the checkout when it is turned on in your checkout settings. Without it, all available plans are displayed in a single list, whatever Account Types your products carry.

Checkout settings can only be viewed and edited by users with the Settings > Edit permission enabled.

1. Go to Settings, then open Checkout.
2. Scroll to the Ordering settings card, then to the Account types section.

3. Select Display account type selection in checkout.

   Selecting Hide account type selection in checkout displays all available plans in a single list, and assigns your default Account Type to the account once the order is processed.

4. Under Account types to be displayed in checkout, click Add account type and select an Account Type.
5. Repeat step 4 for every Account Type you want the checkout to offer.
6. Save your settings.

Each Account Type you add has two options:

At least one Account Type must be configured when the selection is displayed. The selection step only appears to customers when at least two selectable Account Types are available at their address.

Associating Account Types with your products

Enabling the setting displays the question. Associating Account Types with your products is what actually filters the plans. When creating or editing a product, set the Account Types that product can be assigned to.

Review your full catalog rather than only the plans you want to restrict. As shown in the rule above, any plan left without an Account Type keeps appearing for every customer, so a single untagged commercial plan is enough to make the filter look broken.

What customers see in the checkout

Once the setting is enabled and at least two selectable Account Types are available, the customer enters their service address and a side panel opens before the plans are displayed. The panel asks What type of service are you looking for? and the customer selects an Account Type, then clicks Continue.

Depending on your configuration, the same panel may also ask which services the customer is interested in, so that the plan list is built around both answers.

If only one Account Type is available at the address, the panel does not ask the question and that Account Type is applied automatically.

Preselecting an Account Type from a link

You can send customers straight to the plans for a given Account Type by adding the account-type parameter to your checkout URL. The value is the name of the Account Type in lowercase, with spaces replaced by hyphens.

For example, https://yourcheckout.example.com/?account-type=commercial preselects the Commercial Account Type and skips the question entirely.

This is useful when your website has separate residential and business pages, and each one should lead to its own set of plans.

If the value does not match one of your selectable Account Types, the parameter is ignored and the customer is asked the question as usual.

Using workflows to determine an Account Type

Another way to determine an Account Type is to have your product availability workflow assign it automatically. Depending on the configuration, the checkout then skips the Account Type question entirely. To configure this:

1. Update your workflow to set the Account Type field based on your rules.
2. Confirm the workflow successfully returns the correct Account Type during address verification.
3. Complete the Account Type configuration and product association described earlier in this article.

If the workflow returns multiple Account Types, customers will be able to choose between them in the checkout.

Troubleshooting