Sales teams use the eCat Online portal to view summary sales numbers by customer, invoice and order details, including a dashboard with summary sales numbers and 'top seller' analysis for selected date ranges.   The amount of information users see in the dashboard is determined by their user group permissions.

In order to prevent accidental display of confidential company sales information to those who don't need to see it, it's important to understand how various user group settings effect what users see.

There are two user group settings in particular that are important to understand:

• Customer list access—controls which customers users in the group can see
• Customer sales total access—controls which sales totals users in the group can see.

In general, these two settings should be kept the same.

Customer list access #

This setting determines which customer records users in the group can access in various contexts. Specifically:

• in the customer list the user will only see customers they have access to
• in the order and invoice lists, the user will only see orders and invoices for customers they have access to

There are three possible values:

• All—users will have access to all of the company's customers
• None—users will have access to no customer records
• Associated—users will have access to customer and shipping location records with territory codes that match the territory codes associated with their user. This is typically the setting used for sales reps.

Keep in mind that this setting is ignored for customer-type users (users associated with a customer number). In this case, they will have access to one customer.  The customer list will not be shown to these users.

Customer sales total access #

This setting determines which sales totals users in the group have access to.  Specifically:

• in the customer list, users only see sales and backlog totals at the top and in the columns associated with customers they have access to
• in the order and invoice lists, users only see summary totals at the top associated with customers they have access to
• in the territory dashboard, users only see values, graphs, etc. associated with customers they have access to

There are two possible values:

• Show company sales totals—users will have access to all sales totals
• Show only associated—users will have access to sales totals for customers matching their configured territory codes. This is the default value and typically the one used for sales reps.

If customer list access is set to 'All' and customer sales total access is set to 'Show company sales totals', users assigned to the group will see sales totals for the whole company. This includes your company's confidential total sales numbers, total company invoices and orders by month in the dashboard graph, product and customer rankings and detailed sales information for all customers.

Company/Territory Dashboard Access #

The dashboard can be hidden if portal users need access to the customer list but not to the  summary sales numbers and rankings shown in the dashboard.  For example, it may be useful for  customer service teams to see the entire customer list with sales numbers, but unnecessary for them to see the company's sales numbers and item sales rankings on the dashboard. 

To hide the Territory Dashboard, un-check  'Enable portal dashboard' in the appropriate user groups.  For security purposes, this setting is unchecked by default.

Note that if a user sees all customers for a company and can view sales numbers for the customers, they will see total sales numbers for the company at the top of the customer list.  It is best not to show customers to users who should not see sales numbers.

Company admin users #

Regardless of their user group settings, company admin users see data associated with all customers.  When viewing the portal they will see your company's confidential total sales numbers, product and customer rankings and detailed sales information for all customers.  

Best practice is to set up only one or two admin users per company.  Admin credentials should not be shared.  Admins should be individuals who can be trusted to see the company's sales numbers and other confidential information.  If other individuals need to perform admin tasks like user, order, and Library management, the user group restricted admin feature should be used to give them access to the admin tools they need.  These individuals' users should not be set up as admin users.

Tip:  Because admins see all data by default, admins who wish to test what users assigned to other user groups can see and do should use a non-admin user account created for that purpose.