Acquisition Centers - Classic UI

Acquisition Centers are used to separate customers who belong to the same Program based on how they were acquired. While a Program is the top level under which all related customers are grouped together, the Acquisition Centers are the next level down. To illustrate this, think of a Program as a tree... the Acquisition Centers are the branches and the customers are the leaves. All customers are linked to both a Program and an Acquisition Center.

As an example, let's say you sell a diet pill product. All customers who buy the diet pill would be assigned to one Program named Diet Pill. Within the Diet Pill Program, you wish to track the phone orders, internet orders and mail orders separately. To do that, you would create the following 3 Acquisition Centers in the Diet Pill Program:

Acquisition Centers are also a way of separating data in reporting. Comparison reports can be run to see how each of your Acquisition Centers are performing.

As you are deciding how to separate different groups of customers into Acquisition Centers, you should take into consideration how you wish to separate the data in your reports.

How to Access Existing Acquisition Centers

Existing Acquisition Centers can be accessed from one of two places, either from a Customer Record or from the List Menu. Both options are covered below.

You can access the Acquisition Center that a particular customer belongs to from the Customer Record window. After you have searched for the customer, open his record and click on the paper icon shortcut beside the Acquisition field. This will open the Acquisition Center the customer is in.

Below is an example of a Manager's view when the customer's acquisition center is opened. Notice that you are able to see the tabs for Performance, Billing Plans, Commissions, Lead scrub, Assigned Banks, and Scripts & Notes.

Below is an example of a CSR's view when the customer's acquisition center is opened. Notice that you are ONLY able to see the tabs for Billing Plans and Scripts & Notes. If you need access to the other tabs, please contact your system administrator.

To view all existing Acquisition Centers, go to the Lists Menu on the home page and click on Acquisition Centers.

The Lists menu is typically only visible to managers. If you require additional permissions, please see your CRM administrator.

In the Acquisition Centers list, your view is limited to only the Acquisition Centers within the selected Program. Use the Program drop down menu in the upper left corner to view the Acquisition Centers in other Programs.

The results will be displayed in ascending order by ID Number and will include details such as the Report Group, Status, Phone, and Email for each Acquisition Center.

Click on the pencil icon beside an Acquisition Center to open it and view more details.

How To Create a New Acquisition Center

This is an important field. It is used to identify the Acquisition Center and will be referenced in other places throughout the CRM including reports. Therefore, make sure you choose a name that is descriptive, clearly differentiates this Acquisition Center from others and identifies which program it will be assigned to. Example: Program A - Call Center 123. Note: Acquisition Center names can't be changed in the future, so take your time when considering the naming convention you will use.

Important: Each Acquisition Center, across all Programs, should have a unique name. Acquisition Centers with an identical name can easily be confused in reporting and other areas in the CRM, even if they are assigned to different programs.

If an order comes into OrangeCRM with no Billing Plan assigned to it, the system will automatically assign the selected Default Billing Plan.

This is an optional feature that isn't always used by all businesses. If your business does use Performance Groups, you may click on the eyeglasses icon to make a selection. For an explanation of what Performance Groups can be used for and for instructions on how to set them up, please see the Performance Groups page.

These three fields are optional and are only used for reference purposes. Feel free to use them as needed.

The next steps are determined by the method in which you will be inserting new customers into this Acquisition Center. Customers can be inserted into OrangeCRM in one of two ways, either through a Lead File Upload or API. Please proceed accordingly with one of the two options listed below.

API - If you are inserting new customers via API, the Acquisition Center creation is complete. Be sure to click Save in the top right corner of the Acquisition Center.
Lead File Upload - If you are inserting new customers through a Lead File Upload, proceed with the remaining steps listed below.

Go to the Lead Scrub tab and select the Pay Types allowed for this Acquisition Center.

Pay Type OT = all other types of credit cards that are not Mastercard, VISA, American Express or Discover. Examples of OT Pay Types are JCB, Elo, Hipercard or Aura.

Select the fields you wish to enable Duplicate Check on. This feature checks for existing customers that already have the same value as the new customer in the selected field. If a duplicate is found, a new customer record won't be created. We recommend enabling Duplicate Check on continuity offers to prevent repeated orders, which may be fraudulent. If you don't want to use the Duplicate Check feature, leave all boxes unchecked.

Select the fields you wish to enable High Risk Check on. This feature checks the value in the selected fields against your black list of customers who have been marked as a High Risk. If a match is found, a new customer record won't be created. If you don't want to use the High Risk Check feature, leave all boxes unchecked.

Leaving the high risk options unchecked will allow blacklisted customers to place future orders.

Select which Compliance Fields are required for each incoming Lead. Leads without all of the selected Compliance Fields will be rejected.

The Acquisition Center window will close and you should now be back to the main Acquisition Centers page. Click Refresh to see your new Acquisition Center in the list.

Your view is limited to only the Acquisition Centers within the selected Program. If you have more than one Program in your CRM, you will need to select the Program that you assigned the Acquisition Center to.

To complete the remaining setup steps for an Acquisition Center that will be using Lead File Uploads, please see How To Add a Bank Assignment to an Acquisition Center on this page.

How to Clone an Acquisition Center

Open the Acquisition Center that you want to clone. Then go to the Actions menu and click on Clone Acq Center.

A box will pop up, as shown below. Type in the Name of the new Acquisition center and select the Program it should be assigned to. You can also clone the Fee Schedules and Bank Assignments if desired by clicking on the Fee Schedules and Bank Assignments boxes. Click the Clone button and the CRM will make a copy of the Acquisition Center.

A confirmation box will pop up saying the cloned acquisition center has been created. Close the box when finished.

Click Refresh in the Acquisition Centers list to see the new cloned Acquisition Center.

Click on the pencil icon beside the new cloned Acquisition Center to open it and make the necessary edits to fit the unique needs of the new center.

What is a Bank Assignment?

A Bank Assignment is how you link a Merchant Bank to an Acquisition Center. Acquisition Centers that use Lead File Uploads require Bank Assignments for transaction processing.

If the only method of inserting customers into an Acquisition Center is via the API, Bank Assignments are not needed. For more details please see the API page.

How to Add A Bank Assignment to an Acquisition Center

Open the Acquisition Center, go to the Actions Menu and select New Bank Assignment.

The Bank Assignment window will open. Click on the Eyeglasses icon to select the Bank Name and then click Save.

Leave the Fee Schedule field blank if you want the Bank Assignment to apply to any Fee Schedule within this Acquisition Center. If you want to limit the Bank Assignment to one Fee Schedule, click on the Eyeglasses icon to select the desired Fee Schedule.

In the Acquisition Center, go to the Assigned Banks tab to see the new Bank Assignment.

What is a Fee Schedule?

Fee schedules are what allow you to manage the billing cycles for customers who reside in a particular Acquisition Center. Each Billing Plan typically consists of at least one Fee Schedule. Without at least one Fee Schedule, a Billing Plan cannot process any customer billing.

Once a Billing Plan has been setup with all of its required Fee Schedules, customers assigned to that Billing Plan will automatically be billed according to the parameters that have been predefined within its Fee Schedules.

How to Create a New Fee Schedule

The Lists menu is typically only visible to managers. If you require additional permissions, please see your CRM administrator.

Once you have located the Acquisition Center in the correct Program, click on the pencil icon beside the Acquisition Center to open it.

In the Acquisiton Center window, go to the Billing Plans tab and use the drop down list to select the Billing Plan you wish to create a Fee Schedule for.

Select the Acct Code for this Fee Schedule by clicking on the eyeglasses icon. All fee schedules must be linked to an account code. See the Account Codes section in the Banks topic.

In the Retry Amount/Attempt fields, enter a dollar value less than the fee schedule amount and specify the RETRY attempt on which to implement the lower charge amount. If the initial charge attempt fails, the system will automatically retry the failed transaction in the number of days specified in the Merchant Bank settings (see the topic Banks).

When entering the Retry Attempt, keep in mind that it only applies to the number of times a transaction is RETRIED. Therefore, the initial charge attempt counts as RETRY Attempt 0, the first RETRY attempt counts as Retry Attempt 1, the second RETRY attempt counts as Retry Attempt 2, and so forth. For example, if your fee schedule amount is $100 and you want to retry failed transactions for the full amount on the first RETRY attempt but then you want to drop it down to $50 on the second RETRY attempt, you would enter $50.00 in the Retry Amount field and the number 2 in the Retry Attempt field.

In the Trigger tab, configure each of the following settings to dictate the parameters in which this Fee Schedule will automatically be triggered:

Select what you wish the customer status to be set to while this Fee Schedule is being processed. The typical settings we recommend are as follows: If the Customer Trigger Status is Active, the customer Status During is generally also set to Active. If the Customer Trigger Status is New or Trial, the Customer Status During is typically set to Billing.

Select the type of transaction to be processed on this Fee Schedule. If no billing is to be processed in this Fee Schedule, select No Trans from the drop down list.

This field only applies to Capture transactions. Enter the number of days you wish to delay the capture of a PreAuth.

This field only applies to Capture transactions. Enter the dollar amount to be captured (may be equal to or less than the original PreAuth amount).

Enter the number of days or months to wait between the prior Fee Schedule and this Fee Schedule. In other words, how long do you want the CRM to wait before it bills the customer for this Fee Schedule.

0 days = today. When creating the first Fee Schedule, if the customer is to be billed on the first day, Rebill Every would need to be set to 0 days.

Example: Let's say you want to bill the customer upfront on day one for a small shipping & handling fee, then in 2 weeks you want to bill them for the full purchase price and every month after that, you want to bill them monthly until they cancel. In this scenario, the first Fee Schedule would have Rebill Every set to 0 days. The second Fee Schedule would have Rebill Every set to 14 days, and the remaining Fee Schedules would have Rebill Every set to 1 month.

Enter the minimum and maximum billing cycles that this Fee Schedule will qualify for. Cycle 0 means no prior billing cycles have been processed. The default Cycle Min/Max is set to 0/999, which indicates that this Fee Schedule will qualify for any cycle. However, you can change the Cycle Min/Max to limit the Fee Schedule as needed.

This is typically left at the default setting of 1, which means each time the Fee Schedule is processed, the billing cycle will be increased by one.

You will see that there are four sections in the Responses tab: Transaction Accepted, Transaction Declined, Transaction Error and Transaction Retry. Within each of these sections you can select specific actions for the CRM to take based on the result of the processed transactions:

Changes the Customer Status after a given transaction result. For example, an Accepted Transaction may set the Customer Status to Active, whereas a Declined Transaction would result in Canceled or Suspended Customer Status, etc.

Declined, Error and Retry transactions already have a default Customer Status selected. These are just recommended settings that can be changed to suit your needs.

Changes the Category of a customer, based on the result of a transaction. Categories are predefined in the Lists menu on the home page. See the Categories section in the Customers topic.

Changes the Lead Status after a given transaction result. It is quite common to leave this set to No Change.

Triggers the selected Fulfillment, based on the result of a transaction (see Fulfillments for more information).

If you have multiple Bank Assignments on this Acquisition Center and you need to limit a Fee Schedule to one particular bank, you may do so by adding a Bank Assignment to the Fee Schedule. Although this is not common, the option is available if needed.

As an example, you may need to process the First Fee schedule in a Billing Plan through one specific bank, while the rest of the Fee Schedules in the Billing Plan can be processed through any one of the banks assigned to the Acquisition Center. In that case, you would only add a Bank Assignment to the first Fee Schedule. By NOT adding a Bank Assignment to the remaining Fee Schedules in the Billing Plan, you will allow those Fee Schedules to qualify for processing through any one of the Merchant Banks assigned to the Acquisition Center.

To add a Bank Assignment to a Fee Schedule, go to the Actions menu in the Fee Schedule window and click on New Bank Assignment.

Acq Center - This option allows any customer in this Acquisition Center to qualify for this Bank Assignment.

Bank Route - This option only allows customers with the specified Bank Route stamped on their customer record to qualify for this Bank Assignment.

You should now see the new Bank Assignment, in the Assigned Banks tab of the Fee Schedule window.

These settings are used if you want to track and report on taxes or shipping costs associated with the transactions generated by a particular Fee Schedule. The Money Module is required to use these features.

Note: These settings do NOT have any impact on the amount that customers are billed. This is strictly for reporting purposes.

We typically recommend keeping the default settings in the Transactions Tab. However, there can be special circumstances when some of these settings may need to be changed.

Some payment processors allow the use of multiple Descriptors if you sell more than one type of product in a single merchant account. Please contact your payment processor directly to find out if they support this feature. If they do, all transactions generated from this Fee Schedule will be sent to your gateway with the Descriptor entered into these fields.

The Descriptor Text field on the Merchant Bank must be left blank in order for this feature to work properly.

This setting is used if you allow your calling center to process preauth transactions at the time of the sale. In order for OrangeCRM to process a capture against the original preauth, the preauth must be tied to a Fee Schedule. If you select Enable in this field, you will be designating this Fee Schedule as the default Fee Schedule for lead capture processing.

Determines which date will be used to set the Last Process Date on the customer record.

The Last Process Date is used to calculate when the customer is billed again. Changing this setting will change the number of days between billing cycles.

When you are done configuring the settings in the Fee Schedule, click the Save button.

You should now see the new Fee Schedule listed in the Billing Plans tab of the Acquisition Center.

How to Clone a Billing Plan

The Clone Billing Plan feature is provided as a shortcut to help you save time when building new Billing Plans.

Go to the Billing Plans tab and select from the drop down menu the Billing Plan you wish to clone.

The From section will auto-populate with the Program, Acq. Center and Billing Plan you are cloning from.

The To section is where you will select the Program, Acq. Center and Billing Plan you want to assign the clone to.

A confirmation box will pop up saying that the cloned billing plan has been created.

Go to the Billing Plans tab and select the new cloned Billing Plan from the drop down menu and make the necessary edits to the Fee Schedules to fit the unique needs of the new Billing Plan. For a description of Fee Schedule settings, please see the section How to Create a New Fee Schedule on this page.

How to Add a Lead Commission to an Acquisition Center

Some Acquisition Centers charge on a commission basis for their leads. Some leads my require that you pay a commission to an individual. To facilitate this, the CRM can be configured to automatically calculate Lead Commissions that you need to pay out.

Before you can add a Lead Commission to an Acquisition Center, you must first create the master Commission by going to the Lists menu on the home page and clicking on Commissions.

A list of all existing Master Commissions will be displayed. To create a new Master Commission, click on the New Commission button in the upper right corner.

Enter a descriptive name for the individual or company who will be receiving this commission.

Auto populates today's date, however you can use the calendar selector to change the date if necessary.

The Acq Centers tab displays a list of all Acquisition Centers linked to this master commission. Instructions on how to assign a commission to an Acquisition Center are listed below.

Since this new commission has not been linked to any Acquisition Centers yet, the Acq Centers tab will say No documents found.

Filling in the fields in the Banking Info tab is optional and is used strictly as a point of reference. It does not enable any type of bank processing.

The Notes tab is also optional and can be used to record any miscellaneous details about this commission.

Once the master Commission has been created, you can add a Lead Commission to the Acquisition Center.

Start by opening the Acquisition Center. Go to the Actions menu and click on New Commission.

Enter the payment terms in number of days, starting from when the lead is received.

The status of the Lead Commission, either Active or Inactive. An Inactive Lead Commission will not be calculated.

Enter the percentage of bad leads that you will absorb into your own costs before you begin to charge them back to the originating Acquisition Center. This percentage will be determined by the contract with your Acquisition Center.

Enter the agreed upon number of weeks (between you and the acquisition source) that a customer must remain active (starting from lead creation) in order to be considered as a good lead that warranted a commission payment. If a customer cancels within this window, a credit for the paid commission will be applied to future payouts.

This number should be set to the same number as the Calc Window to prevent duplicate commission payouts. This is the number of payout summary records that are retained for future reference (i.e. the number of snapshots stored). The purpose of this feature is to allow you to view recently paid Lead Commissions, in cases where a credit or adjustment may be needed due to an over payment or lost customers from previous batches.

Enter any miscellaneous notes you may want to record for future reference regarding this Lead Commission.

To view the new Lead Commission you just created, go to the Commissions tab in the Acquisition Center.

Then select the master Commission from the drop down list and click on the paper icon shortcut to view the Lead Commission that you assigned to that master Commission.

How To Add a Script to an Acquisition Center

The date this script is to be activated. The default date will be set to today's date.

Enter any miscellaneous notes you wish to record for reference purposes regarding this script.

Click on the Choose File button to attach the document that contains the script. You may also attach additional files that contain supporting documentation.

You should now see the new script listed in the Scripts & Notes tab of the Acquisition Center.

Once a script has been added to an Acquisition Center, CSRs can access the script by simply clicking on the paper icon shortcut beside the Acquisition Center field on a customer record.

Acquisition Center Field Definitions

This section provides a description of the fields in each section of the Acquisition Center record.

This box will be auto-populated by the system and set as Active when a new center is created.

Select the Program you want to assign to this Acquisition Center (see Programs for more information).

This is an important field. The Acquisition Center Name is a key piece of information that is used throughout the system & in reporting. The Name field is only editable upon creation, so take some time to make sure that this name is appropriate, meaningful and free of typos before saving.

Select the report group you wish to assign this acquisition center to by clicking the eyeglasses. For reporting that is based on the acquisition center report group, instead of the acquisition center name, this acquisition center will be shown with the selected group. (See Performance Groups)

The phone number associated with this Acquisition Center. This field is used purely for user reference and is optional.

The email address associated with this Acquisition Center. This field is used purely for user reference and is optional.

This must be a unique number, assigned by the user, usually 3 digits beginning with 100.

Auto-populated with today's date or can be manually selected by editing the text box, or using the calendar application.

If a customer comes into OrangeCRM with no Billing Plan assignment, the CRM will automatically assign the Default Billing Plan selected in this field.

The Actions menu of the Acquisition Center allows for a number of different actions to be taken:

Allows you to copy the structure of an existing Acquisition Center to a new Acquisition Center, as shown below. For instructions, see the section How to Clone an Acquisition Center on this page.

This feature is provided as a shortcut to help you save time when building new Acquisition Centers.

Allows you to clone a Billing Plan from the current Acquisition Center to another Acquisition Center, as shown below. For instructions, see the section How to Clone a Billing Plan on this page.

This feature is provided as a shortcut to help you save time when building new Billing Plans.

Creates a new Fee Schedule in the Billing Plan currently selected in the Billing Plans tab. For instructions, see the section How to Create a New Fee Schedule on this page.

Adds a new Bank Assignment to the Acquisition Center. For instructions, see the section How to Add a Bank Assignment to an Acquisition Center on this page.

Typically all customers in an Acquisition Center will qualify for processing through any one of the banks assigned to the Acquisition Center, unless bank routing is being used or a specific Fee Schedule has a Bank Assignment (see the Bank Routes section in the Banks topic and the section How to Create a New Fee Schedule on this page).

Allows you to add a script to the Acquisition Center. For instructions, see the section How to Add a Script to an Acquisition Center on this page.

Lets you to add a new Lead Commission to the Acquisition Center. For instructions, see the section How to Add a Lead Commission to an Acquisition Center on this page.

Exports the Acquisition Center's Commission information in an Excel spreadsheet.

The access and revisions tab shows any changes that have been made to the record.

Shows you the quantity of new customers created in this acquisition center per day. Below the bar graph are shortcut links to the Profit and Loss and Finance and Risk reports for your convenience.

Gives you a breakdown of the quantity of customers by status for the selected time period. The default time period is set to the last 30 days, however you may change the time period by using the Customer Status Period drop down menu. Below the bar graph are shortcut links to the Customer Summary and Customer Activity reports for your convenience.

In this tab you can view each of the Billing Plans assigned to the Acquisition Center. Each Billing Plan has it's own individual Fee Schedules that determine when and how much a customer will be billed throughout each cycle of their life. For more information see the section How to Create a New Fee Schedule on this page.

Pick a Billing Plan from the drop down list and the individual Fee Schedules associated with that Billing Plan will be displayed.

To create a new Fee Schedule for the Billing Plan currently being viewed, go to the Acquisition Center Actions menu, and select New Fee Schedule, as shown below. For instructions on how to setup a new Fee Schedule, please see the section How to Create a New Fee Schedule on this page.

In this tab you can view each of the Commissions assigned to the leads in this Acquisition Center. Choose a Commission from the drop down menu to see a payout summary for the selected Commission.

The number of "bad" leads (Lead Status of Duplicate, Out of Compliance, CSR Check Fail or Error).

You pay for any leads that are under the Absorb Un-Billables limit. For more details, see the section How to Add a Lead Commission to an Acquisition Center on this page.

This is the percentage of non-pay leads that is over your Absorb Un-Billables limit. For more details, see the section How to Add a Lead Commission to an Acquisition Center on this page.

Shows any credits or adjustments that need to be made, based on an over payment, or lost customers from previous batches. Depending on the contract you have with the acquisition center, the calculation time of lost customers will vary. For more details, see the section How to Add a Lead Commission to an Acquisition Center on this page.

To see a breakdown of leads by status for a particular week, click on the pencil icon.

This will open the Leads Summary for that week, which includes a breakdown of leads by status. See example below.

To open and edit the commission currently being viewed, click on the paper icon shortcut beside the commissions drop down menu.

For instructions on how to create a new Commission, please see the section on this page titled How To Add a Lead Commission to an Acquisition Center.

The Lead Scrub tab is where you set the rules for how incoming leads are processed and what qualifies as an acceptable lead that will become a customer in the CRM.

If you are not using a lead file upload, you do not need to do anything in this tab.

Indicates the status a lead will be set to when it is loaded from this acquisition center after validation, generally set to cleared. See Leads for more information.

What the customer status will be set to when the lead is loaded from this acquisition center. See Customers for more information.

Indicates what the category on the customer will be set to when it is loaded from this acquisition center. This is not a required field. See Customers for more information.

The account code associated with this acquisition center. Click the eyeglasses to select from current account codes.

Select the types of payment you would like to validate (Credit Card and Automatic Cash Handling). OrangeCRM is not a gateway and the validation check is check-digit calculation that will mark leads as unbillable if they fail the check.

Select payment types you would like to allow. If "cash" is selected, all payment types will be accepted. If other payment types are selected but come back invalid, they will be assumed to be cash.

Checks to see if there are existing matching Customers already in the system. Duplicates will be checked against the fields selected and duplicate records found will be rejected.

Checks to see if there are existing High Risk customers already identified in the system based on the fields selected.

Compliance fields are the minimum fields that will be required for a lead to be considered acceptable. If a required field is not passed to OrangeCRM, the lead will be rejected as invalid. OrangeCRM will accept data for fields that are unchecked, but will not require the data for the lead to be considered valid.

Custom fields allow you to customize the acquisition center. Any field that you would like added to the acquisition center, specific to your program or to this acquisition center, can be created here. The Tag is the value of the field. Field name is the name of the field, which are defaulted to custom field.

Allows you to setup round robin bank routing for the leads that turn into customers. (See Banks).

Enable Lead Capture processing only if you offer a trial period in which you need to delay the capture of the initial transaction on a customer. Select the Merchant Bank to be used for the capture, enter the number of days to delay the capture by (e.g. the number of days in your trial period) and select the desired customer status during the trial period.

The fulfillment options allow you to add 5 fields to any fulfillment that may require additional information that is specific to this acquisition center. Filling out the mail merge fields will allow you to import that information onto a master fulfillment. The master fulfillment record has the option of importing the mail merge #1 - mail merge #5 field values. Please see the Fulfillments topic for more details.

Defines the number of days that a transaction will remain in Pending status before it is "abandoned."

What is an Acquisition Center?