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How to Set Up Sales Reps to Order on Behalf of Their Fishbowl Customers

Sync your Fishbowl salesperson assignments to the website so sales reps can log in and order for the customers they manage

When You'd Need This

If you're already using Fishbowl's Sales Rep feature to assign a salesperson to specific customer accounts, you can extend that same relationship out to your Kinein website. Once it's set up, your sales reps can log into the website directly, see only the customers they're assigned to in Fishbowl, and place orders on those customers' behalf - complete with the correct customer-specific pricing.

It's a common request: your reps already know who their accounts are (that's why you set them up in Fishbowl in the first place). This just makes that same relationship work on the website.

How It Works

Kinein looks at the salesperson assigned to each customer account in Fishbowl and automatically creates the same association on the website. It matches your sales rep to their Fishbowl username - so once the sales rep is set up on the website with that username as their "salesperson code," every customer that has them listed as the salesperson in Fishbowl will show up under their account after the next sync.

The reps then log in like any other customer would. But instead of just seeing their own account, they'll see an "Order on Behalf of My Customers" option, which lists every account they're the salesperson for.

How to Set It Up

The video below walks through the full setup, or follow the written steps underneath.

 

Step 1: Create the Sales Rep as a Customer on Your Website

  1. Log into the admin panel of your website.
  2. Click Add Customer in the upper left.
  3. Enter the sales rep's information - name, email address, company name (this can be your own company name), and any other required fields.
  4. Leave the account number blank. Unlike your regular customer accounts, sales reps don't need one - unless the rep also has their own personal account that they'd place orders against in Fishbowl. Most of the time, this stays empty.

Step 2: Configure the Sales Rep-Specific Fields

This is the part that's easy to miss - two fields matter here:

  1. Set the Customer Type to "Sales Rep." This is what tells the website to treat this account differently from a regular customer.
  2. Skip the Salesperson field. Don't fill this one in.
  3. Set the Salesperson Code to their Fishbowl username. This is the crucial link. Head to Fishbowl > Setup > User, find the sales rep, and copy their username exactly. Paste that into the Salesperson Code field on the website.

Step 3: Finish Creating the Account

  1. Approve the customer account.
  2. Set an initial password (you can generate one or set your own).
  3. Save the account.

Step 4: Run a Sync

Once the sales rep account exists on the website, you need to run a sync so Kinein can pull the customer-salesperson associations from Fishbowl.

  1. In the admin panel, click Status.
  2. Click Sync Now.
  3. Wait for the sync to finish.

After the sync completes, if you open any customer account in the admin panel that has this rep set as their salesperson in Fishbowl, you'll see the rep's name automatically populated in the Salesperson field on the customer record. No manual assignment needed - it all pulls from Fishbowl.

Step 5: How the Sales Rep Uses It

Once everything is set up, the sales rep logs into the website the same way any customer would - just with the credentials you created for them. They'll see a new option: Order on Behalf of My Customers. Clicking it shows them only the customers they're assigned to in Fishbowl.

From there, they can pick a customer, browse the site as that customer (seeing that customer's specific pricing), and place orders that write back into Fishbowl against that customer's account. When they're done, they click Stop Ordering to return to their own account, and can jump into another customer's account from there.

Things to Watch For

  • Salesperson Code = Fishbowl username, not their name. This is the most common mistake. It has to match the username in Fishbowl exactly - not their display name, not their email. Head to Setup > User in Fishbowl to grab it.
  • Skip the "Salesperson" field, use "Salesperson Code." These are two different fields that look similar. Only the code field creates the sync link.
  • Sync has to run for associations to populate. Newly created sales reps won't automatically link to their customers until the next sync runs. If you want it done immediately, run Sync > Status, then run a full sync.
  • No account number needed for sales reps. Unless they also have their own personal Fishbowl account for orders, leave account number blank.
  • New customers get associated automatically. As new customer accounts are added in Fishbowl with this rep as their salesperson, they'll show up under the rep's login after the next sync. No extra setup needed.

Still Stuck?

If the associations aren't populating after a sync, or the sales rep isn't seeing their customers when they log in, shoot us an email at support@kinein.com and we'll help you sort it out. The most common culprit is a mismatch between the Salesperson Code on the website and the username in Fishbowl - so double-check that first.