Accounts Online: Operating Manual

Accounts Online

Accounts Online
User Management
Invoices & receipts
Custom Order Forms
Custom Fields
Protected Directories
Auto Accounts
API Functions
Handling Taxes
Shipping&Handling

Release 2.29 of Accounts Online introduced auto accounts feature. This mode is intended for use with custom scripts and makes it possible to put Accounts Online into background - no messages, no screens will be produced while all bookkeeping and protected directories managing will work as usual.

Using Auto Accounts with custom order forms
Accounts Online package serves as a middleman between a form and your custom script which handles the form. All you need to do is just add several hidden and text fields to your form and replace "action" script in the

tag with *CGIURL* macro. Being submitted the form activates proper script from Accounts Online package which registers new account, posts and invoice and adds a subscription if necessary, then it passes control to your custom script preserving all the form's fields. For more details on how custom order forms work please see Custom Order Forms.

Here are the steps, required to configure custom form.

1. Create custom form template. The template is an html page, with one ore more <form> tags. Here is a sample code for a form, used to subscribe a customer with valid account to product "wktrial". <form method="POST" action="*CGIURL*">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="autosubscribe">
<input type="hidden" name="prodid" value="wktrial">
<input type="hidden" name="confirmurl" value="http://www.eastwright.com/internet/accnts/demo/welcome.pl">
Brand of your monitor: <input type="text" name="customarg1" size="25"><br>
Brand of your car: <input type="text" name="customarg2" size="25"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Subscribe Now!">
</form>

Notes:
1. *CGIURL* is a placeholder for script url
2. form field "prodid" is reserved for Accounts Online, it keeps a product id, the one you define using Product Manager (Admin Panel)
3. form field "confirmurl" is reserved for Accounts Online, it keeps url of custom script to be activated after invoice posted to customer's account
4. You can use any custom fields, their content will be passed to your custom script.
5. Accounts Online will use the following fields (if present) to initialize new account record
name, lname - account holder first and last names
street, city, state, zip, country - account holder street address, city, state, zip, country
phone - account holder phone number
bizphone - account holder business phone number
fax - account holder fax number
email - account holder email address
notes - account related notes
cctype, ccnumber, ccisuue, ccvalid, ccname, cczip - account holder credit card type, number, issue number (for switch cards), expiration date, name on card, zip as per bank statement
6. Please note that in auto account mode Accounts Online does not require any of the listed above customer data fields to be completed.

2. Store the form template at your basedir/tmpl directory, where basedir is Base Directory set via Admin Panel (System Setup command).

3. Use the following url to activate you custom script: url-to-accview.pl?cmd=loadtmpl&template=autosubscribe.html (we assume, that autosubscribe.html is the name of your template file)

Security considerations:
It is possible to call custom script directly (simply by typing its url with parameters necessary right into address string of web browser). In order to prevent you site from such an abuse there is additional parameter "pincode" which generated by Accounts Online and passed to your custom script. The value of pincode produced by applying crypt Perl function to concatenation of accid and pin, as set by your system administrator using Admin Panel (System Setup menu). You need to hardcode this pin value into your custom script and each time it is invoked generate pincode and compare it against the one, you received as an input.

Please review the following sample files in your package for more details:
autosubscribe.html - sample custom form
welcome.pl - sample custom script

Using Auto Accounts with e-commerce gateway
Normally upon completion of credit card/e-check transaction customer's browser is being redirected to accview.pl script. At this point customer must login into system in order to credit the transaction amount to his/her account. If you are able to obtain customer id and password while producing order form, you can pass this info through most transaction gateways (iBill, Authorize.net, WorldPay supports passthrough variables) - in such a case user will be logged to his/her account automatically. But if this is a new customer, he/she will have to create an account manually. This process could be somewhat confusing and in certain cases even needless. You can avoid login screen by simply replacing value 'login' for 'cmd' passthrough field in your order form (see e-Commerce Gateway documentation for more instructions) with an 'autologin'. Below is an example of order form using WorldPay service.

<form method="post" action="https://select.worldpay.com/wcc/purchase">
<input type="hidden" name="instId" value="your-installation-id-here">
<input type="hidden" name="M_prodid" value="your-product-id">
<input type="hidden" name="M_cmd" value="autologin">
<input type="hidden" name="amount" value="your-product-setup-charge">
<input type="hidden" name="cartId" value="any-value-here">
<input type="hidden" name="currency" value="currency-code-as-per-worldpay-instructions">
<input type="submit" value="Pay now">

Please review the following sample files in your package for more details:
worldpay.html - sample custom form
receipt.pl - sample custom script