Consumer self-signup and accounts

Consumer self-signup lets a shopper create their own account on your storefront portal, and with it a customer account and contact in xMatix, so they can sign in and order without anyone in your team setting them up. It sits between the anonymous storefront (browsing, guest checkout) and everything a signed-in customer does afterwards (orders, addresses, order history). An administrator switches it on per portal; after that, every signup arrives in the back office as a new consumer account with its own contact and portal login.

Overview

A signup does three things:

It creates a new Account for the person, with Account Type set to Consumer, and a Contact under that account carrying their name, email and phone.
It creates an external login for the person, already linked to that contact, and makes it a member of the portal they signed up on. External logins are not internal user seats.
It emails the person an invitation to set a password. Until they follow that link and set one, they cannot sign in.

The account's type decides which storefront experience the person gets. An account whose Account Type is Consumer or D2C (upper or lower case) gets the consumer experience: consumer banners, ordering by the unit rather than the case, and no trade panels such as credit position or targets. Any other type, or no type at all, gets the trade experience.

When to use it

You sell directly to households through a storefront portal and want shoppers to register themselves.
A guest has just placed an order and wants an account so they can track it. The order confirmation screen offers this directly (see Step 4).

Do not use self-signup to give an existing trade customer a login. Signup always creates a new account, so the login would not see that customer's orders, terms or history. Connecting a known customer to the portal is an administrator task (see Configuration).

How xMatix handles it

A signup form can be filled in by anyone, so xMatix never matches the email a visitor types against your existing accounts or contacts. If it did, anyone who knew a customer's email could take over that customer's account, orders and terms. Every signup therefore creates a fresh account and contact, even when the same person already exists as a customer. Duplicates are expected, and you handle them deliberately (see Common problems).

The one exception: claiming the account a guest order was placed on

The order confirmation screen offers a guest the Create an account to track this order card. When the guest signs up from that card, the new login is linked to the account their order was placed on instead of a new one, but only when all of these hold:

The signup comes from the same browser basket that placed the order.
The guest proved they own the checkout email with a one-time code, either earlier in checkout or with the code offered on the card.
The signup email is that verified checkout email. The card fills it in and you cannot change it.
The order was placed as a guest, not by someone already signed in.
Nobody can sign in to that account yet.

xMatix then adds a new contact for the person to that account, and sets Account Type to Consumer if the account had no type. If any condition is not met, the signup goes ahead as an ordinary signup with a fresh account. The visitor is not told which condition failed.

The answer never reveals whether an email is registered

Whether the email is new or already belongs to a login (staff or external), the visitor sees the same Check your email screen. For an email that already has a login, nothing is created and no invitation is sent. The person should simply sign in. This stops strangers using the signup form to find out who your customers are.

xMatix creates the account and contact before the login. If the account cannot be created, the whole signup fails, so you never get a login with no customer behind it.

Prerequisites

For a visitor to be able to sign up:

The Portals module is enabled for your organization, and the portal is Active and published.
Self-service signup is switched on for that portal (see Configuration).
For the consumer experience and the guest-order claim, the portal is bound to a commerce storefront. The Commerce module must be enabled for the guest-order claim.

The visitor needs nothing but an email address they can read.

Procedure

On the storefront's landing page, choose Consumer in the Retailer and consumer login card and select Create an account. With Retailer chosen, the card offers Talk to sales instead. You can also select Create an account under the sign-in form (New here? Create an account.).

The link appears only when the portal accepts self-signup. If you open the signup address on a portal that does not, you are sent back to the sign-in page.

Step 2 — Fill in the form and create the account

The Create your account form asks for:

First name and Last name
Business name (optional), shown only when the portal creates a customer on signup
Business email, which is required
Phone (optional)

Select Create account. You see Check your email, telling you that if the address can be registered, an invitation to set your password is on its way. Select Go to sign in to return to the sign-in page.

Open the invitation email, follow its link and set your password. The link takes you back to the portal you signed up on. Then sign in. As a consumer you see the consumer storefront, and anything you order is placed against your new account.

If nothing arrives, check your spam folder. The Check your email screen shows the portal's support address when the portal has one.

Step 4 — Create an account after a guest order

After you place an order as a guest, the confirmation screen shows Create an account to track this order.

Your checkout email is filled in. Add your first name if you like.
If your email is not verified yet, request the one-time code on the card and enter it.
Select Create account.

You see the same "If … can be registered, an invite to set your password is on its way" message. Set your password from the email as in Step 3. When the conditions under How xMatix handles it were met, your login sees the account your order was placed on.

Step 5 — Find new signups in the back office (administrators)

Open Accounts in the CRM, Sales or Support app. Signup accounts have Account Type Consumer, are named after the person, and carry the signup email. Search by that name or email.

A signup account is created with Customer Account and Active both left off. It therefore does not appear in the All Active Accounts or All Customer Account views. Use a view without those filters, such as Account Search.

Step 6 — Prepare a consumer account for back-office documents (administrators)

Orders the consumer places on the storefront are created against their account automatically. To pick the account yourself on a back-office document — an order, quote, invoice, payment, credit note, delivery order or service order — the account must have Customer Account and Active switched on, because those pickers list only active customer accounts.

Open the account and select Edit.
On Categorisation, switch on Customer Account and Active.
Save.

Fields

What the signup writes, and where to find it:

Field	What it means	Notes
Account: Name	The person's first and last name	If no name was given, the part of the email before the @. Never a business name — see Business rules.
Account: Account Type	`Consumer`	Free text. `Consumer` or `D2C` (upper or lower case) gives the consumer storefront. Anything else gives the trade experience.
Account: Email	The signup email	As typed, without leading or trailing spaces.
Account: Phone	The signup phone, digits only	Spaces, `+` and other characters are removed. Must pass the account phone checks (see Common problems).
Account: Customer Account, Active	Left off	Switch on before using the account on back-office documents (Step 6).
Contact: First Name, Last Name	As entered	Up to 128 characters each.
Contact: Email, Phone	As on the account	Phone digits only.
Login	An external login whose email and user name are the signup email	Linked to the contact. A member of the signup portal only.

Business rules

The signup email is required, must look like a valid address and can be at most 256 characters. Leading and trailing spaces are removed.
An email that already belongs to any login (compared without regard to upper or lower case) creates nothing and sends no invitation. The visitor still sees the normal confirmation.
Signup never matches existing accounts or contacts by email, name or phone. The only account a signup can join is the guest-order account described above, and only while nobody can sign in to it.
Business name is offered on the form but is not saved. The account is always named after the person, so add a trading name on the account afterwards if you need one.
The new login is a member only of the portal the person signed up on. To any other portal of yours, they are an anonymous visitor until an administrator adds them.
The account, contact and login are recorded as created by the portal's anonymous visitor identity, not by a member of your staff.
Each network address can submit at most 5 signups in any 10 minutes.
Each new signup is recorded as a portal-signup usage event for your organization. Signups for an email that already has a login are not.

Example

A shopper browses a storefront as a guest and buys two bottles of floor cleaner. At checkout the shopper verifies the email with the one-time code. On the confirmation screen they select Create account on the Create an account to track this order card.

Because the email was verified and the order was a guest order, the new login is linked to the account the order was placed on. Your sales team sees one account with the order and a new contact for the shopper. The account's Account Type is now Consumer.

A week later a neighbour signs up from the landing page instead, giving a name, email and phone. xMatix creates a fresh Consumer account named after the neighbour, a contact and a login, and emails a set-password link. Later your administrator wants to raise a back-office invoice for the neighbour, so they first switch on Customer Account and Active on that account.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox with a published storefront portal:

As an administrator, open the portal under Setup → Feature Hub → Portals → Portals, switch on Self-service signup, leave Create customer on signup on and select Save.
In a private browser window, open the storefront, choose Consumer and select Create an account. Sign up with an email you can read and a phone number no other account uses.
Expected result: the Check your email screen, then an invitation email. In the back office, a new account with Account Type Consumer, named after you, with Customer Account and Active off, and one contact.
Sign up again with the same email. Expected result: the same confirmation screen, but no new account and no second email.

Quick reference

Switches: Self-service signup (off by default) and Create customer on signup (on by default), on the portal's General tab.
Every signup creates a fresh Consumer account, contact and portal login.
Signup never adopts an existing customer by email. The only exception is a verified guest order's account.
The visitor always sees Check your email, registered or not.
No password works until the person follows the set-password email.
Business name on the form is not saved.
Before using a signup account on a back-office document, switch on Customer Account and Active.
A phone that is already on another account makes the signup fail. Leave the phone blank.

Permissions

Visitors need no permission to sign up. The portal must accept signups.
Switching signup on or off happens on the portal setup screens and needs the portal-management capability (setup.portals.manage).
Linking a login to an existing customer contact, or disabling and re-enabling a portal login, needs the user-administration capability (setup.security.users.manage).
Editing the signup account (Step 6) follows the ordinary Account permissions on your security profile. See Accounts.

Configuration

Open Setup → Feature Hub → Portals → Portals and open the portal.
On the General tab:
- Self-service signup — lets visitors create an account and receive a set-password invite. Off by default. When it is off, the storefront hides every Create an account link, and a direct signup request is refused with "Self-registration is not available on this portal. Contact us for an invite."
- Create customer on signup — also creates the customer account and contact and links them to the login. On by default; a portal that has never been saved with it off treats it as on.
Select Save. You see Portal saved. The portal must be published for visitors to reach it — see Publishing, hostnames and custom domains.

The two switches are stored inside the portal's settings. The switches on the General tab always win over anything typed for them under Advanced (JSON).

Switch Create customer on signup off. Signups then create only an external login with no contact behind it. The person can sign in, but storefront screens find no customer account for them, so they cannot order until an administrator links the login to a contact. Use this only when a back-office process onboards every member. Storefronts that sell to the public should leave it on.

Connect a known customer to the portal

Self-signup cannot do this, by design. An administrator with setup.security.users.manage gives an existing contact a portal login through the portal user administration API, which links the login to that contact and can send the set-password invitation. The web app has no screen for this step. Inviting an external user from Users creates a login that is not linked to any contact.

Common problems

The visitor sees "We could not create your account right now. Try again in a moment."

The signup reached the server but could not be completed. Common causes:

The phone number is already on another account. Account Phone must be unique across your accounts, and the signup copies the phone onto the new account. Ask the person to sign up without a phone number. If they are an existing customer, connect their contact instead (see Configuration).
The phone number fails your organization's phone format check. For example, it has too few or too many digits. Ask them to leave it blank or correct it.
The portal's anonymous visitor identity is not ready. Signup needs the organization's portal visitor identity, which the platform provisions. If every signup fails, contact support.

"Self-registration is not available on this portal. Contact us for an invite."

Self-service signup is off on this portal. Switch it on (see Configuration), or invite the person instead.

"Too many attempts. Wait a few minutes and try again."

More than 5 signups came from the same network address within 10 minutes. Wait and try again. Several people signing up behind one office network can reach this limit.

"That does not look like a valid email address."

The email is not in a valid format. Correct it and try again.

The person says no invitation email arrived

They may already have a login with that email. In that case nothing is sent, by design, and they should sign in or reset their password. Otherwise ask them to check spam and wait a few minutes, because the invitation is sent in the background.

I can't pick the consumer's account on an order or invoice

Signup leaves Customer Account and Active off, and those pickers list only active customer accounts. Switch both on (Step 6).

The same person now has two accounts

They were already a customer and then signed up, or they signed up twice with different emails. Signup never merges, so this is expected. Use Find Duplicates and Merge on the account you want to keep — see Accounts. A merge moves activities and files but not orders, invoices or contacts. The person's login stays linked to the contact on the merged-away account, so keep that account active if they still sign in with it.

A signed-up user sees the trade storefront instead of the consumer one

The account's Account Type is not Consumer or D2C. Someone may have changed it, or the login was linked to a trade account. Set Account Type to Consumer if the person is a household customer.

Common questions

What happens if the same person signs up twice?

With the same email, nothing happens the second time. The login already exists, so no records are created and no email is sent, although the screen looks the same. With a different email, they get a second account, contact and login. Signup never merges or adopts existing records, because an anonymous form must not be able to claim a customer. Your team can search for duplicates and merge them deliberately from the account.

Can a guest who already ordered keep their order history?

Yes, if they create the account from the Create an account to track this order card on the order confirmation screen, with the checkout email verified by the one-time code. Their login is then linked to the account the guest order was placed on. Signing up later from the landing page creates a separate, fresh account instead, and that account does not show the guest order.

Yes. Switch Create customer on signup off on the portal's General tab. Signups then create only a login, and the person cannot order until an administrator links that login to a customer contact. Most storefronts should leave the switch on, because a login with no customer behind it cannot use the storefront.

Why does the form ask for a Business name if it isn't saved?

The field appears whenever the portal creates customers on signup, but the server does not use it. The account is always named after the person. If a consumer trades under a business name, add it to the account in the back office.

Do signups use internal user seats?

No. Signup logins are external logins, which are separate from your internal named users. Each new signup is recorded as a portal usage event. See Portal visitors, signup and identity.