Optimize Your Use, Optimize Your Results
Co-op Accounts
For cooperatives whose members are warehouses.
What a co-op account is#
A co-op account sits one level above warehouses. Your member warehouses are the accounts Adergy has placed under you, and their stores and groups are your reach. You see everything each member sees: what every account under them is running, and which vendors have booked space at their locations. If your account is set up for it, you can also send ads through a warehouse to the accounts under it.
Your sidebar has five items:
- Accounts: your member warehouses, and every group and store under them, on three tabs.
- Ad Submissions: ads you've sent, and where you start a new one.
- DSD Reservations: vendor bookings at every store under your members.
- Contact: messaging your account manager at Adergy.
- Home: a summary of all of it.
The warehouse watches, and the store or group answers
When you send ads through a warehouse, the warehouse isn't asked to approve anything. The request goes straight to the stores and groups under it, and each of those answers for itself. The warehouse sees your request on its own Ad Submissions list from the moment it's sent, and can follow the answers as they come in, but the decisions aren't its to make.
You don't approve DSD reservations either
Vendor bookings at your members' stores are on your DSD Reservations screen in every status, but the decision belongs to each store or its group. You can see them, but you don't act on them.
Whether your account can send ads#
Co-op accounts come in two kinds, and it's a setting on your account, not something you choose. Both see exactly the same pages and the same data. The only difference is whether you can submit.
Which one am I? (open Ad Submissions and look for a create button)
- Submit Ads buttonYour account can send ads. Ad Submissions has a create button, and each warehouse, group and store page shows Submit Ads. How to send →
- No create buttonYour account is read-only. You see everything across your members (rosters, orders, reservations) but don't submit. What you can see →
Your ability to send is separate from each warehouse's
A member warehouse may itself be read-only, able to see its roster but not to submit to it. That has no bearing on you. A co-op that can submit can send through a read-only warehouse, and its stores and groups answer as usual.
The accounts under you#
Accounts has three tabs: Warehouses, Groups and Stores. The first lists your members. The other two list every group and store under them, sectioned by warehouse so you can see which member each one belongs to. The search box at the top finds any of the three.
Opening a warehouse gives you its own roster page. Opening a group or store gives you the same detail a warehouse sees (what it's currently running, its history of ad orders, and the vendor reservations at it), with the member warehouse named at the top.
A store and its group can sit under different warehouses
Each account carries its own link to a warehouse, so a store can buy direct from one of your members while its group buys through another. That's a legitimate arrangement, and it shows on the Accounts page as the store and the group appearing under different headings.
If a pairing looks wrong, your account manager can correct it. Which warehouses are your members is set by Adergy's administrators.
From a reservation you can click through to the vendor behind it, to see who they are and everything they hold across your members' stores.
Sending ads through your warehouses#
This is what Ad Submissions does when your account can submit. The order matters: you choose recipients first, then write the ads.
Open Ad Submissions and choose Submit Ads
The first screen is headed "Who are these ads for?". Recipients come before the ads themselves.
Pick your recipients under Choose Recipients
Three tabs: Warehouses, Groups, Stores. Tick a warehouse to reach its whole roster in one go, or use the other two tabs to name particular groups and stores under it.
Continue to the ad order form
The same form a warehouse fills in: a name, a run date range, then one row per product with a title and optional price, category, limitations and terms. Your recipients are summarised at the top.
Send for Approval
Every recipient gets the request as pending, and the confirmation shows exactly which accounts it went to. Nothing runs anywhere until each one approves.
Picking a whole warehouse
Ticking a warehouse on the first tab names its entire roster: every group under it that answers for its locations, and every store under it that answers for itself. The row says how far that reaches, for example “1 group · 4 stores · reaches 1 account that can approve”. The number to watch is the last one. Here it's 1 because the group answers for all four stores, so one approval covers everything. Groups and stores under that warehouse then show as “Included with …” on the other two tabs, ticked already and unable to be changed.
A warehouse whose accounts can't currently receive ads at all is greyed out and reads “None of its accounts can receive ads right now”.
Picking particular groups or stores
The Groups and Stores tabs work the way a warehouse's own recipient picker does, with the rows sectioned by warehouse. Every row says who will answer for it:
- A store that handles its own ad ordering says “Approves for itself”.
- A store whose ordering belongs to its group names the group, as in “… approves for this location”. The request goes to the group, not the store.
- A group says how many locations one approval covers, for example “Approves once, for the 4 locations it orders for”, and adds “(of 5)” where some of its locations order for themselves and would need sending to directly.
Some rows can't be selected
A row is greyed out, with the reason on it, when there's nothing it could approve for or when it's already covered by something else you picked:
- “Included with …” means its warehouse is ticked, so it's already in.
- “Already covered by …, which you selected” or “… which you included” means a store's controlling group is ticked, or was pulled in by a ticked warehouse. The group's answer reaches that store, so it isn't asked twice.
- “Doesn't handle ads for its locations — send to them directly” means a group that stays out of ads altogether.
- “None of its locations have handed ad ordering to it — send to them directly” means a group whose every location orders for itself.
Overlaps are resolved for you, not refused
When you tick a whole warehouse you haven't chosen between a group and the stores it orders for, so the app doesn't make you. Where a group under that warehouse orders for a location, the request goes to the group and the location is left off, because the group's answer is the one that counts there. The confirmation after you send lists the accounts it actually went to.
Starting from an account's page
Submit Ads on any warehouse, group or store detail page opens the same flow with that account already chosen, dropping you straight at the form.
What happens after you submit#
A submission doesn't run when you send it. Every recipient sees it on their own ad screen under Ads Sent to You, badged “Awaiting your answer”, with your products and prices listed, and they approve or decline it. The warehouse it went through sees the same request on its own Ad Submissions list, marked as from its co-op, and can watch the answers arrive, but it isn't asked to answer.
Back on your own Ad Submissions screen, every form carries a rollup of its answers so far, such as “1 pending 5 approved” or “1 declined”, and gains a Complete mark once every recipient has answered. For N accounts under each one expands to the status against each recipient.
Each recipient answers separately
A request sent through a warehouse with six approving accounts is six decisions, and they're independent: four can approve while two decline. Nothing runs at an account until that account has approved.
Where a recipient declines, they can leave a reason, and it's shown to you against that recipient.
An approved submission becomes a normal ad order
Once approved it behaves like any other order at that account. It appears in what they're running, and it goes to their account manager at Adergy the way their own submissions do.
When a group approves on behalf of its locations, the ads reach every location it orders for. That list is fixed at the moment of approval.
Following what is running#
This part is the same whether or not your account can submit, and it's the whole of a read-only account's job.
- Accounts → any warehouse, group or store → what it's running and its ad order history. A store's or group's page also lists anything of yours still Awaiting Approval there.
- Ad Submissions → the ad order forms across every account under your members, filterable by All time, Current or Past, each saying who sent it.
- DSD Reservations → Vendor Bookings at Your Stores across all your members, filterable by status and period, and narrowable to one warehouse or one group. Choosing a warehouse narrows the group list to its own.
Getting help#
Contact in your sidebar reaches your account manager at Adergy and keeps the conversation in one thread. Use Update Account at the top right to keep your phone number and email current. Approvals and declines are emailed, and an account with no address on file won't hear about them.
Which warehouses are your members, and whether your account can send ads, are both set by Adergy. Ask your account manager if either looks wrong.