Are you considering converting an active non-punchout catalog to the punchout protocol? There are a few fine points to consider.

• The "punchout user" permission MUST be enabled for all users who will access the site via punchout. It is important to note that once this permission has been enabled, these users are ONLY able to access the site via punchout.
• Consider creating a new group called "Punchout Users". Enable the punchout user permission for the group. Then create a new user called “Punchout Template User” and assign it to the new group.
• If you prefer to leave the current users intact and simply convert them to punchout users once the punchout is live, you would need to assign them all to the new "Punchout Users" group.
• In this case, Four51 would need to update the punchout configuration. The user's email address would be mapped to the Four51 username field so that the two fields match. While this method can complicate the go-live process, the advantage is that users retain their order and variant history as well as their assignments.

The alternative is to leave all existing Four51 users untouched and to create entirely new Four51 users. A new Four51 punchout user would be created each time a user punches out to the site for the first time. A short suffix would be appended to their name. This way, a unique username is created in the event the user already exists in Four51.

For example, if a punchout user passes in "cdeveroux@giants.com" as their email address, a new user would be created on Four51 with a username of "cdeveroux@giants.edu-acc". These new users would inherit permissions and assignments from the Punchout Template User. This makes the go-live process easier, but users would lose their order and variant history as well as their existing assignments, since they would be technically new users on Four51.

Variable Specs and Punchouts:

• Variable Products with Variable Specs set when the variant is created: Supported
• Variable Products with Variable Specs set when the item is added to the order: Not Supported
• Static Products with Variable Specs - Text/Selection/File specs are not supported, unless they are selection specs that are attached to a variant (variants page - generate variants based on selection specs).

Lastly, inventory and kits are not supported in punchout due to the punchout workflow.