Context

Imagine a chain restaurant brand running a franchised operation where customers can place orders to any location via an e-commerce site or mobile app, but each tenant/franchisee is responsible for managing their own orders and paying for their deliveries. Burq Connect supports complex use cases like this by allowing a "platform account" (usually controlled by the corporate office) to create "connected accounts" (each representing a franchisee). The platform account can manage deliveries from its connected accounts both through Burq's APIs and via the Burq Dashboard. Each connected account also has full access to the Burq Dashboard, where they can invite their employees, manage their own deliveries, set up payment method, and view their invoices.

Intended Use Cases

Burq Connect is intended for merchants that require a high level of isolation and autonomy in their tenants' delivery operation. Burq Connect may be a good fit for you if your business require several of the following use cases:

Each tenant needs to manage their own employee access to the Burq platform. For example, a franchise owner wants to add their own employees to their Burq connected account to help manage their deliveries.
Each tenant owns the billing obligation to all their deliveries. For example, a franchise owner wants to view and pay invoices for locations under their ownership directly in the Burq Dashboard.
Each tenant manages one or more stores. For example, a franchise owner operates multiple locations under their ownership, and they want to manage and view deliveries under each location from the Burq Dashboard.
Tenants' operations require a high level of isolation from each other. For example, you don't want one franchise owner to view other owners' delivery and billing information.

Other Alternatives

While Burq Connect can be used towards a variety of use cases, it is a heavier solution compared with other Burq features that may be better suited for your specific needs:

If you operate one or more stores and need a solution for store-level access management, you can configure user roles and limit a user's access to a particular set of stores.
If you want to use separate payment methods for some or all of your stores, Burq supports store-level payment method in all account types, and you can set it up in the Burq Dashboard.

Limitation

Burq Connect is an evolving product and we're constantly adding support for new use cases. As of now, Burq Connect has the following limitations:

Delivery providers are configured at the platform level. This means when we enable/disable a delivery provider, the change will applied to all connected accounts on the platform.
SMS workflow is configured at the platform level. This means any changes to the workflow configuration will be applied to all connected accounts on the platform.

Getting Started

If you believe Burq Connect is a good fit for your use case, please reach out to your account manager or Burq customer support (support@burqup.com). Once Burq Connect is enabled for your account, you will see a new "Accounts" tab under your platform account (as shown below).

To get started with Burq Connect, you will need to create all the connected accounts on your platform. For merchants with a few connected accounts, you can create them manually from the aforementioned dashboard screen. For merchants with a large number of connected accounts, you can create them using our Connected Account Invitations API.

Once all the connected accounts have been created, it's time to setup the onboarding experience for your connected users. In order for your connected users to setup their individual Burq Dashboard access and upload a payment method, Burq offers a co-branded onboarding flow. Your account manager will work with you to configure the onboarding experience (screenshot below).

Once the onboarding flow is configured, it's time to invite your connected users to get onboarded. If you provision connected accounts via Burq dashboard, your "accounts page" has a static onboarding link that you can distribute to your connect users. They can then enter the onboarding flow with the email that you used to create the connected accounts. For merchants who create connected accounts via Burq API, you will also receive an onboarding link specific to each connected account from the response body of the create-invitation API. Distributing this link allows your connect users to skip the email lookup step, and thereby offering a better user experience.

Once your connect users enter the onboarding experience, they will be first prompted to setup a payment method. This payment method will be used towards all deliveries fulfilled under the connected account. Next they will be prompted to provide a password for their Burq Dashboard access. The onboarding experience usually takes 3-5 minutes for our average users. Once they complete the onboarding flow, we can either redirect them to any url of your choice, or display a success notice. This can be configured at the platform level.

Now your connect user can log into the Burq Dashboard using their email and the new password they supplied.

Manage Deliveries

Your connect users have full access to delivery management through the Burq Dashboard. They can create, reroute or cancel any delivery under their account.

Perhaps more importantly, using the platform account API key, you can create/cancel deliveries for any connected account on the platform by selecting a store under the connected account.

API merchants have two ways to create deliveries under a connected account.

If you are using Burq Store feature, you can set the store_id field when creating quotes and deliveries to a store from any of your connected accounts. The delivery will be automatically created under the owner account of the store.
If you are not using Burq Store feature, you can set the connected_account_id field explicitly when creating quotes and deliveries.

Webhooks

Webhooks registered under the platform account will receive notifications for all delivery events from their connected accounts. Connected accounts do not have the ability to register their own webhooks at this time.