Support

How does your purchasing system work for resellers?

22 minute read • Last updated 2022-12-01

Before making a purchase, please ensure that you:


Our team licensing system enables the purchase of single or multiple licenses in one transaction. A reseller can buy and manage those licenses all from one account then allocate them to their clients without the client ever having access to any invoices or payment details.

 
As a reseller, you will be the Team Owner -  the person who manages the account.

The Team Owner has teams (clients). Each team is made up of Team Members who use the plugins as part of that team. A Team can consist of just one member or thousands.

The Team Owner can have limitless multiple teams (clients) on one account and can purchase, allocate, revoke and reallocate the licenses as they wish.

The Team Owner can also make one of the Team Members within each team a Team Leader. A Team Leader can also revoke and reallocate licenses in the team however, they cannot make purchases or manage multiple teams.

The Team Owner can demote someone from Team Leader back to Team Member at any time.

 
Team Licensing permissions:

  • Team Owner (Reseller - Manager of the account and of multiple teams on that account) – Purchasing and managing multiple teams • Naming their teams and allocating licenses by inviting team members • Revoking licenses e.g. when someone leaves the company • Reallocating licenses • Making someone a Team Leader • Revoking Team Leader Status • Making themselves a Team Member so that they also have a license on that team. 

  • Team Leader (Client – Member and Admin of team) - Use of allocated license within a team • Allocating licenses by inviting new team members • Revoking licenses e.g. when someone leaves the company • Reallocating licenses • Does not have purchasing permissions or access to payment information. 

  • Team Member (Client – Member of a resellers team) - Use of allocated license within a team • Does not have purchasing permissions or access to payment information.

BECOMING A RESELLER

As a reseller, in order to begin purchasing licenses you will need to become a Team Owner with an email address that you will use for administration.

If you would like to be a Team Owner, you will need to sign up for the Free Trial with an email address that isn’t already using an active (paid for) subscription.

If you already have an account with no active purchased subscription this is okay. If you had an account on our old system (pre-September 14 2019) you can reactivate it on the new website by clicking on the “Forgot Password” link and requesting a new password. You should then receive an email inviting you to reset your password. This will then allow you to login on the new site. 

As a Reseller you are only going to be managing the teams, you won’t actually be using the software yourself. This means that once you purchase a team, you won’t add yourself to the team as a member. If you do this by accident, you can revoke the license.  

So, to become a Team Owner please do the following:

  • Create an Astute Graphics account by signing up for the Free Trial with an email address that doesn't already have an active (paid for) subscription.

  • Once signed up to the Free Trial, contact us with the account email address

  • We will give this account Team Owner permissions and reply with confirmation

  • You are then ready to purchase your clients team licenses.

  • Please note that if you have already taken the above steps since July 2020, you won't need to do it again)

Important
Our Software is SaaS software. The user needs to sign into their astutegraphics.com account via the Astute Manager software which is installed locally (Windows and/or macOS). The plugin(s) are installed on request via the Astute Manager along with associated licensing information. You'll need to have direct internet access (not behind a proxy), and establish a secure connection with https://account.astutegraphics.com/ to download, activate, update and regularly maintain activation status. It is not possible to operate the Astute Graphics plugins without direct internet access.


USING THE TEAM LICENSING SYSTEM AS A TEAM OWNER

When you are granted Team Owner status, your dashboard view will change from this… 


To this… 

  
You are now ready to purchase licenses.

PLEASE NOTE: All licenses purchased in one transaction will expire on the same day, this purchase constitutes a team. If you wish to purchase more licenses later, you can either add additional licenses to the existing team at a pro rata rate (see "Adding additional seats to an existing team as the Team Owner") or you can create an entirely new Team. As a Team Owner, it’s possible to have as many teams as you wish on one account.

To purchase Team licenses, go to the Teams section of your account dashboard and click Buy licenses.

Use the + key to select the number of licenses that you wish to purchase.

Now enter the address details and continue to payment. PLEASE NOTE: If you have a VAT number, it would be necessary to add the VAT number at this stage to avoid being charged VAT (please see - Do I have to pay VAT?).

 
Next, you will be prompted to enter your card details before clicking to pay.

 

We accept major debit and credit cards from customers in every country, these include:

  • MasterCard

  • Visa

  • American Express

PayPal is also available as a payment option at checkout.

After paying you will receive confirmation that your payment was accepted.

  
You can then click Manage Team to begin inviting the Team Members (recipients) to your purchased team.
You should have the email addresses of all Team Members that your client is purchasing for. You will then invite each one of those Team Members.

  

When going to the Teams page and selecting Manage Team, you will now see the following options:

  • Add yourself to the team in your case this option is to be ignored. Clicking this will add you as a Team Member and issue one of the licenses to you, but as a reseller you do not want to do this. 

  • Clicking on Invoice will download a PDF of the invoice for the purchase.

  • The Send Invite option allows you to invite a Team Member by entering their email address. 

  

To send an invite, click in the Email address field, enter the email address of the invitee and click Send Invite. 

 

An account is now created for the invitee (unless they have already created one through a Free Trial) and you will see notification that the invitee has been sent an invite email.

 
It’s strongly recommended that you send all these invites at the same time. So for example if your client has purchased 10 licenses, you should have a list of 10 email addresses. Once you have paid you should then immediately send the invite to each of these email addresses.


  

ACCEPTING AN INVITE TO JOIN A TEAM AND BECOME A TEAM MEMBER

After you have sent your invite, the invitee (your client and/or their colleagues) will receive an email that looks like this… 

  
The invitee should click on Accept Invite.

If the invited Team Member is not logged in, they’ll be prompted to login to the website.

If the invited Team Member is already logged in, they’ll be taken straight to their dashboard where they will see the invite.

  

Once logged into their account, the invitee should click on Accept Invite (circled in green) to be added to the Team and issued with their license. In the event that this person was invited by mistake, they can click on Decline Invite (circled in red).

 

The invitee is now a Team Member and will see the following message on their dashboard.

 
The Team Member should now go to the Downloads page where they can Download the installer. To get started they can follow the guide to Installing and activating your plugins

We allow installation and activation on up to two computers used exclusively by the same person. For example: If that person has a machine only they work on in the office, and their own machine at home, they can install and activate on both machines (this applies to both Windows and/or Mac OS computers, be they desktop, laptop, tablet, etc).


MANAGING TEAM MEMBERS AS A TEAM OWNER

As soon as you have sent the invites, name the Team. We recommend that you do this immediately to enable you to keep track of what you have purchased and who for.

To name a team, click on the pencil symbol next to Team Name > Type the chosen team name into the field below > then click on the file symbol to save it.

    

The given name will now show in the Team Name field at the top of the page (circled below in green). This name can be edited at any time. 

Here (under Allocation) you will also see how many of the licenses have been allocated (circled below in red).

And under Updates Until (circled below in blue) you will see the expiry date of the licenses. When you reach that date, the subscription will require renewing to continue using the plugins.

 

On the example shown here, at this point the Team Owner has only invited 1 Team Member but has purchased 5 licenses. All licenses (no matter what date they are allocated) will expire on the date given under Updates until and so it’s advisable to invite the other members as soon as possible. 

Additional Team Members are invited in the same way, by going to the Invite Team Member field and entering the email address of the invitee. 

Invitees who haven’t yet accepted the invitation will show as Pending.


Once invitees have accepted the invite you will see their status has changed to Member.

 

Now you can make one of the members a Team Leader. This person will be the administrator of their team and is likely the person you have liaised with.

When this option is selected, you will be prompted before confirming that you definitely want to make the member a Team Leader.

 

A Team Leader has some of the functionality of the Team Owner, but with restrictions. 

As Team Owner you can demote the Team Leader back to just a Team Member at any time. 

  

TEAM LEADER ACCOUNT

When a Team Leader logs into their account they will see the following dashboard.

 
They have some Team Management permissions with the option (like the Team Owner) to allocate, revoke and reallocate licenses if they so wish.

They cannot however, enable or revoke a Team Leader status, manage multiple teams or purchase licenses.

 

REVOKING AND REALLOCATING LICENSES AS TEAM OWNER

As Team Owner, if you wish to revoke a Team Member license (for example if that member is leaving the company) this can be done quite easily and a Team Leader can also do this.

Just log into your account >  go to Teams > then select Manage Team.


Now click on the bin symbol next to the Team Member.


You will be asked if you’re sure that you wish to remove the user from the team and revoke the license.

  
After confirming, a message will show that the member has been removed and you will see that there is now one less license allocated. You are now able to send a Team Invite for that license to someone else.

 

  

Meanwhile, if the Demoted Team Member logs into their account, they will see that their volume license has been removed and their dashboard will now show the option to Pay Now if they wish to start using the Astute Graphics tools again. This account is no longer linked to the team in any way.

 

BUYING ADDITIONAL LICENSES & CREATING NEW TEAMS AS TEAM OWNER

You may at some point wish to buy additional subscription licenses for new employees. If you want to, you can purchase more licenses on an existing team at a pro rata rate (see "Adding additional seats to an existing team as the Team Owner" further along in this article) or you can purchase will become part of an entirely new team.

In this example, the Team Owner is purchasing an entirely new team for a new client and they wish to purchase just one license for this client.

On the Teams page, you should select Buy Licenses .

 
Your address details are already there from the previous purchase so next, you should click Continue to Payment (remembering to check that you have added your VAT number if you have one).


You will be asked to add your card details again, before clicking the Pay button. Again, your client cannot see your payment details.

 
You can now click Manage Team to invite your client to become a Team Member of this new team.


You will now see that you now have another team under your management (due to these licenses being purchased at different times).


In this new team, you can now name the team and manage it in just the same way as the other one.

 
As Team Owner you can have as many teams as you wish. There is no limit to the number of members that you have on one team, as long as that team is purchased in one single transaction.

 

The Teams can be given any name at all and these names can be edited at any time.

ADDING ADDITIONAL PRO RATA SEATS TO AN EXISTING TEAM AS THE TEAM OWNER

Team Owners also have the option to add additional seats pro rata at any time. This option will disappear from a team 30 days before the expiry when a team is approaching its renewal date. After this time, if you wish to add more seats you will need to wait 14 days for the “Extend” option to appear next to your team.

To add seats:

  • Click “Add seats"

  • (Please note, for any expired teams or those approaching expiry you may also see an “Extend license” option - if you see this for the team that you wish to add seats to, please select “Extend license” instead and then add an additional seat as part of that process ).

  • For however many additional licenses you add, you will be charged the cost of that license only for the remaining days before the entire team expires (at which point you’ll be invited to renew)

  • In the screenshot below for example, the customer has added 1 additional team member, and because there are only 134 days remaining for the active team, this 1 license will cost less than the usual price.

  • You can add as many additional licenses as you wish

  • Next, when you are sure that you have selected the correct number of additional seats, select “Continue to payment

  • You will then be prompted to enter your card details and click the “Pay” button

RENEWING/EXTENDING TEAMS AS THE TEAM OWNER

2 weeks before a team is due to expire, you will see the option to “Extend license” next to the team.

To find this, log in to your customer account and select Teams from the dashboard, you won’t find a billing portal however, any expired teams or those approaching expiry within 14 days will have an “Extend license” option next to them.

You have 2 months after the team expiry date to “Extend" the team license for another 12 months. 2 months after its expiry date, the team will disappear and it will be necessary to start again by buying a new one.

Clicking on Extend license will take you through to an address confirmation page. Here you can also add your VAT number if necessary. At this point you will also have the option to add or remove seats if you wish using the plus or minus button.

If all address details are correct, please click “Continue to payment” to complete payment.