Getting started

This page takes a shop from nothing to its first punchout with punchout.dev and points to the page that covers each step.

Two ways in

	Instant tag	Account first
Where you start	The tag generator on the punchout.dev landing page	Sign up
What you enter	Your shop’s domain	Email address, password, company name
What you get at once	A shop ID, the script tag, a test punchout link and a link to keep the shop	An account, an organisation and the portal
Lifetime of the shop	Provisional: deleted after 7 days unless you claim it	Part of your organisation from the start

The instant tag

1. Enter your shop’s domain under Create your tag and click Create. If you enter a full URL, its path becomes the page a punchout lands on.
2. punchout.dev creates a shop for that origin and shows the script tag, a hint where to paste it, Open a test punchout on your shop and Create your account to keep this shop.
3. Paste the tag into your shop. See Install the tag.
4. Open the test punchout link. It runs a real OCI punchout in your shop, and the cart comes back to punchout.dev instead of a buyer system. The link works once and expires after 60 minutes.
5. Keep the shop by claiming it (below).

A provisional shop has no account behind it. It gets a small daily budget of its own and is deleted after 7 days unless somebody claims it.

Claim a provisional shop

The link Create your account to keep this shop opens the portal’s signup page.

• New account. Sign up on that page. The shop joins your new organisation once you confirm your email address with the link in the confirmation email. Until then, the shop belongs to nobody.
• Existing account. On the same page, choose Sign in under “Already have an account?” and sign in. The shop joins the organisation you are working in, and the portal opens the shop’s Setup tab. Your role must be owner or admin, and your plan must allow one more shop.

An expired, unknown or already used link shows “This link has expired.” Claiming starts the shop’s Sandbox period (see below).

Account first

1. Sign up with your email address, a password of 12 to 128 characters and your company name. The company becomes your organisation, you become its owner, and it starts on the Sandbox plan.
2. Open the confirmation link in the email. It is valid for 24 hours. An account that is never confirmed is deleted after 7 days.
3. In the portal, open Shops and click New shop. A name and an origin (https://shop.example) are enough.

The setup checklist

Every shop has a Setup tab with a checklist, and Onboarding in the sidebar shows the progress of all shops. The portal compares each step with the shop’s current state on every visit, so a step you complete somewhere else turns green on its own.

Step	Done when	Where you do it
Shop created	The shop exists	Shops
Snippet embedded	punchout.dev has recorded the shop for the first time: a successful cart detection through a setup link, or a punchout launch	Your shop, with the tag from the Embed tab
Cart detected	A cart container was verified through a setup link	Setup tab, then your shop
Buying system added	The shop has at least one buyer credential	Buyers tab
Test punchout	A test punchout came back within the last 30 days	Setup tab

The first open step in the order embed, detect, buyer, test carries the badge Up next. When all five are done, the tab shows “This shop is ready.”

Note

The tag stays silent on a normal page view, so Snippet embedded remains open after you paste it. The step turns green with the first successful cart detection or the first punchout launch, test punchouts included. A hosted OCI, cXML or IDS Connect launch reaches punchout.dev before your shop opens, so it ticks the step even where the tag is missing. Check now reloads the step.

A selector typed in by hand on the Cart tab does not complete Cart detected. That step needs a verified container.

What the Sandbox allows

New organisations start on the Sandbox plan. Each shop gets a Sandbox period that starts when the shop is created in the portal or claimed. The dashboard and the shop list show the days left.

During the Sandbox period	Allowed
Setup links and cart detection	Yes
Test punchouts with OCI, cXML and IDS Connect	Yes
One enabled buyer credential, to prepare a go-live	Yes
A productive punchout from a real buyer system	No, refused before the shop opens

Every launch that is not a test punchout counts as productive. The buyer sees a refusal instead of the shop:

Launch	What the buyer gets
OCI launch directly at the shop	The panel says “Punchout is not enabled for this shop yet. Please contact the supplier.”
Hosted OCI or IDS Connect launch	A page “Punchout not enabled”
cXML launch	The buyer system receives a refusal instead of a start page

The portal emails every owner of the organisation when buyers are being turned away, and 7 days before a shop’s Sandbox period ends. Once the period is over, punchout.dev reads no carts for that shop: cart detection and test punchouts stop until the organisation moves to a paid plan. Plans and Sandbox explains how the plans work, and the pricing section lists the prices.

Read next

Follow these four pages in order:

1. Install the tag shows the script tag, where it goes on each platform, the allowed origins and the Content Security Policy.
2. Cart detection explains the setup link and how punchout.dev learns where your cart is.
3. Test punchout runs a real round trip through your shop, with the portal in the role of the buyer system.
4. Connect a buyer covers buyer credentials, launch URLs and allowed return hosts.

After that, Team covers roles and invitations, and Security and privacy explains what data moves where.