TL;DR — Everything you need to launch wholesale on Shopify Plus B2B — company accounts, custom catalogs, price lists, NET terms, and the operational integrations that make it actually work.
Why Shopify Plus B2B beats the alternatives in 2026
Three years ago, serious B2B ran on Magento, BigCommerce B2B Edition, or a custom portal bolted onto NetSuite. In 2026 the calculus has flipped: Shopify Plus B2B is now native, mature, and unifies B2B with DTC under one platform.
- Native company / location / buyer hierarchy — no bolt-on apps required.
- Custom catalogs and price lists per company, with rules-based assignment.
- NET 15 / 30 / 60 / 90 payment terms with automated invoicing.
- Draft orders, quotes, and approval workflows out of the box.
- One platform for B2B + DTC + retail (POS) + international (Markets).
- Same Shopify reliability, PCI compliance, and 99.99% uptime.
Company accounts, locations, and buyer hierarchies
Shopify Plus B2B models the real-world buying organisation: a Company contains one or more Locations (each with its own shipping address, tax setup, and assigned price list), and Locations have multiple Buyers (each with role-based permissions: place orders, approve, view-only).
- Company → Locations → Buyers, with permissions per buyer per location.
- Buyers self-serve: order history, reorder, saved carts, address book.
- Catalog and pricing are scoped to the Location, not the storefront — same URL, different buyer sees different prices.
- Companies can be created via API for ERP-driven onboarding.
Custom catalogs and price lists
Every B2B Location is assigned a Catalog (which products it can see) and a Price List (what it pays). Price Lists support fixed prices, percentage off retail, or tiered quantity-break pricing per SKU.
| Pricing pattern | How to model on Shopify Plus B2B |
|---|---|
| MSRP minus % per tier | Percentage discount price list per company tier |
| Negotiated SKU pricing | Fixed-price entries on a per-company price list |
| Quantity breaks | Volume pricing rules in the price list |
| Promotional / contract pricing | Time-bound price list assigned via Flow |
| MOQ / increment | Native min/max/increment quantities per variant |
NET terms, invoicing, and credit limits
B2B on Plus supports invoice-based payment terms (NET 15/30/60/90) natively. Buyers check out, an invoice is generated, and your AR team is notified. Credit limits and approval thresholds can be enforced via Shopify Functions or third-party apps like Slope, Resolve, or Balance for embedded BNPL-for-B2B.
- Native NET terms with email-deliverable invoices.
- Pay-by-invoice + credit-card + ACH all at the same checkout.
- Embedded NET-financing apps absorb the credit risk if you'd rather not extend it yourself.
- Webhooks fire to your AR/ERP system on invoice creation, payment, and overdue events.
Quote-to-order and approval workflows
Most B2B sales still start with a quote. On Shopify Plus, your sales team builds a Draft Order (with custom pricing, line-item discounts, shipping rules), sends it as a paid-link checkout, and the buyer one-clicks to convert. For internal approval flows (buyer assembles the order, manager approves), use Shopify Flow to route notifications and gate completion via a custom checkout validation function.
ERP, OMS, and the back-office integration layer
B2B is where the back office matters. Inventory accuracy, credit checks, and invoicing all live outside Shopify in your ERP. The integration layer is what makes a B2B implementation succeed or fail.
| System | Integration approach |
|---|---|
| NetSuite | Celigo / Boomi connector + custom for non-standard objects |
| SAP S/4HANA | iPaaS (Workato, Mulesoft) or custom middleware |
| Microsoft Dynamics 365 | Standard connectors via Power Platform |
| QuickBooks / Xero | Native apps for invoice + AR sync |
| Brightpearl / Cin7 | Native Shopify apps with B2B awareness |
Rollout playbook: 6–12 weeks to live B2B
- Week 1–2 — Discovery: catalog scope, top 20 customer pricing, ERP touchpoints, AR rules.
- Week 3–4 — Architecture: company/location model, catalog/price-list strategy, integration spec, theme requirements.
- Week 5–7 — Build: B2B-aware theme, custom apps, ERP integration, Functions for cart/checkout rules.
- Week 6–9 — Data load: company accounts, locations, buyers, catalogs, price lists imported and validated.
- Week 8–10 — UAT with 2–3 pilot customers placing real orders end-to-end.
- Week 10–12 — Phased rollout: invite top 20 customers, then mid-tail, then long-tail.
Frequently asked questions
- Can we run B2B and DTC on the same Shopify Plus store?
- Yes — and that's the recommended setup in 2026. Shopify Plus B2B layers buyer-aware pricing, catalogs, and checkout on top of your existing storefront. Same URL, same theme, different price and product visibility based on whether the visitor is a logged-in B2B buyer or anonymous DTC shopper.
- Do we need a separate B2B store?
- Almost never. The exceptions are when B2B requires dramatically different branding, multi-currency pricing per region without using Markets, or strict separation for legal reasons. For 95% of merchants, one store with B2B + DTC is simpler to operate and cheaper to maintain.
- How do we handle tax exemptions for B2B customers?
- Per-company tax exemption is native: upload the resale certificate against the Company in admin, and that company's orders are tax-exempt automatically (with the document on file). Avalara and TaxJar both have native integrations for jurisdiction-aware validation.
- Can we do approval workflows where a manager approves orders?
- Yes — via Shopify Flow + a custom checkout validation function. The buyer assembles the cart, submits for approval, the manager gets notified, and the order can only complete after approval. Native UI for this is on Shopify's roadmap; today we ship it as a small custom app.
- What about EDI?
- EDI is handled via a middleware layer (SPS Commerce, TrueCommerce, or custom). Shopify Plus exposes the order, fulfilment, and invoice events via webhook + GraphQL — the EDI translator sits between Shopify and your trading partners' VANs.
- How does Shopify Plus B2B compare to BigCommerce B2B Edition?
- BigCommerce launched B2B Edition first but Shopify has shipped faster since 2023. Today, Shopify Plus B2B has feature parity on company accounts, price lists, and quotes, plus better checkout, app ecosystem, and unified DTC. BigCommerce still wins for some highly complex catalog-pricing edge cases that we'd handle on Plus with Functions.