Shopify B2B: Native Features, Quoting and Limitations

Your wholesale customers already have agreed prices and payment terms. You want them to log in, order their usual products and stop sending the same purchase order to your sales team every fortnight.

You may already have what you need in Shopify. We’ve built B2B portals that did everything the customer needed using Shopify’s own features. They didn’t need a B2B app.

Quoting needs a closer look when your sales team spends much of the day negotiating. The price may change several times before anyone places the order, and whoever picks it up needs to know which version the customer agreed to. Complicated pricing rules and customers who need approval before buying also deserve attention before you commit to Shopify.

Plan availability, prices and tax documentation checked September 2026.

The built-in tools

In Shopify, you set up the company your customer buys for and its locations. That might be one trade counter or several branches. When the customer signs in, they see the products and prices available to their location and can order on the terms you’ve agreed.

You choose the products and prices in each catalogue. If you’ve agreed that a customer can pay later, you can also set payment terms for their account. For the customer placing the same order every fortnight, Shopify’s built-in B2B tools let them reorder from a previous purchase and add their purchase order number.

If your ERP already holds the agreed prices and payment terms, keep it as the source of truth for those records and feed them into the store. Maintaining the same agreement manually in both systems gives your team two places to update whenever it changes.

We covered the operational decisions that come before the build in B2B Ecommerce: What You Can’t Just Digitise.

Do you need Shopify Plus for B2B?

Native Shopify B2B is available on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. You don’t automatically need Plus to sell wholesale.

Basic, Grow, and Advanced allow up to three active catalogues across all your B2B markets. If your customers buy from the same few wholesale tiers, that may cover what you need. Individual customers with their own price agreements are a different consideration. Only Plus lets you assign catalogues directly to companies and company locations, and it removes the limit on B2B market catalogues.

Plus also includes deposits and partial payments. On the other plans, you’ll need the new Shopify Markets to use B2B catalogues. Adapting the B2B storefront and checkout for different markets requires Advanced or Plus. Basic and Grow don’t include those contextual experiences through Markets.

“B2B” in the brief isn’t a reason to pay for Plus. An app can also handle separate customer agreements, so compare that cost before choosing Plus for account pricing alone.

Quantity discounts: check the per-variant rule

Say you offer a discount for buying 24 units of a product. Do all 24 have to be the same colour, or can the customer mix colours to reach the discount? Shopify’s native quantity rules and volume-price thresholds apply per variant. The first arrangement fits. Combining colours to reach 24 won’t qualify under that same rule.

If your prices depend on contract rules or live market data, check how the calculation will work when a customer orders. Seeing the right prices in a catalogue doesn’t answer that question.

If the ERP already calculates those prices, keep the calculation there. Scheduled updates work when the price remains valid between updates, but a price that must reflect the market at the moment someone orders needs a live calculation or a quote with an expiry. When the store can’t get a valid price, holding the order for review avoids accepting one that someone will have to correct later.

Where the calculation doesn’t already exist, check existing B2B products before commissioning custom pricing work.

Quoting

If a customer calls to agree on a price, your team can enter it in a Shopify draft order, lock the product prices, and send an invoice. You can also require customers at a company location to submit orders for your review.

That can be enough for occasional negotiation. Once revised quotes go back and forth every day, keeping correspondence tied to the order becomes more useful. SparkLayer is a B2B app that adds trade pricing and ordering to your existing store, and its quoting engine keeps messages and revisions with the quote. The buyer can accept the agreed version as an order without your team having to reconstruct the agreement from an email thread.

Your reps can already take orders through draft orders in Shopify’s admin. You can limit which company accounts they can access using sales staff permissions, available on every plan, although the number of staff accounts still depends on your plan. SparkLayer gives reps a storefront they can order through, and they can switch between the customers they look after. We’d ask the reps to try both with orders they actually take.

SparkLayer’s pricing is separate from Shopify’s native catalogues. You also manage customer groups and payment rules in the app. Its ordering experience and native Shopify B2B checkout can’t run together in the same customer session so be clear which system will handle the B2B order before you build around it.

You don’t need Plus to use SparkLayer. If the app handles your B2B pricing and ordering, identify what else you’d be paying for before taking a Plus subscription.

SparkLayer also offers saved shopping lists, which may suit buyers who order the same items. Shopify already lets them reorder from previous purchases.

Your approval isn’t the buyer’s approval

Your team reviewing an order before accepting it is one process. Your customer’s employee needing permission from their manager to place it is another.

Shopify gives company contacts ordering-only or location-admin permissions. Your team accepting a draft order doesn’t mean the buyer’s manager has approved the spend.

In SparkLayer’s company accounts, a limited user can prepare an order for the account owner to complete or cancel. That fits a customer whose staff put the order together but leave the purchase to the owner.

If the order needs to go through a manager, then finance, with spending limits for each person, ask to see that whole sequence demonstrated. The process above doesn’t establish that SparkLayer can do it.

Payment terms won’t enforce a credit limit

A customer with a £10,000 credit limit and £9,000 outstanding places a £2,000 order. Giving them 30 days to pay would still leave them £1,000 over their limit. Payment terms tell you when the money is due. You also need to decide whether to accept that order.

If the ERP holds the account balance, use it for the credit check. Include orders taken by phone and by reps; otherwise, the website could approve another purchase against a balance that’s already out of date. To enforce that £10,000 limit, hold the order for finance approval or require payment before releasing it.

Selling overseas

An overseas customer needing another language or currency wouldn’t, on its own, persuade us to build a second store. Shopify Markets handles both for B2B, with domain settings available too. Budget for Advanced or Plus if you need its contextual storefront and checkout. Basic and Grow don’t include them, and the documented B2B multicurrency setup requires Shopify Payments.

Separate stores become worth considering when regions run their own trading operations or need distinct inventory. You’ll then have more settings and integrations to maintain. Make that decision based on how the business operates, and use Shopify’s store-type guidance to confirm the setup.

VAT exemptions and trade-price display

You can record a VAT number and set tax exemptions for each company location in Shopify. Don’t take the presence of that number as proof that it’s been checked. Include the VAT number check and exemption settings in account setup, because Shopify’s VAT validation at checkout requires Shopify Tax and doesn’t currently work in B2B-specific checkouts.

If you ship from a UK warehouse to UK or EU customers, that feature’s automatic reverse-charge exemption won’t apply anyway. It requires an EU fulfilment location, even for guest checkout or Shop Pay.

Don’t assume a VAT exemption will turn your retail price into the trade price you intended. Shopify warns that a tax-exempt customer can still pay the full listed price if you’ve included tax in your prices. Country-based tax settings and fixed prices can change how this works.

Set the intended trade price explicitly and test what the customer is charged. For cross-border orders, use the tax treatment agreed with your accountant for the goods and fulfilment route. A customer's EU VAT number alone is not a reason to make all their orders tax-free.

What does Shopify B2B cost?

Shopify’s UK Plus pricing starts at £1,800 a month on a three-year term, or £1,950 a month on a one-year term. That’s £21,600 a year at the three-year starting rate, before you’ve paid for the build or integrations. More complex businesses may pay a variable platform fee.

For SparkLayer, count your monthly B2B orders and the reps who need access before comparing fees. Pro costs US$299 a month with quoting, up to 150 orders and five reps included. If 100 orders and two reps cover what you need, Growth with quoting costs US$198. Starter with quoting is US$98, but only covers 50 orders and one rep. You’ll still pay your Shopify subscription on top.

If you expect more than 150 orders a month, ask for an Enterprise quote. Pricing starts at US$499/month. Exceeding an allowance doesn’t stop ordering, but SparkLayer will contact you about the plan. Additional rep seats cost US$39 each per month on Starter, Growth and Pro. SparkLayer bills in US dollars, so your sterling cost will move with the exchange rate.

You can try the basic ordering setup on SparkLayer’s free Basic plan for Shopify, limited to three price lists and five orders a month. Use the paid-plan trial to test the features your team will need.

Moving your data and configuring the store also cost money. Much of the build budget will depend on the integrations: using an existing ERP connector is a different job from getting live prices and credit checks working across several systems. Allow for ongoing support, plus any payment fees and taxes.

Adding SparkLayer changes what you’re comparing

If SparkLayer will handle most of the buying process, judge Shopify and SparkLayer together. Shopify’s feature list alone won’t tell you whether the proposed setup is a good fit.

Keeping Shopify may make sense if it already runs your retail business. Your catalogue and integrations are there, and your team knows how to use it. A new B2B project doesn’t have those same reasons to stay, so BigCommerce B2B Edition deserves a comparison for its quoting and rep ordering. It also includes shared shopping lists.

Compare costs over the same period and count the work left for your team, such as correcting a price or copying an agreed quote into another system. If you already pay for Shopify retail, separate that existing cost from what B2B adds.