What are Shopify’s B2B features?
Widely recognized for its B2C features worldwide in the online retail space, Shopify has strengthened its capabilities in 2023 with on B2B sales to professionals.
The B2B features were introduced in January 2023 during the Shopify Winter Edition.
Our experts had the opportunity to extensively test these features through a significant B2B project for a French cosmetics brand.
In this article, we will explore the key B2B features of Shopify Plus, catering to the professional market.
(Please note that these functions are not available in Shopify’s Basic or Advanced licenses).
List of Shopify B2B Features
Distinct B2B Catalog
With Shopify Plus, you have the capability to create a dedicated product catalog for B2B clients, featuring specific pricing, discounts, and purchasing conditions specific to your target.
For example, here is a product catalog where specific prices are indicated for a segment of wholesale customers.
Customized Pricing and Discounts
Offers the ability to set specific pricing and discounts based on B2B clients, enabling differentiated pricing based on the volume of purchase or customer status.
This is managed at the customer group level, where you can define an overall discount, supplemented with specific reductions based on different scenarios (purchase threshold, products):
Bulk Order Management
Support for bulk orders with large quantities, customization options, and streamlined purchasing processes.
Orders can be automatically validated and sent to the ERP, or they may require manual validation in the Shopify back office.
Company Tracking
You can assign payment methods and payment terms to businesses and track whether they adhere to these terms or not.
Here are the native payment terms offered by Shopify:
Restricted Access
The ability to restrict access to certain parts of the site or specific products, making them available only to authorized B2B clients.
This function is particularly useful for having public prices inclusive of taxes (incl. taxes) and negotiated prices excluding taxes (excl. taxes) for B2B clients.
Professional Account Validation
A process to validate professional accounts to ensure that only authorized B2B clients have access to specific features and reserved pricing.
In addition to this validation process, DATASOLUTION has developed a connector that verifies company information on Infolegale.fr to retrieve legal information.
This helps limit registration to specific APE codes, for example, and ensures data quality to avoid delivery issues.
Recurring Orders
Ease for B2B clients to place recurring orders, simplifying the procurement process.
Integration with ERP Systems
The ability to integrate Shopify with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems for efficient inventory management, order processing, and other business processes.
Quote Management
The capability to generate quotes for B2B clients, facilitating negotiations and transaction finalization.
Customization of the Purchasing Process
Flexibility to customize the purchasing process based on the specific needs of B2B clients, such as adding custom fields to order forms.
B2B Payment Gateway Integration
Support for payment gateways tailored to B2B transactions, including options for account payments or net payment terms.
User Rights Management
Allocation of different levels of access and rights to users within the business, based on their roles.
Customer Account Management Support
Efficient management of B2B customer accounts, including user management, centralized billing, and payment information management.
As seen in the native B2B function list, Shopify Plus offers a comprehensive solution for launching well-controlled B2B projects using native features on this SAAS platform without requiring heavy configuration.
Flexibility is provided through the use of APIs, allowing the development of custom applications for specific functionalities, as demonstrated in the legal information verification during account creation.
While the solution is comprehensive, there is room for improvement. Platforms dedicated solely to B2B still lead in terms of workflow processes. Here are two workflows that are not natively addressable with Shopify but can be managed with workarounds:
Custom Workflows: Tailored to specific roles and responsibilities, ensuring that each stakeholder, from purchasing to management, follows a structured and efficient path aligned with their functions and the overall operational strategy of the company.
Multi-Step Approval Systems: Ensuring that significant orders or unique price requests don’t proceed without the necessary reviews.
Nevertheless, Shopify regularly releases updates on the B2B scope, and it is not far from achieving functional leadership in this type of project!
A project?
Discuss it with our Shopify experts
Yann FRESSIGNAUD
Managing director
