B2B E-commerce: Dealer Login, Custom Pricing and Quotes

In consumer e-commerce, everyone sees the same price and the same product list. In B2B, both can change by customer. A building materials supplier might show a long-standing dealer a discounted price and a wider catalogue, while a newly registered business sees standard pricing and a narrower list.

That means the site has to recognise a logged-in customer and serve them a tailored view; hiding prices before login is also a common B2B choice, since manufacturers who don't want competing dealers comparing notes on price keep that information behind an approved account.

Order quantity is another dimension of this difference: a consumer order is usually one unit, while a B2B order is expressed in a bulk unit, a box, a pallet, a cubic metre. If the order form doesn't show that unit clearly, a customer can misread how much they've actually ordered, which causes disappointment on both sides once delivery arrives.

Dealer login means each customer account is tied to its own price list and product catalogue. Shopify's B2B module handles this through the concept of a catalogue: a catalogue holds specific products and prices, and gets assigned to a customer or a group of customers, so the same item can show ten different prices to ten different dealers.

For a business applying for the first time, an approval step sits here too: the account stays on standard pricing until a VAT number or company registration is checked and approved, then it moves onto its assigned catalogue.

Custom pricing means the same product shows a different unit price to different customer groups. The two most common methods are a fixed discount tied to a customer tier (new dealer, established dealer, corporate account) and a volume-based discount that scales with order size (five percent off at ten units, ten percent at fifty).

A furniture manufacturer's dealer network runs both together: dealer tier sets the base discount, order volume adds a further reduction on top. The simpler that pricing logic stays, the less confusion a dealer has when quoting their own customer downstream.

A quote flow is the process where a customer adds products to a request rather than paying immediately. A standard B2B quote flow runs: the customer selects product and quantity, adds a note (custom colour, delivery date), the request lands with the sales team, the team confirms price and lead time and sends the quote back, and the order is created once the customer accepts.

The most commonly missed step is not showing the minimum order quantity upfront; a customer who submits a quote request only to hear 'we don't sell in that quantity' loses trust in the process. Showing MOQ clearly next to the product on the catalogue page heads that off entirely.

• Product and quantity selection, with a note field
• Automatic or manual confirmation of price and lead time
• The quote sent back to the customer for acceptance
• An accepted quote converting into an order

B2B orders are usually invoiced on terms rather than paid upfront; a purchase order number is requested as a separate field on the order form so it matches the customer's own accounting system. Payment terms (30 or 60 days) are set once on the customer account rather than asked on every order.

For a business trading with UK customers, invoicing needs to sit cleanly alongside VAT records and, for larger accounts, credit terms agreed in writing; this integration is planned as part of the initial build, not bolted on afterwards.

B2B e-commerce does not remove the sales rep; it cuts down their routine workload. A standard order moves through the online flow, freeing the rep to focus on bespoke projects, large-volume quotes and new customer conversations. A well-built B2B site turns the rep from someone reading prices over the phone into someone reviewing a quote already sitting in the system.

A building materials supplier's experience shows how that relationship shifts: once the online order flow was in place, the rep stopped taking the same dealer's routine weekly order by phone, and instead spent more time meeting new dealers opening in a fresh territory and talking through growth plans with existing ones.