B2B ecommerce and trade ordering portals

B2B ecommerce versus an online shop: what changes

A consumer shop shows one price to everyone and takes a card payment. A trade customer expects something closer to their account with you. That changes most of the design:

• Logged-in accounts only, often with several buyers per customer and an approver for orders above a set value.
• Prices per customer: their price list, their discounts, their contract prices.
• Ordering by product code, repeating a previous order or uploading a list, rather than browsing a catalogue.
• Payment on account with a credit limit, alongside card for cash customers.
• Pack sizes, minimum quantities and delivery days per product or per route.
• Several delivery addresses per customer, each branch or site with its own details.
• Invoices, statements and proof of delivery available to download.

Customer price lists and orders: a B2B ordering portal integrated with your ERP

Your prices already live in Sage 200, Business Central or whichever ERP you run: list prices, customer-specific prices, group discounts, quantity breaks and contract prices with start and end dates. The portal should read those rules, not keep its own copy. A second set of prices maintained by hand is exactly what drifts out of step and ends in a credit note.

There are two ways to do it, and the right one depends on your ERP's API and how many price rules you have. The portal can ask the ERP for the price of each line as the customer orders, which is always current but depends on the ERP responding quickly. Or it can sync prices on a schedule and recalculate in the portal using the same rules, which is faster for the customer but needs careful testing against the ERP's own figures. Stock levels follow the same logic: many distributors show "in stock" or "low stock" rather than an exact number.

Each order should land in the ERP as a sales order on the right account, with the delivery address, the customer's purchase order number and any notes. Status then flows back: confirmed, picked, dispatched, invoiced. The portal also checks the account before accepting an order on credit, using the balance and limit the ERP already holds, and can stop or warn when an account is on hold.

This connection is usually the largest piece of work and the one that most affects the timescale. How it is built for each ERP is covered in our ERP integration services. If what your customers need most is to see orders, documents and requests rather than to place orders, a client portal may be the better fit.

Shopify B2B, an ERP add-on or a bespoke portal

Building is not always the right call. If you have a handful of price lists and a standard catalogue, an existing platform is often quicker. We say so on the first call.

Shopify's help centre says B2B is available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, but not on Starter or Retail. On the plans below Plus, catalogues cannot be assigned directly to companies and are limited to three active catalogue assignments; customer-level pricing with unlimited catalogues needs Shopify Plus, which Shopify UK lists from £1,800 a month. ERP-specific platforms exist too: Sana Commerce, for example, sells B2B ecommerce built for SAP and Microsoft Dynamics, including Business Central.

What shapes the price and timescale

The guide how much custom software costs explains how a price is built and gives market reference figures. For a B2B ecommerce project the factors that weigh most are:

• What your ERP's API allows, and whether prices are calculated live or synced.
• How many price rules there are and how many exceptions sit outside the ERP.
• Product data: images, descriptions and attributes for thousands of codes rarely exist in a usable state.
• Payment methods: on account, card, or both, with credit checks.
• Buyer roles and approvals inside each customer.
• Whether it sits alongside an existing consumer shop.

How we would build your trade ordering portal

A building materials distributor could launch first with repeat orders and customer prices for its largest accounts, then add credit checks, approvals and the rest of the customer base. Your sales team and a few trusted customers try every working demo, one every two weeks, under one fixed price per project. The method is on our page about fixed price software development.