B2B ordering portal with customer-specific prices: the 12 rules it has to enforce

A B2B ordering portal with customer-specific prices has to enforce twelve rules so the customer no longer types the price: four on the price (group list, net price per customer, quantity tiers, metal-indexed lines), four on the order (minimum and pack sizes, credit limit, approval, repeat orders) and four on the account (payment terms, delivery addresses, VAT, documents). A portal that only shows a catalog with your prices covers part of the first four. Every rule left to a person is a place where a wrong price or a wrong order gets through.

Check your portal

A rule marked “by hand” is not broken: it depends on someone remembering it on every order. The “Where you are exposed” list shows what happens on the day they don’t. If the price rules come out red or amber, start there: the price is what the customer sees and what ends up on the invoice.

The customer no longer types the price

A B2B order passes through several hands: the customer who places it, the sales rep who checks it and the back office that invoices it. Every point where someone types a price or a discount is a point where it can go wrong. That is why a portal earns its place on price integrity first and convenience second: the customer picks product and quantity, and the price comes from the rule, not from whoever is typing.

The same goes for orders that still arrive by email: they need the same rules, applied as the order is read. That is covered in AI order entry from email, and the rest of the series is in the guides index.

Rules 1 to 4: the price

1. Price list per customer group. Installers, wholesalers and export customers each see their own list, and only that one. If a customer falls into two lists, the rule that decides between them has to be written down. “Lowest price wins” is one such rule, and it is the one Shopify applies when one company location has two catalogs (below).
2. Customer-specific net prices. The price on screen already carries that customer’s conditions. If the discount is applied when the order is entered, it can be another customer’s discount, or a second one on top of a price that was already net.
3. Quantity tiers that never contradict. Tiers apply on their own by quantity, and buying more never gives a higher unit price. With tiers typed by hand, one row ending up inverted is easy to do and hard to spot.
4. Metal-indexed lines that update. A copper tube or cable cannot carry a fixed price in the portal: it carries a formula, and when the index moves the price is recalculated and someone approves it before it is published. The formula is in how to build a metal-indexed price list.

Rules 5 to 8: the order

5. Minimum order and pack sizes. If a product sells in boxes of 100 or full rolls, the quantity rounds to that multiple when the order is placed, and the order cannot go out below the minimum. Otherwise someone calls back to fix it, or the warehouse opens a box.
6. Credit limit and blocked accounts. An order over the customer’s credit limit, or from a blocked account, stops before it is confirmed, not after it is picked.
7. Order approval by the distributor. The order arrives pending and someone on your team confirms it. That is where exceptions show up: a special price, a new address, a product being phased out.
8. Repeat orders at today’s price. Repeating is not copying. Each line is checked against today’s catalog and priced today, with the reason for every change: inactive product, no price, quantity rounded to the pack size. Nothing is dropped in silence.

Rules 9 to 12: the account

9. Payment terms per customer. The agreed terms flow from the customer to the order and the invoice, and set the due date. With a default term, collection chases the wrong dates.
10. Delivery addresses per customer. Each customer picks from its own delivery addresses, kept apart from the billing address, instead of typing a new one on every order.
11. Tax treatment per customer. Which VAT applies in each case is for your tax adviser, and this guide does not cover it. What matters here is where the decision lives: on the customer and delivery record, not in the cart or in the hands of whoever enters the order.
12. Invoices and delivery notes downloadable. The customer downloads its documents and its price list without asking by email. If downloads are also logged, “I never got the invoice” can be checked.

What Shopify B2B covers, and where it stops

Shopify B2B is an off-the-shelf portal. Since 2 April 2026, the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans include, at no additional cost, up to 3 active B2B catalogs (assigned via markets), company profiles, payment terms and volume pricing (Shopify changelog). This is what its own documentation says, as read on 11 October 2026:

• Customer-level prices are Plus only. Assigning catalogs directly to specific companies and company locations, which is what gives customer-level pricing, is exclusive to Shopify Plus (features by plan).
• Three ways to set a price. An overall percentage adjustment, a fixed price per product or per variant (which overrides the percentage), and volume pricing with up to 10 quantity breaks, plus quantity rules: minimum, increment and an optional maximum. Each company location can have up to 25 catalogs and the store up to 10,000 (B2B pricing with catalogs). None of the three is a formula: a copper-indexed price is calculated elsewhere and loaded as a fixed price (inferred from that documentation).
• Lowest price wins. If several catalogs assigned to the same company location include the same product at different prices, the store shows the lowest. If one catalog is assigned to the location and another to the market, the location’s price applies (B2B pricing with catalogs). By plain logic, a customer with two catalogs of its own always pays the lower of the two, whatever the agreement says.
• 500 lines per order. That is the maximum for a B2B order (B2B requirements and considerations). A longer restocking order has to be split.
• What it does carry per company. Payment terms (Net 7 to Net 90, or due on fulfillment), shipping address, catalogs, tax exemptions and checkout settings; the option to require a location’s orders to arrive as drafts, to review them before they are confirmed; and reorders that duplicate a past order, adding all its items to the cart (B2B features).

Against the twelve rules, on our reading of that documentation: it covers parts of rules 3, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 11; rule 8 is covered as a duplicate of the order, and the page does not say whether each line is checked again; rules 1 and 2 depend on how catalogs are assigned, and assigning them per customer needs Plus; the metal-indexed line (4) is not something it does on its own.

How HeavyDeals does it

In HeavyDeals each customer logs in and sees only its own: its catalog with its net prices, its orders and its invoices. Indexed products are priced by a formula (copper index, EUR/USD and margin), each customer with its own discount, and a recalculation is not published until someone on your team approves it. Orders arrive pending validation until you confirm them. Repeating an order checks every line against today’s catalog and prices it today, with the reason for each change, including quantities rounded to the pack size. The customer downloads its price list as a PDF, with gross, discount and net per reference, and its invoices, and you see which invoices were downloaded. See how it works.

Every figure and rule was checked against the sources above, on the date shown next to each; last review of this guide: 11 October 2026. The examples use illustrative figures, not today’s quotes. This is not legal or tax advice. Written with the help of AI and reviewed by the HeavyDeals team.