How to Set Up and Approve B2B Customers on Shopify

Approving a wholesale buyer on Shopify isn't a single button — it's a sequence of steps in your admin. Here's exactly what happens when you onboard a B2B customer, and how to make it a one-click action instead.

What "approving" a B2B customer actually means

In Shopify B2B, a wholesale buyer isn't just a customer — they belong to a company. For that buyer to log in and see wholesale prices, several things have to exist and be linked together:

• A company record (the business itself).
• A company location (the address the company orders from).
• A company contact — a customer assigned to the company with permission to place orders.
• A link from that location to a B2B catalog / market, which is what applies wholesale pricing at checkout.

Miss any one of these and the buyer either can't log in, can't order, or doesn't see wholesale prices. That's why "just approve them" is rarely just one step.

The manual process, step by step

1. Collect the buyer's business details (company name, tax ID, address).
2. In Customers → Companies, create a new company.
3. Add a company location with the billing/shipping address.
4. Create or find the buyer as a customer and assign them as a company contact with ordering permission.
5. Make sure the location is included in the B2B market/catalog that holds your wholesale prices.
6. Notify the buyer that their account is ready.

None of this is hard — it's just repetitive, error-prone, and easy to get partially wrong (a common one: a company with no main contact, which shows as "not approved to order").

How to make approval one click

A B2B onboarding app collapses all of those steps into a single action. With Tradelane, buyers apply through a form on your storefront, and when you click Approve the app automatically:

• Creates the Shopify company and a location from the application.
• Sets the applicant as the company's main contact with ordering permission.
• Assigns the location to your B2B catalog so wholesale pricing applies immediately.
• Emails the buyer to confirm they're approved.

The buyer goes from "applied" to "ready to order at wholesale prices" without you touching the admin by hand. (For the front-end side of this — the application form itself — see how to add a wholesale application form to Shopify.)

Frequently asked questions

Why does my approved company show "not approved to order"?

Usually because the company has no main contact with ordering permission, or the location isn't linked to a B2B catalog. Both are easy to miss when doing it by hand; a connected app sets them automatically.

Can one customer belong to multiple companies?

A customer can only be the contact of one company at a time. If you reuse a test email across companies, you'll hit errors — use a fresh email or detach the customer from the old company first.

Do I need Shopify Plus for this?

No — native B2B is available beyond Plus now. See do you need Shopify Plus to sell B2B?