Onboard B2B Help for Shopify: Wholesale Applications and Approvals

The form is the quick part. The value sits in what happens when someone presses approve.

Designing the application. Choosing the custom fields you need to vet a retailer, such as resale details, store type or expected order size, and mapping each answer to a B2B metafield your team can filter on later.

Approval presets per buyer type. Presets that assign catalogs, payment terms and tax settings at approval, with conditional rules so the right catalog lands automatically. Pricing strategy behind those catalogs is work for wholesale and B2B specialists.

Bringing current stockists across. Cleaning and loading companies, contacts and locations through the unlimited CSV bulk import, so existing buyers never have to apply.

Locking the wholesale side. Setting up Storefront Lock and Checkout Lock so trade prices and checkout stay with approved buyers.

Buyer self-service. On Growth and above, letting company contacts manage locations, invite colleagues and assign roles through the self-service portal.

What fires after approval. Customer tags and Shopify Flow, so a new company sets off the welcome email, CRM update or sales-rep alert you already rely on.

Where Starter covers it. A brand approving a few retailers a month into one wholesale catalog can usually build the form and a single preset in-house.

Approval workflows encode business rules. Look for someone who asks about your wholesale terms before they open the app.

Describe your buyer types. Retailers, distributors, trade accounts. A strong candidate maps each to a preset with its own catalog and payment terms, and asks who on your team approves which.

Check their native B2B knowledge. They should explain how companies, locations, contacts and catalogs relate in Shopify B2B, because Onboard B2B writes straight into them.

Ask about incomplete applications. The right answer uses a revision request, which lets the buyer fix it. Rejecting closes the application for good.

Ask them to do the usage math. They should estimate your monthly approvals and pick a plan from that, since approvals beyond the allowance are billed one by one.

Where proposals fall short. Rebuilding company records by hand when the CSV import covers them, or no plan at all for buyers you already have.

One buyer type, end to end. A small paid first task: form, preset, one test application approved and one test order placed from the new company account.

Approvals drive the bill. As of October 2026, Starter is $50 a month with 10 approvals included, Growth $100 with 25 and Enterprise $300 with 200. Extra approvals cost between $2 and $1 each, getting cheaper as volume rises. Every plan has a 14-day trial.

Self-service starts on Growth. The buyer portal, contact invitations and location management need Growth. Starter covers the form, approvals and email notifications.

Enterprise buys service. White-glove onboarding, a dedicated account manager and priority support.

The form lives in customer accounts. It runs in the customer account portal as an extension, so test it from a buyer's login rather than the admin preview.

Roles matter. Buyers need the Location admin role to use the self-manage tool, so set roles at approval.

Rejection is final. A rejected applicant can't resubmit. Use a revision request when you only need more information.

Plan requirement not on the listing. The listing doesn't state which Shopify plans it supports. Confirm your plan includes native B2B companies before installing, and read the B2B and wholesale guide if you are new to it.

All 4 profiles list store setup and management, and three each add development, design and marketing: the spread a wholesale portal launch tends to need.