B2B Ecommerce Portal Development

Each account gets a price list at login, drawn from the portal's pricing configuration or synchronised from the ERP as the system of record. The price list applies across every product the account is contracted to buy, so a buyer logging in sees their negotiated price on every line without the seller applying a discount code or having a sales rep intervene. Discount tier configuration lets you set quantity-break pricing per account or product category. A buyer purchasing above a threshold quantity sees the lower unit price applied in the cart automatically. Contract pricing overrides handle specific products or categories where a custom negotiated price sits outside the standard tier structure. Price list effective dates manage contract renewal periods, so a new contract price can be loaded in advance and activated on the start date without a manual update on the day. Price visibility rules mean each account sees only their own pricing. No buyer can view another account's price list, and public pricing is suppressed entirely for logged-in account buyers.

The quote workflow handles situations where the standard catalogue price isn't the right starting point: non-catalogue items, custom configurations, or orders above a value threshold where the buyer's internal policy requires a formal quote before commitment. The buyer initiates a quote request from within the portal, specifying products, quantities, and any relevant configuration or delivery requirements. The request routes to the operator's sales or pricing team, who review it, calculate pricing, and respond with a line-item quote including delivery timeline and an expiry date. The quote appears in the buyer's portal account with full line-item detail. They can review it, query via a messaging thread on the quote record, and accept when ready. Acceptance converts the quote to an order, inheriting the agreed pricing, and the order enters the standard fulfilment workflow. Quote history is accessible to both buyer and operator so the record of agreed pricing is available for future reference without searching email threads.

Purchase order payment lets the buyer enter their internal PO number at checkout and optionally attach the PO document, replacing the card payment step with a credit-based order commitment. Net payment terms (net-30, net-60, or net-90) are configured per account and enforced by the portal, so a buyer on net-30 terms can't exceed their credit limit without the system flagging the issue and holding the order for review. Credit limit enforcement runs in real time: as the buyer adds items to the cart, the outstanding balance is checked against their credit limit, and the checkout surfaces a clear message if the order would breach it. The invoice generates at dispatch, delivered to the buyer's configured billing contact and stored in the portal for the buyer to access. Payment is recorded against the invoice as payments come in, either entered by the accounts receivable team or synchronised from the ERP. The account balance the buyer sees reflects settled and outstanding invoices. A statement of account is available in the portal covering the current period, so the buyer doesn't need to call the credit controller.

A B2B account can have multiple user logins under the same account record, each with an assigned role that determines what they can do in the portal. The buyer role carries full ordering capability: browse, add to cart, and complete checkout up to their individual spending limit. The requester role can create orders and add items to a cart but can't complete checkout without approval. Their order is submitted as pending and routed to the configured approver before it reaches the seller. The viewer role provides read-only access to order history, invoices, and account balance for finance or logistics contacts who need visibility without ordering access. Spending limits per role trigger the approval routing. A buyer below their limit places the order directly; the same buyer above their limit generates an approval request to the account administrator or configured approver for that threshold. The account administrator manages their own users, adjusting roles and spending limits, without needing the seller's support team to make account-level changes.

Account-specific product visibility means each buyer sees only the products their account is contracted to purchase. Not the full catalogue, and not other accounts' contracted ranges. This is enforced at the data level, not by hiding navigation categories, so a buyer can't access a product outside their contracted range by direct URL either. Minimum order quantities are configured per product and enforced at the cart level with a clear message before the buyer reaches checkout. Bulk add-to-cart from a CSV order file covers the common B2B workflow where a buyer has a known reorder list. They upload a file with product codes and quantities; the cart is populated from it, with any items outside their contracted range or below minimum order quantities flagged before submission. Saved order templates let buyers store a standard order list for recurring purchases and populate a new cart from the template in a single action. Order history with reorder capability lets any previous order be added to the current cart with current pricing applied, so the buyer doesn't need to reconstruct the order from memory.

Two-way ERP integration is the operational foundation that makes a B2B portal a real ordering system rather than a frontend that creates a parallel data-entry burden. Inventory availability is pulled from the ERP in real time and shown to the buyer at the product level, so they can see whether a product is in stock before adding it to the order. Order data is written to the ERP when an order is placed in the portal: no manual entry, no CSV import, no end-of-day reconciliation between two systems. Customer account data and contracted pricing are synchronised from the ERP as the system of record, so a pricing change in the ERP propagates to the portal on the next sync without a separate update step. Dispatch and tracking data from the ERP update the buyer's order status in the portal. The buyer sees when their order has been picked, dispatched, and delivered without contacting the seller. Accounts receivable data feeds credit limit and payment terms enforcement in real time, so an account whose balance changes during the day (a payment received, a credit limit adjustment) is reflected in the portal without a nightly batch job.