Shopify B2B checkout: how it differs from DTC.

Same checkout engine, different behavior for company buyers: locked addresses, PO numbers, payment terms, and orders that arrive as drafts for review. What is native, what is Plus-only, and where the edges are.

How is Shopify B2B checkout different from DTC checkout?

Shopify B2B checkout is not a separate checkout. It is the same checkout engine every Shopify store runs, behaving differently the moment a logged-in company buyer reaches it. The buyer's company location decides what happens next: which catalog and prices apply, whether tax exemptions kick in, and whether the order confirms immediately or lands as a draft for merchant review. Buyers assigned to more than one location choose which location they are buying for before adding items to the cart.

The differences are behavioral, not cosmetic:

B2B itself is included at no extra cost on Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Shopify Plus, but several checkout pieces (deposits, checkout-step UI extensions, checkout branding) are Plus-only. The overview chapter covers the full plan picture.

What does a B2B checkout actually need?

Strip the platform away and a B2B checkout has a short, hard list of requirements that a consumer checkout never faces:

• Buying on account. Most wholesale orders are not paid by card at the moment of purchase. The checkout must create an order with an open balance and a due date.
• PO capture. The buyer's own procurement system needs its reference number attached to the order, or the invoice will bounce around accounts payable.
• Review before commitment. Either the seller reviews the order before it becomes binding (pricing, credit, stock), or the buyer's organization approves it before it is placed, and often both.
• Location context. One company, many ship-to locations, each with its own pricing, tax status, and terms.
• Rep-assisted ordering. A large share of B2B orders are keyed in by a sales rep on the phone, not clicked through by the buyer.

Shopify's native B2B checkout covers the first, second, and fourth items well, covers seller-side review with checkout-to-draft, and leaves buyer-side approvals and rep tooling to apps. The rest of this chapter walks through exactly where each line sits.

How do payment terms work at Shopify B2B checkout?

Payment terms are assigned to a company location, a whole company, many companies in bulk, or an individual draft order. The options: no terms (payment due immediately, the default), net 7, 15, 30, 45, 60, or 90 days from the order date, due on fulfillment (payment due after all items ship), or a fixed date, which is available only on draft orders. What the buyer sees at checkout follows directly from the assigned terms:

Deposits are a percentage of the order subtotal only, excluding taxes and shipping, and are exclusive to Shopify Plus. Buyers can pay early from their customer account at any time; after the due date the order displays as "Overdue" but stays payable. One constraint matters more than any other here: Shopify does not automatically capture payment when terms expire. The merchant must charge a vaulted card or record the payment manually. The payment terms chapter covers terms, credit, and collection in depth.

Can buyers enter a PO number at Shopify checkout?

Yes. B2B customers get an optional purchase order number field at checkout, and merchants can add or edit the PO number on a draft order in the admin. The API side is equally complete: a poNumber field exists on both the Order and DraftOrder objects since API version 2023-07, settable through draftOrderCreate, draftOrderUpdate, and orderUpdate. If an ERP or procurement integration needs the PO on every order, it is a first-class field, not a note attribute.

What is checkout to draft (submit for review)?

Checkout to draft is the per-company-location setting that turns checkout from a commitment into a request. With "submit orders as drafts for review" enabled, the buyer builds a cart and checks out as usual, but the final button reads "Submit for approval" and no payment is collected. The submitted order lands in Orders > Drafts in the admin, waiting for the merchant.

The mechanics worth knowing:

• Prices lock by default. Buyer-submitted review drafts preserve the prices quoted at submission, even if catalog prices change afterward. Merchants can unlock a draft to reflect current pricing. Product bundles do not support price locks.
• Manual payment methods hide. Cash, check, and money order do not display during the initial checkout; they become available only after the merchant approves the draft.
• Approval leads to collection. After review, the merchant enters a card, charges a vaulted card, marks the order as paid, or sends an invoice, optionally with a custom message.
• Automatic discounts apply. Discount Functions have applied to review checkouts since June 2024.

Review does not have to be all-or-nothing. A Shopify Function using the Payment Customization API's orderReviewAdd operation can add the review requirement dynamically, based on cart data such as order total or the company location's order count:

export function run(input) {
  const operations = [];
  const totalAmount = input.cart.cost.totalAmount.amount;
  if (totalAmount > 5000) {
    operations.push({
      orderReviewAdd: { reason: "An order over $5000 requires review." }
    });
  }
  return { operations };
}

The operation applies only to B2B checkouts; DTC buyers are unaffected, and it cannot be applied to draft order invoice checkouts or admin draft calculations.

Who creates B2B orders: buyers or reps?

Both, through two different doors.

Buyer-submitted orders

The company buyer checks out on the storefront. Depending on the location's settings, this creates a confirmed order (paid or on terms) or a draft submitted for review. One integration detail trips up many apps: Order.customer always returns the individual who placed the order, the company contact. To attribute the order to the business, use Order.purchasingEntity, which resolves to a PurchasingCompany with the company, contact, and location.

Rep-submitted orders

Staff create a draft order in the admin, select the B2B customer and company location, and that company's pricing, payment terms, and checkout options apply automatically. This is the native path for orders taken by phone, email, or a faxed PO. The full API workflow: draftOrderCalculate to preview totals, draftOrderCreate with a purchasing entity, draftOrderInvoiceSend, then draftOrderComplete to produce the order.

mutation CreateB2BDraft {
  draftOrderCreate(input: {
    purchasingEntity: {
      purchasingCompany: {
        companyId: "gid://shopify/Company/1"
        companyContactId: "gid://shopify/CompanyContact/1"
        companyLocationId: "gid://shopify/CompanyLocation/1"
      }
    }
    poNumber: "PO-4821"
    lineItems: [{ variantId: "gid://shopify/ProductVariant/1", quantity: 10 }]
  }) {
    draftOrder { id poNumber status }
    userErrors { field message }
  }
}

The ceiling on the rep flow is that it lives entirely in the Shopify admin. Shopify has no rep-facing storefront tooling: no way for a rep to see the buyer's account as the buyer sees it, no cart handoff, no territory scoping, no per-rep audit trail. The B2B Supercharge Sales Rep Toolkit adds exactly that layer: secure login-as-customer with every action logged, carts reps build and hand back as links, and accounts scoped by territory. See rep tooling, fixed. Draft orders also double as Shopify's nearest native answer to quoting, covered in the quoting chapter.

How far can you customize Shopify B2B checkout?

Customization runs through checkout extensibility, and the plan you are on decides how much of it you get:

• Checkout UI extensions add custom fields, banners, and validation at defined points. Extensions that render on the information, shipping, and payment steps are available only on Shopify Plus. Thank you and Order status page extensions work on all plans except Starter.
• Checkout branding (colors, corner radius, header and footer) is set through the GraphQL Admin API's checkout branding types, and is Plus-only.
• Shopify Functions (discounts, payment and delivery customization, validation, the review requirement above) are available on all plans except Starter. A store can run at most 25 active payment customization functions. More in the Functions chapter.
• B2B-aware hooks exist for extension developers: usePurchasingCompany identifies a business buyer, and useCheckoutSettings reveals whether completing checkout submits a draft order (orderSubmission === 'DRAFT_ORDER'). Extensions can also read Company and CompanyLocation metafields.

Stores still carrying checkout.liquid customizations must upgrade to Checkout Extensibility to use any of this, and checkout.liquid itself is on the list of things incompatible with B2B. Post-checkout, the same extension model continues into the customer account: see Customer Account UI Extensions.

Where does native B2B checkout stop?

The native checkout is genuinely strong on terms, PO capture, and seller-side review. The edges are specific and worth knowing before you design an ordering flow around them:

Two of those gaps sit squarely in the checkout path. Buyer-side approvals: the B2B Supercharge Account Tools module routes orders over a threshold to the right approver automatically, with full history (details). Quoting on top of draft orders: the Buying Tools module lets your team build quotes line by line that buyers accept and convert to orders in their account (details). For the complete list of native constraints across all of Shopify B2B, see the Constraints Ledger.

Frequently asked questions