B2B Webshop >> Adding VAT number

[BrandingReal]

Hi,
We're about to move a current B2B webshop to Shopify, but we struggle with the lack of VAT metafield on the customer page in Shopify. I've heard that people use 'Notes' or 'Address 2' metafields on the customer page, but I would like a more sustainable solution. Since we need to secure that VAT number will sync in our Finance system as well.

How do other B2B sites coop with this challenge?
Regarding custom prices, then the app 'Bold Custom Pricing: Wholesale' seems fair to control custom prices/discounts to each B2B customer.

Thanks! 🙂

Regards,
Simon

[dropship_helps]

Hello @BrandingReal 

Your current B2B webshop in which platform? 

[BrandingReal]

Hi,
The current shop is on OpenBizBox CMS platform.
The reason why we wanna move this B2B shop to Shopify, is because we have another Shopify B2C shop that works fine, but the poor B2B options in Shopify seems to block this opportunity.

[BiokinFR]

Hello, Did you find a good solution? We have the same problem.

[JimmyRittenborg · Accepted solution]

Notice that a metafields are now natively available for Customers 🤩

Hope that helps, in terms of a solution. See more in the changelog, here https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/metafields-now-available-on-orders-collections-and-customers 

[BiokinFR]

Thank you for your help! I'll have a look at the link to try to add a meta field for the VAT number.

[BrandingReal]

Hi,
Did you manage to add VAT in the new metafields? It would really appreciate some of your learnings here 🙂
I'm about to walk through the current Shopify guide.

Regards,
Simon

[BrandingReal]

Thank you so much for this hint 🙂
The new metafields will hopefully work as a solution to the missing VAT field on customers.
Do you have any experience adding such VAT metafield on customers?

Regards,
Simon

[BiokinFR]

Hello Simon,

I try to figure out how it works, for the moment I didn't manage to add the meta fields (but I'm quite new on shopify 😉 )

[Lpi]

Hi,

Were you able to find a solution for the VAT number using metafields ?

It's not complicated to create a metafield on the Shopify customer backoffice page for the VAT. Just create the customer.metafields.xpto.VAT and he will appear on the backoffice.

What I'm trying to understand is how to expose this field for input/edit on the customer account page. For this we need to edit the customers/account.liquid template and add some code to expose that field for input/edit.

I'm not sure if we can add code on the template file to achieve that goal.

Any clues ?

Regards,

Luis

[BrandingReal]

Hi Luis,
Thanks for your follow up here.
I didn't proceed with the VAT issue, and haven't tried out working with Metafields yet.

Actually, we left out he VAT from our B2B customers, but I'll admit that it causes some headache.

I'll will definitely try out adding VAT to the metafields, like you describe.
Regarding the customer account, how about grabbing such input, using Customer Fields forms in the frontend? Or am I misunderstanding your point? 🙂
Regards,
Simon

[Lpi]

Hi Simon,

Thanks for your reply.

Are you refering to the Customer fields app? That app will do for sure the job, but has an additional cost per month just for exposing one field.

Since I'm not able to reach a solution with metafields I'm trying another approach. Using the Shopify backoffice field customer.note and expose it for input on the register account page the user can enter the VAT. The VAT entered I can see it on the Shopify backoffice, what I'm trying to achieve is to give the user also the possibility to input that value or change it later on the account page. For that I need to add some code to the liquid template of that page. Trying to understand how to do it, but still not sure if this field can be expose for input/edit on that page like the others (Name, LastName, CompanyName...).

Regards,

Luis

[Xtrahunt]

Hi Luis,
Okay, I understand your issue here then.
Currently, I've added 2 metafields to customers (VAT and secondary email). The issue for is then, that none of these metafield data is tranferred to my accounting system.
The reason for us, to add a secondary email, is for invoice purpose for certain customers.
Our accounting system relies on an integration from third party that most likely will not prioritize including metafield informaton, so that's an issue 🙂

Regards,
Simon

[Lpi]

Hi Simon,

Were you able to create this two metafield on the front end in the customer account page for input/edit ? Or only in the Shopify backoffice ?

I´m also using a third party software for the integration with my accounting system. And since Shopify does not have natively the VAT field we are trying to create a workaround to solve this.

Regards,

Luís

[Xtrahunt]

Hi Luis,

No we haven’t embedded the new metafields in our frontend, since our Empire theme from Pixel Union, only supports such dynamic content in their blocks on product pages, not customer pages.

We might ignore this issue for now, and focus on the lack of proper work flow between Shopify and Accounting system.

We really need to enrich our customer information with secondary mailadresses etc from the metafields to our accounting system.

What about Google Feed?

[Xtrahunt]

Hi Luis,
Maybe you can use this guide, in order to embed your metafields in your frontend of customer pages: https://www.identixweb.com/shopify-customer-metafields/
Good luck