I have two questions regarding email requirements when placing B2B orders via the Shopify Admin:
Why are emails required when placing orders via the Admin? We have many Amish customers who do not have email addresses and this requirement prevents us from placing orders for them. This requirement makes sense when orders are place via the website, but not via the Admin.
Why can a customer be associated with only one customer? We have distributors that place orders for several different companies. We need to have the same email address associated with several different companies so they can receive notifications.
These issues are preventing us from making sales and placing orders.
Hi Tara! I’ll need to ask the team whether there are any other options for your first question. Let me get back to you there.
On the second question, there is an option available to you today. Our system requires emails to be unique across companies, which is why you cannot add a single email to two different companies. Note: buyer can be added to every location of the same company though. You can add buyers to all of the companies they represent using a slightly modification to their email. Ex: Buyer A has a regular email of anne@company.com. When they make an account for Company B, they input their email as anne+b@company.com. For Company C, they input their email as anne+c@company.com.
Thanks for the quick response, I’ll be interested to know the results of your inquiry for my first question.
For the second one, I do understand the limitation of the emails. Our previous system did not have this limitation, so we are having to come up with some process work arounds. I just thought I’d double check that there was no other option for this.
Hi Tara - following up after having a chance to speak with the team. It is possible to manually remove the email address on a B2B draft order and complete the order. However, the order will still show the business customer’s primary email once created. We are not currently looking to remove this as a necessary field, because it is required for a B2B customer to login (with new customer accounts). This may change once we release different ways to login to a B2B store, like SMS or phone number.
Thanks for looking into this, however, that doesn’t fully fix the issue we have with retailers who have no email addresses (Amish often do not have a phone either FYI). If it was possible to place orders in the Admin without needing an email address that would be great. I understand wanting to require emails so that retailers can order online, but many of our retailers simply call in or even fax order requests. They are not interested in placing the order online themselves, they would prefer that we do it for them.
This also creates a secondary issue. We have an approval process to allow retailers to sell our products, however, prior to them being approved we will sometimes send out samples of our products for them to try, so we will create them in Shopify to send them a sample order. If there is an email address on a company like this, Shopify says that the company is “approved” for ordering when it really is not. There are also other companies that we have been selling to for years that show as “not approved” even though they are. Is there a way to manually set the approved/not approved flag?
Just another point regarding requiring the email addresses in order to place orders for companies, this is NOT a requirement when placing an order for a D2C customer. Via the admin orders can be placed for customers without needing an email address. It makes sense to allow for the same situation with companies.