I want to open a website that only accepts purchase orders, no online payments

Shopify Discussion
1

We are looking to open a wholesale website for our trade customers only, we already have a retail website with Shopify so to try and keep things easy we ideally would like to keep using Shopify with our new site instead of going with another platform.

I’ve been searching the internet for days it seems but can’t seem to find all the answers. This is what I’d be looking for.

~ Trade account only, customers would need to request a trade account via a form and we would review and either accept or decline.

~ Hide the prices of our products until customers have signed in.

~ We would only want to take purchase orders only, so customers can ‘place’ an order but we would have to review it first and do our checks e.g. make sure we have the stock available and quote an accurate postage price. We would then send them an invoice after we have made our checks. (This is the part I’m really stuck with, I know I could set up a bank transfer manual payment but this wouldn’t really work as the total order amount wouldn’t include the postage quote yet)

Any help would be greatly appreciated

2

Hi @jonhos1989 ,

Yes, you can achieve all of this on Shopify. Use a form builder app like Shopify Forms or Jotform to let trade customers apply for an account, then manually approve and tag them as wholesale. To hide prices until login, use an app like Locksmith or Wholesale Lock Manager. For orders, instead of direct payments, use Draft Orders or apps like Order Printer Pro so customers can submit purchase orders. You can then review stock, calculate postage, and send an invoice manually (via Shopify or tools like QuickBooks) before requesting payment.

3

The approach above is solid, draft orders are the right mechanism for what you’re describing.

One thing to think through: once your trade customers are approved and start ordering, how are they actually sending you those purchase orders? If they’re emailing them, a PDF, an Excel sheet, a written list, someone on your end still has to manually re-enter everything into Shopify to create that draft order. At low volume that’s fine, but it becomes the main bottleneck as the account list grows.

Full disclosure: we built LevelOps specifically for this step. Your customer emails their PO to a dedicated address, and it automatically creates the Shopify draft order, products matched against your catalog, customer assigned, ready for you to review, adjust shipping, and send the invoice. The review-before-payment workflow you described stays exactly the same, you just skip the manual re-entry.

5

For Problem 1, some form builder apps support approval processes and workflow automation. You may find this blog helpful.

For Problem 2, you can update your theme code as shown below:

{% if customer and customer.tags contains 'wholesale' %}
  {% render 'price', product: product %}
{% else %}
  <a href="{{ routes.account_login_url }}">Login as a wholesale customer to view pricing</a>
{% endif %}

In this example, wholesale customers are identified by the wholesale customer tag that was assigned in the first step.

6

Hi @jonhos1989,

For this kind of workflow, I would avoid sending customers straight to checkout.

A cleaner setup is:

  1. Let approved customers submit the items they want as a purchase request or quote request.
  2. Review the request internally.
  3. Check stock, shipping, and any quantity rules.
  4. Create a Shopify draft order.
  5. Send the invoice or checkout link after review.

Draft orders are usually the right Shopify feature for the “review first, payment later” part.

The main thing to watch is manual re-entry. If customers send purchase orders by email, PDF, or spreadsheet, someone still needs to turn those lines into a Shopify draft order. That may be fine at low volume, but it can become the bottleneck as order volume grows.

8

I realize this is from a while ago, but I’m exploring the same setup. For those who’ve implemented this, how do you handle international wholesale clients wanting to place POs? Any tips for managing shipping quotes and taxes efficiently? Also, has anyone tried LevelOps recently, and how well does it integrate with Shopify in real-time? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!