It sounds like your client’s project has a bunch of custom requirements—everything from a wholesale portal and custom order fields to tailored invoicing and packing slip functionality. Since you’re avoiding Shopify Plus, you’ll need to mix and match some third-party apps and possibly a bit of custom development. Here are some suggestions to help point you in the right direction:
Consider using a robust form builder app like Hulk Form Builder or POWr Form Builder to create a custom page where users can apply to be wholesalers. These apps let you capture details such as Contact Name, Email, Phone, Company info, and even a comment area.
Wholesale Account Management:
For managing wholesale customers (pricing, quotes, etc.) without Shopify Plus, you might look into apps like Wholesale Club or Wholesale Gorilla. While they primarily focus on wholesale pricing, they might complement your custom wholesale application form.
Custom Order Fields (on Orders)- Adding Custom Fields:
To capture additional details like “Customer Purchase Order Number”, “Delivery/Shipment/Pickup” options, and “Requested Date”, you can use apps like Infinite Options or Bold Product Options to add extra fields at checkout or on the cart. However, due to Shopify’s limitations (non-Plus), these fields are often added as cart or line item attributes, so make sure they integrate well with your order processing workflow.
Quote Requests & Invoicing- Quote Request:
For generating quotes from orders, consider an app like Request a Quote or Quote Machine. These tools let customers build and send quote requests based on custom pricing rules.
Invoicing & Custom Packing Slips:
For invoices that include custom fields like customer purchase order numbers, net & discount terms, and the ability to send invoices to multiple email addresses, apps such as Sufio or Order Printer Pro can be highly customizable. They let you design invoices and packing slips with additional fields as needed.
Putting It All Together- Integration:
Since you have multiple components (wholesale portal, custom checkout fields, quote requests, and invoicing), plan how data flows between these systems. You might need some custom code to ensure that the custom order fields show up on invoices and packing slips.
Developer Assistance:
Given the complexity and that you’re not on Shopify Plus, consider hiring a Shopify Expert for the integration work. This can help ensure that all the apps and customizations work seamlessly without manual data entry.
By combining a few carefully chosen apps with some custom tweaks, you should be able to build a workflow that meets your client’s needs without the high cost of Shopify Plus. Hope this helps, and feel free to ask if you need more details on any specific part!
For the form part you can create a simple page with some information then embed Google Form for collecting wholesale inquiries. This is what we did when I had a store, it helped to easily track and save the data for later analysis by multiple team members.
Thank you so much for this comprehensive reply! Aside from having one app that does everything - this is exactly what we were looking for. Thanks Carlos!
If you ever consider upgrading to Shopify Plus B2B in the future, you can configure payment terms directly inside Shopify & then use Upro to assign and enforce credit limits for these buyers. Additionally, the app also embeds a credit & financial summary inside customer accounts that lets buyers email invoices to their team right from within the accounts section.
The ordering portal (existing wholesale customers placing orders). That’s SparkLayer or Wholesale Gorilla territory. Pricing tiers, reordering, catalog management. Proper wholesale suite stuff.
The registration form (new customers applying to become wholesalers). Different problem. You need a form that collects business info, sends it to you for review, and lets you approve or reject. Most people use Helium Customer Fields for this, or get it bundled inside a wholesale suite like BSS.
The catch with BSS and similar suites: they inject code into your theme to work. If your D2C store is running fine, that’s a risk. I’ve seen merchants in App Store reviews who had to rebuild their theme after code conflicts. One couldn’t fully remove BSS code even after uninstalling.
I’m building B2B Onboard. Just the registration and approval part. Runs on App Proxy so it never touches your theme. Still pre-launch. Doesn’t do wholesale ordering or pricing. You’d pair it with a separate tool for that.
Depends on whether you want one app for everything or the right tool for each job.
Hey @AnonymouUser020, I work on B2B tooling for Shopify so I can offer a slightly different perspective from the “stitch together 5 apps” approach.
For the registration/application form part specifically, there’s an architecture pattern worth knowing about: Shopify App Proxy.
Some generic form builders can create Shopify customers from submissions, but they weren’t designed around the B2B approval workflow. An app built specifically on App Proxy can handle the full loop:
Serve a registration page directly on your store’s domain (e.g., yourstore.com/apps/wholesale-signup) so it looks and feels native, not like a third-party embed
Write directly to the Shopify Customer API, meaning when someone fills out the form, a customer record is created with the right tags (like wholesale-pending) automatically
Handle the approval workflow so the admin gets notified, reviews the application, approves or rejects, and the customer tag changes to wholesale-approved
The advantage over repurposing a form builder: everything from submission to approval to tagging lives in one system. No glue code between separate apps.
For your client’s specific fields (Contact Name, Company Name, Address, Website, “how they’d sell the product”), all of that can be stored as customer metafields, which means it’s queryable in Shopify admin, not buried in an email somewhere.
For the ordering side (PO numbers, delivery options, requested dates), that’s a different layer. You’ll likely still need a checkout customization or cart attribute approach. But separating the registration/onboarding concern from the ordering concern makes the whole system more maintainable than trying to find one app that does everything.
Worth looking at apps specifically built for B2B registration rather than repurposing generic form builders. The data flow is much cleaner.
Just adding a note from Sufio since invoices, quotes, and packing slips were mentioned.
Sufio can help with the document side of this setup, creating professional invoices, quotes/pro forma invoices, credit notes, and other customer-facing documents for Shopify orders. It can also include important B2B details on documents, such as company information, VAT numbers, tax details, PO numbers, and custom fields, depending on how those details are stored in Shopify.
That said, Sufio would usually be one part of the stack rather than the whole wholesale portal. For wholesale pricing, catalog access, customer approval, and reordering, you’d likely still want a dedicated B2B/wholesale app or custom setup. Sufio can then handle the invoicing and document workflow once those orders are created.
Hope that helps clarify where Sufio can fit into this kind of setup.
One angle not mentioned: you may not need a full custom portal for the ordering side. A lot of B2B sellers just let wholesale customers email their order or PO and convert it from there.
Our app, LevelOps PDF to Order, turns those emailed POs, PDFs, or spreadsheets into Shopify draft orders automatically, capturing the customer PO number and keeping it on the order. Works on any plan, no Plus required, and you review each draft before confirming. It won’t cover the application form or packing slips, but it removes the manual order-entry piece, which is usually the biggest time sink. (Disclosure: I’m the founder.)