Sound familiar?
- Trade customers email or phone orders that staff retype into the system
- Each customer has its own price list, kept in a spreadsheet only two people understand
- Stock on the website is wrong because the feed runs once a night
- Supplier price files arrive in five formats and take a day to load
- Big retail customers want EDI and you are keying their orders by hand
- Credit control finds out about an overdue account after the next order has shipped
Key facts
- B2B portals with customer-specific price lists, tiers, credit limits and account terms
- Stock and price sync with Unleashed, Linnworks, Mintsoft, Sage 200 or your warehouse system
- Accounting integration with Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Business Cloud and KashFlow
- EDI with retail customers via EDIFACT or an EDI provider's API
- Bulk product loading and supplier feed imports from CSV, XML or FTP
- GS1 barcodes and product data managed in one place
- Fixed-price quote after a free chat; you own the code
Why wholesale outgrows standard ecommerce
Wholesale looks like ecommerce from a distance, but the rules are different. A retail shop has one price. A wholesaler might have hundreds of price lists, volume breaks, contract prices for named customers, pack sizes and account terms. Orders come by email, phone, rep visits, EDI and a website, and they all need to end up in the same order book with the right price.
Standard platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce can do some B2B, and for simpler catalogues that is the right choice. Where pricing logic is complex or the trade portal needs to talk to Sage 200, a warehouse system and an EDI hub at once, bespoke usually works out cleaner than a stack of plugins fighting each other.
We have done this kind of work for a long time. dijitul developments built bulk product loading, stock feeds and KashFlow integration for OpenCart shops from about 2011, including automatic customer creation, invoices on payment and stock and price sync.
B2B ordering portals that trade customers will use
A good trade portal is fast for people who know what they want. That means quick order by SKU, reorder from history, CSV upload for big orders, saved lists and clear stock availability. Behind it sits a pricing engine that resolves the right price for that customer, that quantity and that date, so the portal and the sales team always agree.
Account features matter as much as the shop: invoices and statements pulled from your accounting system, credit limit and overdue checks before an order is accepted, multiple users per customer with approval rules, and delivery addresses per branch. See customer portal development for more on how we build logins and permissions.
Systems wholesalers integrate with
Most of the value is in the integrations. The ones we see most often:
- Accounting: Xero (API with OAuth 2.0), QuickBooks Online, Sage Business Cloud Accounting or Sage 200, and KashFlow.
- Stock and warehouse: Unleashed, Linnworks, Mintsoft, Peoplevox, Brightpearl, or a 3PL's own API.
- Marketplaces: Amazon Selling Partner API and eBay APIs for wholesalers who also sell direct. See marketplace integration.
- EDI: retail and catering customers often require EDIFACT orders (ORDERS), despatch advice (DESADV) and invoices (INVOIC), usually through an EDI provider.
- Couriers: label and tracking APIs so despatch details flow back to the customer automatically.
We design each sync around one owner for each piece of data, with queued jobs, retries and idempotency keys so a timeout never creates a duplicate invoice.
Compliance points that shape wholesale software
- Packaging EPR: Environment Agency guidance says businesses with over one million pounds of turnover handling more than 25 tonnes of packaging a year must report packaging data. Importers and brand owners in wholesale are often obligated, so packaging weights belong in your product data.
- AWRS: alcohol wholesalers must be approved under HMRC's Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme and check that their trade buyers are too. A portal can store and check URNs before accepting alcohol orders.
- VAT: mixed zero-rated and standard-rated lines, EU sales via Northern Ireland, and Making Tax Digital for VAT all depend on clean tax codes flowing into your accounting software.
- UK GDPR: trade customer contacts are still personal data, so access controls and retention rules apply.
Pricing engines: the part most systems get wrong
The pricing engine is where wholesale projects succeed or fail, so we design it first. A typical rule set has a base price list, customer groups with percentage discounts, named-customer contract prices with start and end dates, quantity breaks, pack size conversions (buy by the case, stock by the unit), promotional prices funded by suppliers, and minimum margin checks that stop a rep selling below cost.
We model those rules as data, not code, so your team can change a contract price without a developer. Each order line stores which rule produced its price, so when a customer queries an invoice you can see exactly why they paid what they paid. The same engine serves the trade portal, rep tablets, EDI orders and the sales office, which ends the familiar problem of the website and the phone order disagreeing.
Price changes from suppliers flow in through the feed importers, and the engine can recalculate sell prices by margin rule, flag contracts that have become loss-making, and schedule the change for a future date so customers get notice.
Getting started
Tell us how orders arrive today and which systems hold stock, prices and customers. After a free chat we map the flows, then give you a fixed-price quote for a defined scope. A common first phase is the pricing engine and trade portal with accounting sync, followed by EDI or marketplace work. Related reading: ecommerce and ERP integration and software for retailers.
What we deliver
- A trade ordering portal with logins, quick order, reorder and account history
- Customer-specific pricing, discounts and minimum order rules in one engine
- Stock, price and order sync with your warehouse and accounting systems
- Supplier feed importers that validate and load product data automatically
- EDI order, despatch and invoice processing
- Credit limit checks and statement downloads tied to your accounting data
How it works and what it costs
Every project gets a fixed-price quote after a free initial chat and a short scoping stage. You own the code and the data.
Free chat
Tell us the problem in plain English: what you do now, what goes wrong and what "better" looks like. No charge, no obligation.
Scoping
We map the processes, systems and data involved, agree what is in and out, and write it down so there are no surprises.
Fixed-price quote
You get a fixed price for the agreed scope, or a phased plan for bigger builds, so you can start small and prove it works.
Build and test
We build in short stages you can see and try, test against real data, then go live carefully with a rollback plan.
Hand over and look after
You own the code and the data. We can host it, support it and keep improving it, or hand it to your own team.
Frequently asked questions
Can a trade portal show each customer their own prices?
Yes. dijitul builds a pricing engine that resolves price lists, contract prices, volume breaks and promotions per customer account, then the portal, the sales team and the invoice in Xero or Sage all use the same result.
Should we use Shopify or WooCommerce B2B features instead?
Sometimes. If your pricing is simple and you do not need deep ERP or EDI integration, a standard platform is cheaper to run. We recommend bespoke when pricing rules, credit control or integrations would need several plugins that do not work well together.
Can you load supplier price and product files automatically?
Yes. We build importers that collect CSV, XML or spreadsheet files from email, SFTP or supplier APIs, validate them, flag changes and load them. We have built bulk product loading and stock feeds since our OpenCart work around 2011.
Do you handle EDI?
Yes. We usually connect to an EDI provider's API, which handles the network connections, and map EDIFACT orders, despatch advice and invoices to your sales orders. Direct EDIFACT processing is possible where a provider is not wanted.
Can the portal stop orders from accounts on stop?
Yes. The portal can read balances and overdue amounts from your accounting system and apply credit limit rules before accepting an order, holding it for approval instead of rejecting it if you prefer.
How much does a wholesale portal cost?
We do not publish prices because scope varies a lot. dijitul gives a fixed-price quote after a free chat and scoping, and can phase the work so the first release is small and useful.
Related
Tell us what you need to build
Free chat, clear scope, fixed-price quote. You own everything we build.