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Buyer portal guide

Wholesale buyers use your normal storefront and the normal customer account — signed in with the same passwordless (OTP) email login as any customer. What changes is a set of extra account features that appear once a customer is a company buyer. This page walks through them, so you know what your buyers experience and can answer their questions.

Switching identity: personally vs for the company

At the top of the account, a company buyer gets a Purchasing for selector. It offers:

  • Purchasing personally — shop as a normal retail customer: public catalog and prices, personal discounts, loyalty, and personal store credit. Nothing about the company applies.
  • Purchasing for a location — one entry per company location the buyer can order for. Catalog, prices, quantity rules, payment terms, addresses, and tax all follow the selected location.

The page reloads on a switch so pricing follows immediately. If the buyer switches with items in the cart and anything material changes — prices, availability, tax, shipping — the cart is re-checked and the buyer confirms before continuing. Until a buyer has made a choice, nothing is assumed: checkout asks them to pick who they are purchasing for.

When “Company purchasing only” is on

Settings → B2B wholesale → Company purchasing only is on by default, and it removes the personal half of that choice for company contacts. A buyer then sees only their company locations in the switcher — no Purchasing personally option — and if they can order for just one location, it is already selected when they sign in, so they land straight on company pricing.

If an old cart or a stale saved choice still points at personal shopping, the buyer gets a short message (“This store only accepts company purchases”) and a pointer back to the switcher; the order is refused rather than quietly placed at retail prices. Customers who are not company contacts never see any difference. Turn the setting off and the Purchasing personally option comes back for everyone who has a company.

The company screen

Account → Company shows the buyer where they stand:

  • company name and account status;
  • the active location, and the list of locations they can switch to;
  • payment terms, credit limit, and current outstanding balance where applicable.

Orders and invoices

  • Orders — the buyer’s orders, including company orders they placed. If the location routes orders through merchant review, a Submitted for review section shows their pending submissions.
  • Invoices — every unsettled terms order, however old, with amount due and due date. Each carries a Pay now action to a hosted payment page; when payment settles, the invoice leaves the list. Reminder emails (if you configured them) link to the same place.

Location Admins see more

A buyer you assign as a Location Admin gets two extra surfaces, scoped to the location(s) their grant covers (one location, or the whole company if you granted company-wide access):

  • Location balances — a view in Invoices that shows every buyer’s orders and open balances at the location, not just their own. Paying is still personal: a Location Admin sees the location’s balances but pays their own invoices, not other members’.
  • Location addresses — an editor for the location’s saved shipping and billing addresses, so an authorized buyer can keep them current without waiting on you.

A plain Buyer sees neither — only their own orders and balances, and no address editor. See buyer roles.

Checkout for a company

Company checkout looks like normal checkout with a few differences:

  • a banner names the company and location the order is for;
  • shipping offers the location’s saved company address — plus a one-time address only if the location allows it; billing always uses the saved billing address;
  • a PO number field appears (required if the location requires it);
  • with terms enabled, the Payment plan step offers Pay in full now or Pay on terms; “on terms” follows the location’s schedule — due when invoiced, Net 7–90, due on fulfillment, or due on delivery (COD), stated before you confirm;
  • if the location requires a deposit, the terms option is replaced by Pay a deposit now, which names the amount charged now and the balance due later before the buyer pays.

Reorder

From a past order, reorder re-adds its items to the cart — at today’s availability and today’s contextual prices, under the buyer’s current identity. Items that are no longer available (or no longer offered to that location) are flagged rather than silently restored, and nothing is ever re-added at its historical price.

Quick order

Account → Quick order is for buyers who order from a product list: they paste or type SKUs with quantities, Sellerlane resolves each line against what their location can actually buy, flags anything unavailable, and adds the rest to the cart in one step.