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Sellerlane Help Center

B2B / B2C isolation FAQ

Wholesale and retail run from the same store, so the platform draws hard lines to keep them from bleeding into each other. The rule of thumb: every benefit and balance belongs to exactly one purchase identity — the person, or the company location — and never crosses over.

Do my retail discounts apply to company orders?

Only if you let them. Every discount defaults to Personal purchases, so the promotions you were already running keep behaving exactly as they did before you turned wholesale on. None of them reach a company order until you change that discount.

To reach companies, open the discount and set Who it’s for to Company purchases or Both, then optionally narrow it to named companies, branches or location groups. See discounts on company orders.

Does a company order use up a buyer’s personal discount allowance?

No, but not for the reason people expect. On a company order the usage counter belongs to the company location, never the employee.

  • A “one use only” code at Sharma Distributors’ Pune office is shared by every buyer there. Three colleagues, one use.
  • The same customer with five branches effectively gets five uses, because each branch carries its own counter.

A buyer’s personal allowance on their own weekend shopping is untouched either way.

Does loyalty earn on company purchases?

No, in both directions. Personal loyalty points neither accrue on nor can be redeemed against company purchases. An employee spending their employer’s money earns nothing personally, and their points balance is untouched by anything the company buys. Redeeming returns “Personal loyalty points are not available for company purchases.”

When the same person shops Purchasing personally, loyalty works exactly as normal.

Read this as a feature: employer spend never mints value into an employee’s personal account, which is the first question your customer’s finance team will ask.

Can store credit pay for a company order?

No — neither kind can.

  • Personal store credit belongs to the customer and can only fund their personal purchases. The credit box is hidden entirely on a company checkout.
  • Location store credit is a balance you record against a branch, but there is nowhere at checkout or on an invoice where a buyer can apply it. Treat it as a recorded goodwill figure, not a tender, and settle it by crediting an unpaid invoice, refunding cash, or running a company-scoped discount.

The two balances are separate accounts, and neither can fund the other.

What about gift cards, bundles and upsells?

  • Gift cards are not blocked on a company cart, but applying one makes terms and deposits refuse: “Remove gift cards and store credit before paying on terms or by deposit.” A gift card can only be used on a company order paid in full at checkout.
  • Bundles and upsells are refused on company carts outright and must be removed before the buyer can check out.

How is tax kept separate?

By purchase identity. A personal purchase is taxed by the customer’s own exemption flag; a company purchase is taxed by the purchasing branch’s flag — including when that branch is explicitly not exempt. A personally exempt buyer ordering for a taxable branch pays tax. See company tax exemption.

Who at a company can see whose orders?

A Buyer sees only their own. A Location admin sees every order and unpaid balance at the branch they cover, and can reorder or file a return on a colleague’s order.

Two things stay closed even to a Location admin:

  • Paying a colleague’s invoice. Only the person who placed an order may settle it online. A Location admin can see the whole branch’s debt and chase it internally; you can always record a payment yourself from the order page.
  • Seeing a colleague’s quote. Quote visibility is own-quote only. A quote thread carries purchase orders, negotiated rate sheets and a written conversation, so opening it would expose a discussion and not just a number.

The full matrix is in buyer roles.

Can a company order be Cash on Delivery?

Yes — but company COD is not your retail COD reused for companies. It is a payment term: the order is placed unpaid, the balance comes due when the order is delivered, and you record the cash then. The consumer COD rules, fees and split rules you set for retail never reach company carts, and no COD fee is added.

You enable it deliberately per branch — select a Cash on delivery method for the location and set a Due on delivery term — and the unpaid amount sits under that branch’s credit limit like any other terms balance. See due on delivery (COD).

Can a company buyer also shop for themselves?

Only if you allow it. Settings → B2B wholesale → Company purchasing only decides, and it is on by default: a customer who is an active contact of a company can purchase only for their company location, never personally. That is the safe default.

While it is on, a company buyer sees:

  • no “Purchasing personally” option in the purchasing switcher — just the company locations they can order for;
  • their location already selected when they sign in if they can only order for one — company catalog and prices from the start, with no choice to make. A buyer covering several locations still picks which one;
  • a message pointing them back to the switcher if an old personal cart or a stale saved choice is still hanging around (“This store only accepts company purchases”). The order is refused at checkout, not quietly repriced.

Turn it off and the same person gets both modes: Purchasing personally for their own shopping and Purchasing for their company location for company orders, with all the isolation rules on this page applying between them.

Customers who are not company contacts never see any of this. Ordinary retail shopping on the same storefront is identical either way.

What does “Ordering incomplete” mean on a company location?

The branch exists but cannot yet take an order, and the banner lists exactly why. The usual reasons:

  • No payment method — no gateway is selected for the branch and no terms schedule is set, so checkout would have no way to collect or defer payment.
  • No shipping address — the branch’s address book has no active saved address and one-time shipping is off.
  • No active buyer — nobody is attached who can order.
  • Credit decision required — terms are selected but neither a credit limit nor explicit Unlimited was chosen.
  • Company or location not active — a hold or an archive is blocking commerce.

Fix the listed items and the branch becomes orderable; the held buyer invitation can then be sent. This state is not a hold — it simply means setup is unfinished.

Do company orders change my customer analytics?

Personal facts stay personal. A company purchase does not increase the acting buyer’s personal lifetime spend, does not end their “first-time buyer” status, and does not feed personal-segment order facts — those update company-side records instead. Personal orders continue updating the customer as before.

Similarly, past personal orders linked to a company location are visibility only — they are labelled as linked history and never counted as B2B sales.

Does enabling B2B change anything for retail buyers?

No. Retail checkout, pricing, discounts, loyalty and COD behave identically whether wholesale is on or off. The only storefront-wide knob is the optional Prices for signed-out visitors setting — and its default (Show prices to everyone) changes nothing.

Do my wholesale prices leak to logged-out visitors or Google?

No. Catalog pricing needs a signed-in customer, so feeds, sitemaps and structured data stay on your base prices. A competitor browsing anonymously sees your retail prices, never a contract price.

Can one customer belong to two companies?

No — one customer, one company. A person buying for two businesses needs a second email address, which creates a separate customer record. Removing them from one company frees that email to be added to another.