B2B Ecommerce Australia: Trade Portals for Wholesalers and Manufacturers

B2B means business to business. In ecommerce it is a store where your customers are other companies: retailers, trade contractors, venues or distributors. They log in to an account, see the prices agreed for that account, order in cartons or pallets, and pay on terms instead of by card upfront. A retail store sells to the public at one shelf price. A B2B store sells to known accounts at many prices.

It is the logged-in part of a B2B store where an approved account does its ordering. A dealer portal is the same idea for manufacturers who sell through dealers, often with spec sheets, warranty forms and parts lookups added. Wholesalers tend to say trade portal and manufacturers tend to say dealer portal, but the job is the same.

A food wholesaler letting cafes reorder online before a delivery cut-off. A building supplies distributor giving each trade account its own prices and a 30-day account. A manufacturer of pumps or fittings letting dealers check stock and order spare parts. A homewares brand running a retail store and a stockist portal from one catalogue. Each one moves orders out of email and phone calls and into a system that writes straight to the books.

Yes, and for brands with both channels it is usually the better design. One catalogue and one stock pool serve both sides. Retail shoppers see GST-inclusive prices and pay at checkout, with Afterpay or Zip if you offer them. Logged-in trade accounts see their own price list, ex GST if you choose, and can pay on account. The rules about what each group sees live in the store, so staff stop keeping two price files in step.

It depends on where your prices and stock live today. If you already sell retail on Shopify, Shopify B2B or Shopify Plus is usually first to test. If Cin7 Core or Unleashed already holds your customers and price tiers, their own portals or a store fed from them may be enough. Complex quoting, approvals or large catalogues point to Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce or a custom portal. We start from your own price and stock data.

B2B ecommerce platforms for manufacturers and distributors ↗

Yes. Shopify wholesale selling runs on Shopify’s own B2B features. Its help centre lists B2B features for the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans, and not for Starter or Retail. Every supported plan gets company accounts, payment terms and quantity rules. Below Plus you can run up to three active B2B catalogues. Plus has no catalogue cap and adds catalogues set per company, deposits and partial payments. A wholesaler with dozens of negotiated price lists will usually end up on Plus or need a workaround.

Shopify Help: B2B features by plan ↗

Shopify includes B2B in the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, so there is no separate B2B licence. On 31 October 2026 its Australian pricing page listed Basic at AUD 42 a month, Grow at AUD 114 and Advanced at AUD 431, each billed yearly, and Plus from AUD 3,700 a month. Add any apps and the build work for companies, catalogues and your accounting connection. Fees change, so check the page before you budget.

Shopify Australia pricing ↗

Cin7 Core’s help centre says each product can carry up to 10 price points, assigned to customers or to a sale order. For a wholesaler with simple tiers that can be enough. Businesses that need a branded storefront, retail and trade in one place, richer product content or SEO usually put a store in front of Cin7 and let Cin7 keep stock and pricing.

Cin7 Core: different prices for a customer ↗

Yes. Unleashed has its own B2B store. Its help centre says the B2B Portal pushes product details, images, customers, stock and pricing to the store, imports orders into Unleashed every 10 to 15 minutes, and syncs order status back every 15 minutes. If a 15-minute gap matters, for example on fast-moving stock or cut-off times, factor that into the design or put a store with a direct connection in front.

Unleashed: B2B Portal introduction ↗

Two parts that share one product database. A public catalogue that ranks in Google and answers buyer questions with specs, drawings and compliance documents. A logged-in portal where approved dealers and distributors see their prices, stock and order history. Many manufacturers launch the public catalogue with a request-for-quote button first, then add the ordering portal once account pricing is mapped. That splits the cost into two signed phases.

Yes. Trade orders become Xero invoices on the right account, with GST coded correctly and the payment terms that account has. Card payments from retail or trade checkout are recorded against the payout so the bank feed reconciles. The important decision is which system owns customers and credit terms. If Xero does, the store reads from it rather than holding its own copy.

Yes. MYOB Business suits a wholesaler whose stock and pricing are fairly simple, with orders posted in as invoices. MYOB Acumatica is a fuller ERP, so the portal can read customer price lists, stock by warehouse and credit status from it and post orders back as sales orders. We map every field with your bookkeeper or ERP partner first, so nothing lands in the ledger in a shape they have to fix by hand.

Yes. NetSuite and Odoo are full ERPs, so they usually own items, customers, price levels and stock, and the portal reads from them and sends orders back. QuickBooks Online is closer to Xero in role. Our current trade store work includes a WooCommerce store fed by Odoo for stock, pricing and SKUs, so the website never keeps a second copy of that data. We confirm the connection method against your exact edition before quoting.

The portal checks the account at checkout. If the customer is within its limit and not overdue, it can place the order on account, for example on 30-day terms. If it is over the limit or has overdue invoices, the order can be held for your accounts team to approve, or the buyer can pay by card through Stripe instead. The limit itself stays in Xero, MYOB or your ERP, so finance controls it in one place.

Not if only businesses can see them. The ACCC says a business displaying prices only to other businesses does not need to include GST in the total price. Retail shoppers are different: prices shown to consumers must be the total as a single figure. So a mixed store usually shows GST-inclusive prices to the public and ex-GST prices to logged-in trade accounts. We then add GST clearly at checkout and on the tax invoice.

ACCC: price displays ↗

The ATO lists the seller’s identity and ABN, the date, a description of what was sold with quantity and price, the GST, and wording saying the document is intended as a tax invoice. For sales of $1,000 or more it must also show the buyer’s identity or ABN. If a customer asks for a tax invoice you must give one within 28 days, unless the sale is $82.50 including GST or less. We set up order invoices to meet these.

ATO: tax invoices ↗

Not between private businesses today. Xero’s guide for accountants says B2B e-invoicing remains voluntary, and the ATO says eInvoicing is not a compliance or revenue measure. Government is further along: the ATO says Commonwealth agencies must be able to process and send eInvoices automatically by December 2026, after a target of 30% of received invoices as eInvoices by 1 July 2026. If you supply government or large buyers who ask for Peppol invoices, it pays to be ready.

ATO: eInvoicing for government ↗

Peppol is an international framework for sending invoices as structured data between accounting systems, so the buyer’s software reads them without anyone typing. The ATO is the Australian Peppol Authority. It works for business to business and business to government invoicing. The ATO says over 400,000 Australian businesses can trade eInvoices on the network, and many accounting packages already include it.

ATO: Peppol ↗

Search for them in the public Peppol directory, which Xero links to from its eInvoicing page. If they are registered, invoices raised from your portal orders in Xero can go to them as eInvoices. Xero says Australian businesses can only send eInvoices within Australia, but can receive them from registered businesses overseas, where they arrive as draft bills ready for approval.

Xero: eInvoicing ↗

What’s The Damage?, an Australian cost guide, puts BigCommerce B2B and wholesale builds in Perth at AUD 15,000 to 50,000. It does not say whether GST is included, so ask every agency to quote ex GST. The spread comes from how many systems connect, how complex your price rules are and how clean your product data is. These are market figures, not our prices. FactoryJet quotes a fixed price per phase in writing after scoping.

What’s The Damage?: BigCommerce cost in Perth ↗

It depends far more on your data than on design. A portal on an existing platform with one accounting connection moves fastest. Each extra system, custom pricing rule or approval step adds time, and so does cleaning a price list that lives in three spreadsheets. We give you a phased timeline after the scoping session, and the first working draft with your own products comes before you sign the build.

Five things get you an accurate quote. A product export with SKU count and units of sale. Your account types and how a price is worked out for each. The systems you run, with editions: Xero or MYOB, Cin7, Unleashed, NetSuite or Odoo. One real order traced from the buyer’s email to the invoice. And any channels beyond the portal, such as retail, Amazon.com.au or Bunnings Marketplace. A one-page note is fine.

Two examples. A live Commerceflo trade storefront for GPSUK, a UK promotional products supplier whose buyers reorder at their own account prices. And a WooCommerce trade store for Sow Easy, a B2B distributor, reading stock, pricing and SKUs from Odoo, which is in testing on staging. On a call we walk you through both, then build a draft with your own products.

GPSUK case study ↗

You do. The code, the repository and the admin accounts are in your name from day one, and platform and app fees are billed to your own accounts. Defects found after launch are fixed inside the build price for a cover period agreed before work starts. After that, support is optional: each change is quoted and approved before we do it, and there is no monthly minimum.

Use the form at the top of this page with your name and work email. The next screen lets you upload your brief if you have one. Bhavesh Barot, the founder, answers within 24 hours and sets up a call about how your trade customers order and what software holds their prices. If the fit is right, we build a working draft with your own products and one of your price lists, so you can see the trade portal before you commit to the build.