BigCommerce B2B Edition Agency for UK Distributors and Manufacturers

B2B Edition is what BigCommerce calls its enterprise-level B2B offering. It is switched on for an existing BigCommerce storefront and runs inside the same account. BigCommerce’s help centre lists company accounts with multi-tier hierarchies and buyer roles, quotes from sales agents, shared shopping lists, a Quick Order Pad, an invoice portal with company payment terms, and payment methods set per company. Existing BigCommerce merchants request it through their customer success manager or BigCommerce sales.

For a UK distributor the core list is short: a login for each trade customer, prices set for that account, ordering by SKU in bulk, reordering from past orders, quotes for large or unusual orders, pay on account with a credit limit, and invoices that match your accounts system. On top of that, B2B needs several buyers per company with different permissions, such as a site buyer who orders and a manager who approves.

Yes. BigCommerce added multi-tier account structures to B2B Edition in March 2025, with role-based permissions. Its help centre describes company accounts with multi-tier hierarchies and buyer roles. So a builders’ merchant group can sit at the top, with each branch as its own company below it. A branch buyer orders for their site, and we set up head office access to branch orders and invoices during scoping.

The company is now Commerce.com, Inc. Its SEC filing says BigCommerce Holdings, Inc. took that name on 31 July 2025, and its Nasdaq ticker changed from BIGC to CMRC on 1 August 2025. BigCommerce stays as the platform brand, alongside Feedonomics and Makeswift. For a UK buyer nothing practical has changed: B2B Edition, the storefront, the UK site at bigcommerce.co.uk and the developer documentation all keep the BigCommerce name.

Yes. BigCommerce’s help centre says sales agents can view the Buyer Portal and place orders for consenting companies, and can share quotes with custom products, shipping rates and discounts. For a UK distributor that means the rep on the phone builds the order inside the customer’s own account, at the customer’s own prices, instead of keying it into the ERP afterwards. We set which reps see which accounts.

Yes. BigCommerce’s help centre says you can enable B2B Edition on any of your native storefronts. So a UK manufacturer can keep a public retail shop for card-paying shoppers and run a separate trade storefront where logged-in buyers see their account prices and pay on terms. We usually plan both around one product catalogue so descriptions and images are kept in one place.

Our ERP work covers Odoo, NetSuite, SAP Business One, ERPNext and custom ERPs. Sage 50, Sage 200, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Xero, QuickBooks UK, Brightpearl and Linnworks connect to BigCommerce through the API each one exposes. We scope that API on your version and hosting before we quote. Whatever the system, one of them owns each piece of data.

It can, if the link is built as a digital link. HMRC’s VAT Notice 700/22 lists API transfer and CSV import as accepted digital links and says copy and paste does not count. A link that sends each trade invoice to Xero by API, with the VAT rate on every line, keeps the trail from order to VAT Return digital. Your accountant should still check your whole setup against the notice.

BigCommerce’s help centre describes an invoice portal where buyers see invoice history and pay balances, plus payment terms set per company and control over which payment methods each company can use, such as purchase orders or cards. We normally read credit limits and overdue balances from your ERP. An account on stop (blocked for unpaid bills) then cannot keep ordering on terms while finance chases it.

In most cases, yes. GOV.UK says statutory interest on late business-to-business payments is 8% plus the Bank of England base rate, and that you cannot claim it if your contract sets a different rate. With no agreed payment date, GOV.UK says a payment is late 30 days after the customer gets the invoice or the goods, whichever is later. We print your terms on portal invoices; your solicitor confirms the wording.

BigCommerce’s B2B Edition help article does not cover tax, so we treat VAT as a design task. Trade buyers usually see prices ex VAT, with VAT added on the basket and the invoice. We map each product’s VAT treatment and each customer type, such as UK trade, EU business or export, to the same codes your accounts system uses, and your accountant signs off the mapping before launch.

Yes. BigCommerce’s help centre says multicurrency payments and invoices are supported in B2B Edition. VAT is the harder part. HMRC’s VAT Notice 703 says goods sent from Great Britain to the EU follow the export rules, and can be zero-rated only if you meet all the conditions, including export and evidence within the time limits. Northern Ireland to EU follows separate rules. We build the order data your evidence trail needs.

Yes, normally through your warehouse side. We pass each trade order to the tool your team already uses to book Royal Mail, DPD or Evri. That might be Linnworks, a 3PL (an outside logistics warehouse) running Mintsoft warehouse software, or your own shipping software. We also bring tracking back into the buyer’s order history. Pallet and freight orders usually need their own delivery rules at checkout, which we agree with your transport team.

Yes, and we plan the channels separately. Trade buyers see account prices and terms; shoppers on Amazon.co.uk, eBay UK, OnBuy or ManoMano see public prices. What matters is one stock figure across all of them, which usually means your ERP, Linnworks or Brightpearl owns stock and feeds BigCommerce and the marketplaces. Overselling a trade customer’s pallet because a marketplace sold the last units is the failure we design against.

BigCommerce’s UK pricing page lists its standard plans in US dollars, excluding VAT: from $29 a month on Core to $299 on Scale, billed annually, with Performance starting at $1,499 a month billed annually. B2B Edition is not priced on that page; BigCommerce quotes it through sales. For the build, BigCommerce’s own cost guide gives a market range, not our price: $5,000 to $25,000 for custom design and integrations, and $25,000 to $250,000 or more for mid-market and enterprise builds. FactoryJet quotes a fixed price per phase in writing after a short scoping call.

A B2B Edition build with company accounts, price lists and quick order typically takes 5 to 8 weeks. A headless or heavily custom build runs 8 to 14 weeks. The ERP link sets the pace more than the storefront does. Accounts and prices can go live first from a file, with the live ERP sync in the next phase. Dates for each phase go in the written quote.

Yes. Before you sign, we build a working draft on BigCommerce with a slice of your real catalogue and one of your trade price lists. Your sales team can log in as a buyer, place a quick order by SKU and check that their own prices appear. Your sales team finds out whether trade customers will order this way before you commit.

You do, from day one. The BigCommerce account, B2B Edition and any apps sit in your company’s name and are billed to you directly, at cost, with no markup from us. Theme changes, middleware (the code that sits between BigCommerce and your ERP) and integration code live in your own repository. Defects found after launch are fixed inside the build price, for a cover period we agree in writing before work starts.

No. Support after launch is optional. If you want us to stay on, each change is quoted and approved before we do it, and there is no monthly minimum you pay whether you use it or not. A common split is for us to keep the ERP link and price-list changes while your team runs product content. We can also keep managing the hosting and integrations if your team would rather not.

Six things: how many trade accounts and buyers per account you have, how prices are set today (bands, customer-specific or contract), which systems hold stock and credit limits, your order volume and delivery types such as parcels and pallets, whether retail or marketplaces run alongside trade, and the date that matters to you. Upload it as a PDF or Word file with the form and the founder replies within 24 hours.

Both run hosted B2B for UK wholesalers, so the answer comes from your ERP, your price rules and your team. BigCommerce B2B Edition suits distributors who want company hierarchies, sales-agent quotes and an invoice portal inside the platform’s own B2B layer, and trade and retail on separate storefronts of one account. Shopify Plus suits brands whose direct-to-consumer channel is the bigger business. We build on both, so we have no reason to push either.

For a distributor with hundreds of trade accounts and an ERP, BigCommerce is usually the steadier choice, because hosting and the core B2B features come from the vendor. WooCommerce suits firms already on WordPress who want full control and are happy to own hosting and plugin updates. We build on both, and our Sow Easy trade store (see below) runs on WooCommerce, so we can say which fits your catalogue.

Sometimes. Heavily customised Magento and Adobe Commerce sites often move to cut hosting and upgrade work. Most of the risk sits in the data: company accounts, price rules, order history and URLs that already rank. We map each one before anything moves, set a 301 redirect (a permanent forward to the new address) for every old URL, and load trade accounts so buyers arrive to their company, colleagues and price lists already in place.