Shopify B2B & the wholesale channel
B2B payment terms are the written answer to three questions: when does the buyer pay, what happens if they pay late, and who qualifies for which arrangement. A brand that answers those once, in writing, negotiates them once. A brand that answers them per account negotiates them forever, and ends up with twenty accounts on twenty arrangements nobody can reconstruct.
This is about the policy rather than the plumbing. Where you record terms in your store matters far less than whether you decided them before the first buyer asked.
The menu you are choosing from
Six structures cover almost every wholesale arrangement. Most brands end up using three of them.
Payment in advance. The buyer pays before you ship. Standard for opening orders from accounts you do not know, and for any account whose history has gone wrong. Nothing about it is unprofessional; it is what most new brands do and most buyers expect.
Deposit plus balance. Half at order, half before shipping or on delivery. Useful for large opening orders and for anything you are producing to order, because the deposit covers your materials and proves the commitment is real.
Net terms. Goods now, payment on a date — net 30 most commonly, net 60 with larger accounts, occasionally net 15 as a middle step. This is the structure with real cash-flow consequences, examined properly in net terms for stockists.
Early-payment discount. A small reduction for paying within a short window, written as something like two percent off if paid within ten days, otherwise due in thirty. You are buying your own cash back at a known cost, which can be worth it when a production run is due.
Payment on delivery. The buyer pays when the goods arrive. Less common in wholesale than in food and perishables, where it is the norm.
Consignment. You keep ownership and get paid on what sells. This is not payment terms so much as a different business model, and it moves all the inventory risk onto you. Worth considering only for a flagship placement you specifically want, never as a general policy.
Writing the policy in one page
The policy that works is short enough that you can paste it into an email. Six lines.
Opening order minimum, in dollars. Reorder minimum, usually lower. Lead time from order to shipping. Payment terms for a first order and for subsequent orders, with the qualification rule stated. Late-payment handling. Damages, shortages and returns.
An example, with plausible numbers for a small home goods brand. Opening order 500 dollars. Reorder minimum 250 dollars. Lead time two to three weeks. First order paid in advance; net 30 available after two orders paid on time, up to an account limit of 2,500 dollars. Invoices dated at shipping; accounts more than thirty days overdue return to prepayment. Damages reported within seven days of delivery with photographs, replaced on the next shipment.
That page does an enormous amount of work. It ends the negotiation before it starts, it makes you consistent across accounts, and it reads as a brand that has done this before — which matters more to a buyer than most brands realise.
How to decide your own numbers
Four inputs, in order.
Your cash cycle. Count the days between paying your supplier and getting paid by a stockist. If that number is over ninety days, you cannot afford to be generous with terms until it shortens, regardless of how much you want the account.
Your production lead time. Terms should never be dated from the order when the lead time is long. Invoice at shipping, always, or you will be owed money before the goods exist.
Who your buyers are. A channel of independent boutiques behaves very differently from a channel of regional chains. Boutiques often prepay happily and order in small, frequent amounts. Chains almost always require net terms and purchase orders, because their accounts payable process has no other mode. Knowing which you are selling into determines how much working capital the channel needs before you commit to it.
Your gross margin at wholesale. The thinner it is, the less room you have to absorb a late payment or a bad account, and the tighter the limits should be. That number comes straight out of how you built your price lists.
If you do not yet know which kinds of buyers your product suits, that is worth resolving before the policy, because it changes every number above. Paste a product link into WholesalePilot and the preview shows the kinds of shops, distributors and chains that plausibly stock something like it, which tells you whether to plan for prepaying boutiques or for chains with sixty-day cycles.
Applying terms consistently
Two disciplines, and both are about removing the decision from the moment.
Attach terms to the account, not to the order. Whether that is a company record with terms on it or a note on a customer record, the arrangement should belong to the relationship. Order-by-order decisions drift, and within a year you have accounts on terms nobody remembers approving.
Define tiers, not exceptions. Three arrangements — prepay, net 30 with a limit, net 60 for large accounts with stated criteria — are manageable and auditable. Fifteen bespoke arrangements are a spreadsheet you maintain forever. The same principle that keeps catalogs usable applies here: a buyer should be able to move between tiers by meeting criteria, not by asking harder.
When an account asks for something outside the policy, the useful response is to name what would qualify them. Net 60 is available above a certain annual volume. A higher limit is available after four paid invoices. This turns a negotiation into a target, and buyers generally respond well to it because it is how their other suppliers work.
What terms look like at checkout
A buyer on terms should not see a card field. They should see their purchase order number field, their price, their shipping arrangement, and a confirmation that the order is due on a date.
That last part is not cosmetic. An order marked pending forever is invisible; an order with a due date appears in your list of what is outstanding. The difference determines whether you find out an invoice is late on the day it happens or two months afterwards. The full set of differences between a trade checkout and a consumer one is in the B2B checkout.
Also worth setting explicitly: trade accounts should not inherit consumer shipping rules. An included-shipping threshold written for a sixty-dollar consumer order becomes uncharged freight on a pallet, which is a policy decision you never meant to make.
Handling the awkward parts
Shortages and damages. State a reporting window and stick to it. Seven days with photographs is reasonable. Replace on the next shipment rather than shipping a single replacement item, which usually costs more than the item.
Returns. Wholesale is generally final sale. Saying so plainly in the policy prevents a shop from treating your warehouse as their clearance channel. Faulty goods are a separate matter and should be handled quickly and without argument.
Price changes. Give existing accounts notice before a wholesale price rises, and honour the old price on orders already placed. Buyers plan their margins around your price and a surprise increase is remembered longer than the extra dollar is worth.
An account that goes quiet. Stop shipping before you stop being paid. An unpaid invoice plus another order in transit is how a small problem becomes the biggest number on your accounts.
Questions brands ask about B2B payment terms
Is asking for prepayment on a first order unprofessional? No. It is the standard for a new supplier relationship, and buyers who stock many small brands expect it. What looks unprofessional is having no stated policy at all.
Should the policy be public? Terms yes, prices no. Put your minimums, lead times and payment structure on the trade page or in the line sheet. Keep the actual wholesale prices behind a login, for the reasons set out in wholesale discounts and prices.
What if a large retailer imposes their own terms? That happens, and with big accounts their terms are frequently non-negotiable. Treat the payment delay as a cost of the account and check whether the order still works after financing it. Sometimes it does not, and declining is a legitimate answer.
Does any of this change on WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix or Squarespace? The policy is identical; only the recording differs. BigCommerce and WooCommerce both support offline or invoice payment methods for trade groups; on Wix and Squarespace most brands invoice outside the store entirely.
How often should the policy be revisited? Once a year, and immediately after any account costs you money. The second one matters more — every unpaid invoice teaches you something specific about where the limits should sit.