Shopify B2B & the wholesale channel
Net terms mean the stockist receives the goods now and pays on a date — usually thirty days from the invoice. Offering them is normal in wholesale and expected by most established retailers, and it means you are funding your buyer's inventory out of your own working capital until they pay.
Whether to offer terms at all is a cash-flow decision, not a customer-service one. A brand that grants net 30 to every account and grows quickly can run out of money while looking, on paper, extremely successful. The question is not whether terms are nice. It is whether you can fund the gap and who deserves to be inside it.
What net 30 actually costs you
Work through the cycle with real timing and the cost becomes visible.
A home fragrance brand pays its supplier for a production run in January. Stock lands in February. A boutique orders 1,800 dollars of it in March on net 30. The invoice is due in April. The boutique pays in the first week of May, because thirty days from invoice is a target rather than a promise for a shop watching its own cash.
So the brand paid for goods in January and was paid for them in May. Four months of cash tied up in one order, on top of the production run that has to be paid for again before the reorder arrives.
Multiply that by twenty accounts and the arithmetic stops being abstract. At an average order of 1,800 dollars with twenty accounts on terms, there is roughly 36,000 dollars sitting in other people's shops at any moment — money you cannot use to pay for the next production run. That number, not your revenue, is what determines whether the channel can grow.
The second cost is collections. Some share of terms invoices will be late, and a small share will require several reminders. That is time, and it is awkward time, spent asking people you want to like you for money they already owe.
Who should get terms, and who should not
The general rule that works: terms are earned, not granted at the opening order.
First order, new account: prepay. Payment before shipping, by card or transfer. This is standard for a brand a shop has not bought from before and almost no buyer is offended by it. If they are, that itself is information.
After one or two clean orders: net 30 on request. The account has proven it reorders and pays. Terms now reduce friction on exactly the relationship you want to grow.
Large chains and distributors: terms from the start, usually. These accounts often cannot pay any other way — their accounts payable process runs on purchase orders and invoices, and asking for a card is asking them to break their own system. Price that constraint into the deal rather than fighting it.
Accounts in trouble: no terms, no exceptions. A shop that is slow to pay, or that has changed ownership, or that is visibly quiet on its own channels, goes back to prepay. Doing this early is much easier than doing it after a large unpaid invoice.
Write these rules down before the first buyer asks, because in the moment the temptation is always to say yes. A written policy lets you say the policy is thirty days after two paid orders rather than saying no personally, which is a different conversation. The broader menu of structures is in B2B payment terms.
The three ways to offer terms on Shopify
Manual invoicing. Build the order as a draft, mark it pending payment, send the invoice with terms stated on it, and chase the due date yourself. Works at any plan level, costs nothing, and consumes your attention. This is the right answer for the first handful of accounts on terms, and the manual-path context is in B2B without Plus.
Native payment terms on the account. On plans with the company-based B2B model, terms attach to the company and apply automatically at checkout. The order is created as due on a date, the buyer never sees a card field, and you get a real list of what is outstanding rather than a folder of sent invoices. The cash-flow risk is unchanged — you are still the lender — but the administration stops being manual.
Third-party financing. A provider pays you shortly after the order ships and collects from the buyer on the terms. You take a cut off the order value; they take the credit risk and the collections work. For a brand whose growth is limited by working capital rather than by demand, this is often the cheapest money available, because the alternative is turning down orders.
Which one fits depends on where the constraint is. If you have cash and few accounts, manual is fine. If you have cash and many accounts, automate it. If you do not have cash, financing is what lets the channel grow at all.
Setting the terms so they hold
The details matter more than the headline number.
Date from the invoice, and invoice at shipping. Net 30 from order date on a product with a four-week lead time means payment is due as the goods arrive, which is not what either side meant.
State the late policy up front. A late fee you have written down is a deterrent. A late fee you invent after an invoice goes overdue is a fight. Keep it modest and keep it stated.
Set an account limit. Terms without a credit limit mean a single account can accumulate three unpaid orders before anyone notices. A limit per account, sized to what you could lose without harm, is the simplest control there is.
Take a deposit on large first orders. Half up front on a big opening order from an unproven account is common and reasonable. It covers your production cost and tests whether the commitment is real.
Put the terms on every document. The line sheet, the order confirmation, the invoice. Buyers forget what was agreed in a trade show aisle in March, and a terms line on the confirmation prevents most disputes.
What to do when an invoice goes late
Have a sequence and follow it the same way every time, so this stops being an emotional decision.
A short reminder on the due date, friendly and automatic in tone. Another a week later, addressed to the accounts contact rather than the buyer, because they are often different people and the buyer may not know. A phone call at two weeks. At thirty days past due, the account goes to prepay for future orders and stays there until the balance clears.
Two things to avoid. Do not ship the next order to an account with an overdue invoice — it is the most common way a manageable problem becomes a large one. And do not let the conversation disappear into email; a shop that is struggling is receiving many emails and answering few.
The part that comes before terms
All of this assumes accounts asking for terms, which assumes accounts. For brands moving from DTC into wholesale, the credit question usually arrives later than expected, because the first several stockists prepay happily.
If you are earlier than that — deciding whether wholesale is worth building at all — the useful first step is finding out who would stock the product. Paste a product link into WholesalePilot and the preview shows the kinds of shops, distributors and chains that plausibly carry something similar, which tells you what kind of accounts you are likely to face and therefore what your terms policy needs to handle. A channel of small boutiques and a channel of regional chains require very different amounts of working capital.
Questions brands ask about net terms
Do I have to offer net 30 to be taken seriously? No, not as a new brand. Prepay on the first order is standard and widely accepted. Refusing terms forever to a proven account that reorders reliably is what costs you, not asking for prepayment at the start.
What is the difference between net 30 and 2/10 net 30? The second offers a small discount for paying within ten days. It is a way to buy your own cash back at a known cost. Useful if you are tight and the account is reliable, unnecessary otherwise.
Should I run a credit check? For large orders, some form of check is reasonable — trade references from two other brands they stock is the low-effort version and tells you most of what you need. For a 600-dollar opening order it is not worth the friction.
Can I offer terms only on reorders? Yes, and that is the most common policy worth copying. Prepay first, terms once the relationship has a history, limits on both.
How does this interact with checkout? A terms account should not see a card field at all, and the order should record a purchase order number where the buyer's system needs one. The differences from a consumer flow are in the B2B checkout, and the account-level settings that drive it in Shopify B2B features.