Trade customers reorder the same things constantly, and most of that ordering arrives as email that somebody then types into an invoice.
A portal turns it around. They place the order themselves, against their own account and their own agreed prices, and what lands on your side is already a document.
What you can do
- Run one store or several, each with its own name, logo, colors and contact details.
- Sell from the catalog you already keep, with no second product list to maintain.
- Show each customer their own prices, from the price list on their account.
- Let customers browse, search and filter by category and price, and keep a list of favorites.
- Take orders from signed-in customers, guests, or both - your choice, per store.
- Have each order generate the documents you nominate: an invoice, a packing note, or both.
- Let customers reorder a past order in one click, and download their own invoices.
- Put a carousel, a deal of the day and a message of the day on the front page.
- Read the orders with their lines, addresses and totals, and edit one before it goes further.
How it works in practice
Create the store (Products → Online Store → Stores). Name, logo, contact details, colors and a slug - the short name that tells one store from another, which is how you run a trade store and a retail one off the same catalog without them sharing a front page.
Choose what appears. Mark a product for the web shop on the product itself, and your catalog stays one catalog. If you haven’t marked any, the store shows them all. A customer with a catalog of their own (Products → Catalogs) sees only what’s in it, at the prices on their price list, so a price change happens once and the store and your invoices agree.
Decide who can see what. Let visitors register themselves or leave registration off. Hide prices until somebody signs in, send guests to sign in before they browse, or make them sign in at checkout. A trade counter and a public shop want different answers here, and each store has its own.
Set the front page. A carousel, a deal of the day with its own image and end date, and a message of the day for delivery notices and holiday closures - the things a trade customer needs to see before ordering rather than after.
Then customers order. They fill a cart, choose a delivery date no earlier than your store’s delivery days allow, accept your terms and place it. The order is numbered, the documents you chose are raised, and a confirmation email goes out if you’ve set one up. Each line keeps a snapshot of the product as it was ordered, so an order stays readable long after the catalog has moved on.
Orders become documents automatically. Nominate which document types an order should raise, and they’re created through the ordinary document path. That means they post to your accounts and move your stock exactly like anything else.
Customers look after themselves. Signed in, a customer sees their past orders, reorders one at today’s prices, opens or downloads the invoices you’ve sent them, and keeps their own details up to date where you allow it. “Can you resend last month’s invoice?” stops being a phone call.
Check an order before it goes. The list shows customer, city, total and date, and opening one shows the lines and both addresses. You can edit it when something needs adjusting.
Good to know
- This is a trade portal first. Ordering against an account with agreed prices and known addresses is what it does well. If you’re selling to the general public at scale, weigh it against a dedicated retail platform connected through the WooCommerce connector - see connecting other systems.
- Store customers sign in separately from your staff. Someone with store access isn’t a user of your company’s system, and sees only their own orders, invoices and details, on your store alone.
- One email address, one store login. An address registered at one store can’t register at another, even another business’s.
- A guest’s order has no page of its own. They see the order number once, and your confirmation email carries it if you’ve set one up. Customers who sign in get the full history.
- One catalog, one price list. The store shows what your product records say. Store-only pricing is a matter of the price list attached to the customer rather than a separate store price. The price filter works on your standard sale price, not the customer’s own.
- A cart keeps the price a line was added at. A guest who signs in halfway through keeps guest prices on what’s already in the cart.
- Decide deliberately which documents get raised. Raising an invoice on every order suits a trade counter. It suits a business that picks and ships before invoicing rather less.
- Nothing here takes the payment by itself. Payment happens the way it does for any other invoice: a payment link, a bank transfer, or an account they settle monthly. See payments and getting paid.