In B2B Edition, accounts are organized by companies rather than individual customers, which is typical in BigCommerce. This structure is designed to cater to businesses selling products to other businesses with authorized buyers. Therefore, in B2B transactions, the company itself is considered the ‘customer,’ and the authorized buyers are referred to as ‘company users.‘
There are two types of accounts available to customers: Business accounts and Personal accounts. As the store owner, you can decide which type of account requires a completed registration form, or not require account registration at all. The registration form is an efficient way to collect company information for new accounts.
Depending on your store’s settings, a company might need a B2B Edition user to manually approve their registration. This setting can be turned off in the B2B Edition control panel under General Settings > Company Management.
Once a company submits the account registration form, the account must be approved by a B2B Edition user. The approval process and store access can be adjusted through various settings while the account is pending. Ensuring these settings are correctly configured is crucial for a smooth onboarding experience.
These settings can be toggled on or off in the B2B Edition control panel > General Settings > Company Management.
B2B customers often have multiple billing and shipping addresses. Each company account has its own address book that lists all associated addresses. Default shipping and billing addresses can be set at the account level and will appear at the top of the address book. Company addresses are not linked to BigCommerce customer addresses unless a personal account is converted to a business account.
Address labels help identify specific types of addresses within the address book. This optional field helps users organize various billing and shipping addresses in a company account. Labels can include company name, location name, organization name, company code, or any other relevant identifier.
Company accounts are independent of customer groups, meaning that the two entities exist separately. Customer groups can be used to set the pricing and the viewable catalog for a company or a group of companies; however, this is optional and company accounts are not required to be assigned to a customer group.
For example, your B2B storefront sells both wholesale and retail products, and it works for some of your customers to have access to both types of products. You can set up two customer groups (Eastern and Western regions) to give your customers access to the specific pricing and catalogs for their region. In addition, you can have other company accounts that are not assigned a customer group. These companies will have access to the products and pricing on your storefront regardless of region.
With independent Companies, Company accounts do not automatically generate customer groups. This allows you to:
BigCommerce price lists allow you to assign company- and currency-specific pricing to specific customer groups. Individualized pricing for companies can be accomplished by applying a price list one or more customer groups and associating the customer groups with companies as appropriate. For more information about using price lists, see Using Price Lists documentation.
If you are on an older version of B2B Edition, each company account will be assigned its own customer group and you will not be able to change the customer group. See the Companies and Customer Groups in B2B Edition article for more information.
Company users, or buyers, can access the Buyer Portal from the storefront to manage orders, request sales quotes, and pay invoices. Each buyer has a user account with a role that determines their permissions within the Buyer Portal. When a B2B Edition user is created, a customer account is automatically created in BigCommerce.
There are three default company user roles:
B2B Edition allows you to create custom user roles with unique permissions to support specific workflows for buyers, and these can be assigned to buyers in any Company account. However, it is important to note that some API requests are restricted based on user role and permissions.
Company credit settings allow you to set a maximum value for orders using the Purchase Order payment method and place company accounts on a credit hold if they surpass their allowed credit.
The credit amount does not track buyer credit usage; it only establishes a cap on an order’s total value that can be placed using the Purchase Order payment method. The available credit value will not decrease when buyers make a purchase order, nor increase when they pay an open invoice.
If monitoring credit is what you need, you can use the Payments API to sync an ERP or accounting system.
There are three company credit settings:
A warning banner will appear in the company’s buyer portal when the available credit has been exceeded. The banner will inform buyers of the credit hold and advise them to contact you for more information.
When an invoice is generated for an order it is assigned the default payment term configured in your invoice settings. To allow for individual business relationships and agreements on payment deadlines, you can set payment terms on the company level varying from “Due on receipt” to “Net 60.”