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5 things to settle before your wholesale business launches a B2B ordering portal
Many wholesalers still take orders by phone and email. A sales rep types each order into a spreadsheet or the ERP, then tells the warehouse to ship. That works when you're small. Add more dealers and orders get missed, mistyped and quoted inconsistently.
An ordering portal hands ordering to your dealers. But five things are worth settling before launch, or you end up with a website nobody uses.
1. How prices are managed
Pricing is the hardest part of wholesale. Every dealer has a different discount: some by tier, some negotiated one by one.
Decide which system is the source of truth. If your ERP already has price levels, sync them into the portal instead of maintaining two copies. Dealers see their own prices after login; visitors see none.
2. Whether orders go into your ERP
If you run an ERP like NetSuite, portal orders should become sales orders automatically. Otherwise you've only moved the re-keying from email to a website.
Work out which data syncs and how often. Our usual setup: orders go to the ERP in real time; products, customers and shipping status sync nightly.
3. Which delivery options you offer
Wholesale orders rarely fit in one parcel. Small orders go UPS or FedEx, large ones by LTL freight, and nearby customers may get local delivery or pick up.
Write the rules down: what weight switches to LTL, what distance counts as local, whether pickup needs booking, what happens on holidays. With clear rules, checkout can price shipping correctly.
4. How returns and claims work
A great ordering flow doesn't help if after-sales still runs on email threads.
Let dealers submit returns and claims in the portal, with photos, and have staff reply on the same page. If "it arrived damaged" disputes are common, consider photographing every package as it ships.
5. What to launch first
You don't need everything on day one. Launch core ordering and ERP sync first, let a few friendly dealers use it, then add returns, promotions and quotes based on their feedback.
Plan for existing customers too: import their accounts from the ERP so they don't have to sign up again.
Every point above comes from our B2B ordering portal for a cabinet wholesaler. Settle these five and the portal you build will actually get used. If you're weighing a portal, book a free consultation and we'll work through it with you.
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