Taking wholesale sales online: price lists, trade credit and ERP integration

The operation starts before the cart

Wholesale buyers need to know what they can buy and on what terms. In B2B ecommerce, those rules shape the experience: who can sign in, which catalog they see and which price list applies to their account.

Start by mapping how the business sells. A buying experience can feel simple because the rules for prices, credit and availability have been defined carefully behind the scenes.

Questions I would ask before implementation

• Prices: Does pricing depend on the account, customer group or volume? Who maintains it, and in which system?
• Order: Are there order minimums, fixed quantity increments or sales approvals before confirmation?
• Credit: Which system provides the credit balance, and what happens if an order exceeds the available limit?
• Stock: What availability is shown, and what happens if it changes before confirmation?
• Salespeople: How do salespeople work with their accounts, and how are orders placed on a customer’s behalf recorded?

Answering these questions allows you to compare solutions based on their real behavior. It also helps distinguish what is resolved on the platform from what requires specific integration or development.

Does ecommerce replace ERP?

CommerceUp works alongside the ERP. Define which system owns customer records, prices, stock and business documents. Saying two systems are connected does not explain what they exchange or how they recover from a failure.

One useful test is to follow an order from the portal through to acceptance in the ERP. I would check the customer’s terms, products and totals, as well as how a rejection is communicated. This is a proposed test scenario, not a measured customer outcome.

What to test before opening the portal to all customers

I would test accounts with different terms: one with its own price list, another that orders in fixed quantity increments and another that requires approval. The aim is to catch exceptions that a standard order might miss. The sales team should also be able to explain what each customer sees.

I would then look at adoption, orders that need correcting and the time the team spends intervening. Online order volume is useful, but it does not capture the manual work that may still be happening behind the scenes.

Where my experience fits

I created CommerceUp, SourcingUp’s platform for wholesale sales by distributors, manufacturers and importers. Building it is where these questions come from. The scope of an implementation depends on the business and its systems; integrations and custom development need to be assessed in that context.

AI can support parts of that operation. First, the rules need to be clear: an agent working in a company also needs to understand what it can do and when to ask for a review.