Customer accounts and activation

Wholesale Gorilla allows you to manage new customer accounts automatically.  Customer’s that signup through our wholesale registration form can be automatically assigned tags.

Wholesale accounts - the basics

• For New Customer Accounts, you do not need to activate your customer’s account, as they’re automatically “approved”.  Please ensure they are tagged with a price rule tag, so that they have wholesale access when they log into their account.
• For Legacy Customer Accounts, you will need to click the ‘More Actions’ button on the customer’s profile, and choose the ‘Send invite’ option. Follow through those steps so that your customer may set up a reusable password.

Customer wholesale tags

You must create at least one discount rule, which will also require you to choose a discount rule tag. Our app's other settings will not turn on until you set up at least one rule + tag, so we recommend doing that as your first step when using the app. Once you've created at least one discount rule & tag, you can then apply said tag to your customer’s account. This will update their account to a "wholesale" one, and will allow Wholesale Gorilla to correctly identify the customer as a wholesale customer - thus unlocking all of the wholesale settings for them.

Please avoid using the following tags when creating a price rule, as they are reserved for internal use by our app:

• wg_wholesale – Used explicitly for creating customer segments.
• wholesale-only – Used to exclude products from non-wholesale customers (available only for Advanced and Premium users).
• wsgTestTag – Used by Wholesale Gorilla during installation and troubleshooting (merchants may remove this tag if desired).

Here's an example of a customer's account, which has yet to be tagged for wholesale access. You can see that the 'Tags' setting is blank, meaning that they've yet to be tagged for wholesale access: 

Once you've chosen a discount rule tag, you can type it into the 'Tags' field and then click 'enter' to lock it in place. Once you save the customer's account profile, they will have that tag on their account until you adjust it. 

Need to add multiple tags in one go, or remove certain tags while adding others? You can use the 'Manage' button in the 'Tags' section to do so: 

 

Have a store that’s only for wholesale shopping? Even if you have a store that doesn’t need any price discounts to be created you must still create a discount rule & tag. You can use a dummy rule such as 'entire store is 0% off' or 'Item A is 0% off' if you're not in need of an actual discount; you just want to ensure that you've saved at least one rule, and that you then apply that rule's tag to your customer's account tags so that they are seen by our app as a "wholesale" customer. 

And that's really all there is to it! So long as your customer both has an account with a password that they can use to log in and has at least one tag on said account's tags that perfectly matches a discount rule's tag, then they're all set and can access the wholesale elements of your shop by logging in. 

Important!  Please read carefully.

Accounts need to be either Optional or Required for Wholesale Gorilla to work properly. Learn more here.

Additionally, Shopify's Customer Accounts can influence your shop's ability to manage customers within Wholesale Gorilla. Learn more about Shopify's Customer Accounts.

Requiring customers to log in to their account before checkout

Shopify creates & manages all customer accounts within your Shopify store. Our app utilizes Shopify's customer tag system to apply wholesale features to your customers. Because of this you must have accounts enabled and set to optional or required in your Shopify’s Checkout Settings.

We recommend requiring customers to log in before checkout to ensure wholesale discounts and product exclusions are correctly applied. If a wholesale customer does not log in first, they may miss out on their discounts or be able to purchase restricted products. This is especially important for merchants using abandoned cart emails, as customers clicking the checkout link may not have their discounts applied if they were logged out. Keep in mind that enabling this requirement will also affect retail customers.

You can reach this setting within the 'Settings -> Checkout' section of Shopify, and will see the option to adjust it your customer account preferences. You'll need to select Require the customer to log in to their account before checkout.

Wholesale Gorilla uses customer tags that are associated with specific discount groups that are set in the app. So, in order for your customer to access any our app’s features, your customer must have an active customer account and have a perfectly matching discount rule tag on their account.

There are several ways to create wholesale customer accounts. We'll list a few of them below. Choose whichever method you like, or try them all.

It's all about the Customer Tags

In order for the prices on your store to change to wholesale, or to see any wholesale functionality, a tag on the customer account must match a tag that you are using for a discount rule in Wholesale Gorilla.

Wholesale Gorilla recognizes a customer as 'wholesale' when a tag on their account matches a tag on a discount rule set in the app.  A customer account can be covered in tags, but until there is a match with a discount rule tag they will be treated as a regular retail customer.

Creating wholesale customer accounts

Creating wholesale accounts for existing customers

If you already have a customer account set up in your Shopify admin, use this method to convert their account to a wholesale account.

1. Go to Shopify Admin and and click Customers on the left
2. Click on an existing customer to access their account.
3. Scroll down to the Tags section.
4. Type in the customer tag (e.g. wholesale) associated with a wholesale pricing rule.
   
5. Click Save.

Important: Your existing wholesale customers will not automatically know that they have been converted to wholesale accounts. We recommend sending them an email to inform them about their new status, any applicable wholesale benefits, and how to place orders under the new pricing rules.

When this customer logs into your store, they will see the special prices you set in the previous step.

Creating wholesale accounts for new customers

To create a new customer account from the Shopify admin, follow these steps.

1. In your Shopify admin click Customers.
2. Click Add Customer.
3. Enter the customer contact details.
4. Add the customer tag you set for the discount rule in the previous step (e.g. wholesale).
5. Save.
6. Send the account invite: Next you will need to activate the customer account so you can create a password and log into your store as a b2b customer. In the upper right of the customer's profile page, click More Actions >  Send account invite > and follow the on-screen instructions to send the invite email.
7. Check the email address you entered for this customer, and click the link to set a password and log into your store.

Not seeing the account invitation email?  We can do our best to help, however these emails are generated by Shopify.  Learn more about customer accounts in Shopify.

Creating wholesale accounts with the wholesale registration form

You can also use a wholesale-specific signup page to create new customer accounts.  This can be a great self-serve way for buyers to get access to your b2b prices and features. Lite subscribers can still use this form, though the automated settings (Auto-activation, auto-tag, automatically mark as tax exempt) will not be available. If you are an Advanced or Premium subscriber, please skip to the next section for info on using the form's helpful automations.

1. If you've left Auto-Activation unchecked or don't have access to this setting due to subscribing at the Lite level, the store owner will get an email alerting them to a new customer signup whenever a customer uses the form.
2. The store owner will then need to manually send an account invite to the customer. To send an account invite: A) From the Shopify admin click the Customers tab. B) Open the customer account profile. C) Click the 'More Actions' option, and choose 'Send Account Invite'; follow the steps that appear until the invite is sent.
3. The customer's account is accessible to them once they set up their password; they can then log into it. Note: At this point, the customer's account is simply a retail account - further steps are needed to give them wholesale access. 
4. As your last step, once again within the customer's account profile, you'll need to scroll down to the Tags section, and add the wholesale tag(s) you set when you created the wholesale discount rule.
5. Once you save the tags of your choosing, your customer will have full wholesale access. 

1.  

Troubleshooting the Sign Up Page

• An account with this email already exists: Shopify does not allow multiple customers accounts with the same email address, so if you get this error message it means you already have a customer account set up with this email address.  Choose a different email address, or follow the steps in Create a wholesale account for an existing customer above.
  
• The Country or State/Province dropdown isn't working: Usually this means you don't have any Shipping settings configured in your Shopify admin.  If this is the case, set up some retail shipping rates and the dropdowns will populate with regions you have configured shipping for.
  
  
• Any other issues?  Get in touch by clicking the Help button in the Wholesale Gorilla admin, or by emailing [e-mail]
  

Auto-tagging new customers 

Wholesale Gorilla allows you to automatically tag all new customer accounts that come through our wholesale registration form. Any tags added to this space will be added to a customer’s account upon completion of the signup form.

NOTE: Shopify’s 'Shop' feature allows users to log in without passwords, posing challenges for merchants using the auto-tag feature for wholesale accounts. Customers under review may be automatically tagged with wholesale status and can access wholesale prices by using 'Shop' before approval. To address this, merchants can either turn off the auto-tag feature, or deactivate the Discovery setting, removing their Shop Store and products from search results and Shop curations. Deactivating the Discovery setting will affect all users - retail, and wholesale.  This ensures wholesale pricing remains secure until approval. Note that tags automatically added will still appear on the customer’s account page, even if their request is denied.

Here's how to turn off Shop: Go to Sales channel Shop, click on settings.  In the Shopping section, deactivate the Discovery setting.

Automatically marking customers as tax exempt

Important!  Please read carefully.

New Customer Accounts can influence your shop's ability to manage customers within Wholesale Gorilla, especially while auto-tagging customers. Learn more here.

Shopify allows you to take control of your tax calculations. While taxes are automatically calculated, you have the flexibility to override tax rates for precise control over the taxes you apply. These overrides are particularly useful for various scenarios. With Wholesale Gorilla, you can conveniently designate new customer accounts as "tax exempt" automatically.

Checking this box will ensure that your customer’s account is marked as tax exempt upon signup. Leaving this unchecked will require you to manually make this change in their account should you ever need to mark them as tax exempt in the future, which you can do via the 'Taxation Settings' section on your customer's account profile.

To learn more about setting up tax-exempt customers manually, you can visit the following Shopify URL for detailed guidance: Set Up Tax-Exempt Customers

Activating customer accounts automatically 

Important!  Please read carefully.

New Customer Accounts can influence your shop's ability to manage customers within Wholesale Gorilla, especially while auto-activating customers. Learn more here.

Wholesale Gorilla allows you to automatically activate new customer accounts that come through the Wholesale Gorilla registration form.  

Wholesale customers signing up for an account through our wholesale signup form will be automatically allowed to create a password and access their account.  

How can I know when a new customer account has been created if it’s automatically created?

Regardless of how you've set the auto-activation setting, you will be sent an email anytime a customer attempts to create an account, and your customer will still receive any auto-tags that you have added to the field should you have auto-tag set up.  With auto-activation on, no further action is required from you when these notifications come through.

Unticking this box will require you to manually approve (or deny) their account requests. If you've turned auto-activation off, then you can approve their account request (by sending an account invite) or deny it (by deleting their account profile altogether) once the notification reaches you.

Account activation pending page

Wholesale Gorilla allows you to customize the notification customers will receive after submitting the Wholesale Gorilla registration form. This will show when you have not selected to automatically approve new customers.

The confirmation message input will allow basic HTML markup, but does not support hyperlinks.