Net terms allows wholesale customers to place an order without immediate payment. An order with net terms will be submitted as a draft, allowing you determine what the payment terms are for each order, before continuing with completing the purchase.
Net terms is offered in the Advanced and Premium subscription packages.
Learn more about net terms and more Advanced and Premium features here!
- Reward loyal customers
- Deferring payments for trusted customers is a great way to strengthen your relationship with your buyers.
- Keep track of pre-orders
- You and your customer can easily keep track of orders for out-of-stock or otherwise unreleased products.
- Determine order costs without requiring purchase
- Allow your customer to estimate their total costs for an order without having to pay upfront - this is especially useful if you need to calculate custom shipping & packaging costs or apply a one-time discount.
- Edit orders
- Changes can be made to the products purchased, the order’s overall pricing, shipping costs, taxes, your customer’s shipping address, or any notes included on the order. For more information on making edits to a draft order, please see Shopify’s draft order guide
- Collect payment how and when you want
- You can choose to collect payment at any time and through any service that you wish. Shopify offers an option to directly email this invoice to the customer or to run a credit card right there on the draft page. You can also split the invoice up by duplicating it and adding/removing items in order to collect multiple payments over time.
When using the Net terms feature, you're responsible for tracking and collecting payment for all net orders.
Net terms setup
The net terms feature applies only to customers with a valid wholesale account, indicated by a tag associated with a wholesale discount rule.
- Open Wholesale Gorilla and navigate to Checkout.
- If prompted, click Enable net orders.
- Enter a Net Tag. Customer accounts will need this tag in order to be eligible for net terms.
- Save.
The net terms feature applies only to customers with a valid wholesale account, indicated by a tag associated with a wholesale discount rule.
We recommend using a separate ‘net’ tag distinct from these tags for the Net Terms feature. While using the same tag is possible, a separate tag offers greater flexibility if you choose to offer net terms to select customers only.
The Net Terms feature can only be added to a customer that has a valid wholesale account, meaning they must have an actual customer account and must have be eligible for at least one wholesale wholesale price rule set in Wholesale Gorilla.
Net terms will only affect wholesale customers.
- In the Shopify admin, open Customers.
- Find (or create) the customer account you wish to give net terms to.
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Add the Net Tag you set in Wholesale Gorilla to the customer account.
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Save.
Customers with any tag associated with net terms will always have their orders placed as drafts.
Advanced Net Terms
Invoicing
- Auto-email invoice
- With this feature enabled, as soon as a net terms customer places an order they will be emailed an invoice that includes a link to pay for the order. If you plan on editing or reviewing the order before allowing the customer to pay, leave this feature turned off.
- Mark net orders as payment pending
- When this feature is enabled, net orders will be submitted as normal orders. This means that they will enter the order fulfillment workflow you have set up in Shopify, and a customer will be able to pay for their order right away.
- Mark net orders as payment pending
- This is a useful feature if you don't need to review or edit a net order. It allows the customer to submit the order without paying, but the order is immediately marked as ready to fulfill.
Customizing the net confirmation page
When a customer submits a net order they do not enter the normal checkout flow, but instead are redirected to a confirmation page. Here you can edit the messaging displayed to the customer on this page.
This is a great place to outline payment terms, next steps, estimated processing time, and more.
Inventory Reservation
When a customer submits a net order and you have disabled Mark net orders as payment pending, then the net order will live in the drafts section of your Shopify admin until you take further action. By default, Shopify does not reserve the inventory on draft orders. Once the draft is created, the inventory amounts for products in the draft order will not change.
If the customer doesn't pay for their order for several weeks, it's possible that there will not be enough inventory to fill some products on the order, resulting in a checkout error.
- Reserving inventory on net orders
- When you enable this feature, inventory is reserved for any products submitted in a net order. This ensures that when the net order is paid for or fulfilled, you will have enough stock to complete the order.
- Custom reservation time
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By default Shopify reserves inventory for 60 days. You can optionally change this timeline by enabling this feature and entering a custom number of days that the inventory should be held for.
If the order has not been paid for or fulfilled when the inventory reservation time expires, the inventory reservation will no longer be enforced and the reserved items will be available for purchase by other customers.
- Viewing and editing reservation times
- Once your customer's net order comes through, you can review how long the inventory is reserved by opening the order and viewing the 'Items reserved until....' section.
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Even once the order comes through, you may edit the number of days that the inventory is reserved for. This allows you to customize the duration of the reservation on an order by order basis, which is helpful for shops that need more dynamic reservation settings.
To edit how long inventory is reserved on a specific order, you'll just need to click on the date in the 'Items reserved until...' section, and the following menu will appear:
Here, you can adjust the date & time that the inventory will be reserved for that particular order. Once you've made the necessary adjustments, you'll need to click 'Done', and will need to click the 'Update Draft Order' button.
- Reserving inventory vs. marking orders as payment pending
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You do not need to reserve inventory if Mark as payment pending is enabled, because in this case net orders will go straight to the Orders tab in Shopify, and inventory is automatically reserved for any order in the Orders tab.
If the reserve inventory feature is grayed out (even if you've entered details into this setting and checked the box for it to be active previously), it is currently inactive due to 'Mark as Payment Pending' being turned on. You will need to uncheck the box to turn off 'Mark as Payment Pending' and save the overall settings before you'll have access to the Inventory reservation settings, as they can not both be active at the same time.
Automated Payment Terms 
Premium plan customers have the ability to set automatic, customer-specific payment terms, as well as adjust whether a net order is automatically invoiced and/or automatically marked as payment pending -- all based on specific tags. This allows for different customer's net orders to receive different payment terms and automated invoice functions, all based on a tag system. Below are the steps required to set up these various settings.
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Establish a main 'Net Tag'. You will enter this into the 'Net Tag' field in the 'Net Terms' settings area of our app
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To adjust the Payment Terms, select an option from the drop down box. The payment terms will add a note to the order that both you and your customer can view, which list the due date of payment. You can choose terms from a selection of common lengths of time, payment being due immediately upon receipt, as well as set a custom due date.
The app will select 'No Payment Terms' by default, so no payment terms will be added to an order unless you adjust this setting.
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You can choose to mark net orders as 'Payment Pending,' which will immediately move them out of the 'Draft' phase, turning them into final orders. This action sends them to the Orders Tab, reducing your inventory. Enabling this option locks the orders, so avoid it if you plan to make further edits. If you also use 'Payment Terms,' the order will include a due date. This setting is off by default; tick the box to turn it on or leave it off by not ticking it.
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Finally, you may choose whether to auto-email the invoice to your customer. Turning this setting on allows your customers to instantly be sent a copy of their order, as soon as they submit the draft. The email will include a link to your Shopify checkout gateway, allowing the customer to pay for their order as soon as they're ready.
In order to use this setting with payment terms set, you MUST activate the 'Mark Orders As Payment Pending' setting.
With 'Mark orders as payment pending turned on, turning on the 'Auto-Email Invoice' setting means that you will not be able to edit any net orders that come through for customers with this tag applied to their account.
We do not recommend turning this setting on if you wish to further edit net terms orders, as this will prevent you from doing so at any point. If you're using this order in conjunction with payment terms, the customer will instantly be emailed a copy of their order, which will be set as 'payment pending' thus moving to the Orders Tab, and will include the due date of the terms that you've established. This setting will be off by default. If you'd like to turn the setting on, tick the box. If you'd like to leave this setting off, do not tick the box.
If you would like to turn on auto-email invoice without turning on the 'Mark Orders as Payment Pending' setting, you will need to set the 'Payment Terms' setting to 'No Payment Terms'.
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You can now add this tag to any customer's accounts whom you wish to lock these settings to. Anyone with this tag on their account tags will submit their order through the net checkout, and it will follow whichever rules are locked to that tag.
Some shop owners will find this sufficient, as they currently hold all wholesale customers to the same terms. If this is the case, there is no need to read further. For shops that do require different terms & net order functions for their different customer groups, please read on for our Tag Override settings.
Net terms & discount codes
Discount codes are typically applied on the checkout page. However, when using Net Terms, the customer submits their order as a draft, bypassing checkout. In this case, they can apply a discount code once you email them an invoice. If you choose to send the invoice outside of Shopify, any discount the customer wishes to use must be manually applied.