Shipping solutions with net terms
Our wholesale shipping settings are set as 'one size fits all,' applying to all wholesale customers on your site. This is useful for enforcing universal shipping rules but may not suit situations where you need to exclude specific customers or apply different rules. In such cases, you can use Net Terms and Manual Order settings to customize the customer's order according to your preferences.
Applying special shipping rates to specific customers & orders
When using Net Terms orders, they will be submitted to you as unpaid, editable drafts, giving you the flexibility to make necessary adjustments. You will have the opportunity to review the order before approving it and allowing the customer to make payment. This feature is particularly useful if you need to apply special shipping rates that are not set up within the app, as it enables you to ensure that only specific orders are subject to these charges. However, please note that manually adjusting each order to align with your desired shipping charges may require additional effort. Ultimately, leveraging Net Terms orders can help you to enforce special shipping costs that would otherwise be applied to all wholesale customers.
Excluding specific customers & orders from wholesale shipping rules
To exempt specific customers or orders from predefined WG shipping costs, you can grant them Net Terms Checkout access. This feature allows them to submit an unpaid draft order, which you can later edit, including removing or adjusting shipping costs. Additionally, you can use the Manual Order setting, which lets you manually create an order for customers in the backend of your shop, bypassing order limits, shipping settings, or VAT tax settings. This approach is ideal when you need to apply specific shipping settings to most customers but offer exceptions for a few. Keep the order in 'Draft' format while adjusting shipping costs and avoid updating the order status until you've finished modifying the charges.
Wholesale-specific payment options
The payment gateway that's accessed by your wholesale customers is the exact same one that you provide to your retail customers, meaning that these customers will both have access to whichever payment methods you make available within Shopify. With this being said, you can offer your wholesale customers all payment methods that Shopify allows -- however, you'll first need to make that payment option available to your retail customers, by setting this payment option up in Shopify.
If you want both retail and wholesale customers to have access to the same payment methods, just add it within your Shopify admin, that way it's included in both checkouts. If the payment option isn't supported by Shopify, or if you prefer that the payment option is only accessible to your wholesale customers, then you'll want to use this workaround.
Tag your wholesale customers with Net Terms access, that way they can submit their orders as unpaid, editable drafts. Once they send these draft orders in, you'll then have full control over their orders, and can do literally anything you'd like with them -- even going so far as to receive their payment outside of Shopify. This workaround will require that you manually create, manage & enforce the additional payment settings entirely outside of Shopify, which will need to be done without our app or Shopify's assistance. You will also be responsible for ensuring that the order is paid for, and will want to delay shipping the order until this is done (or otherwise unless you ultimately trust your customer to pay later). Once the order is paid for, you can mark it as 'Paid' within Shopify to complete the order there.
Order & quantity limits through net terms
Our Order Limits are currently set as 'one size fits all,' applying to all wholesale customers on your site. This is useful for enforcing specific limits for all customers, but it can cause problems when excluding certain customers or applying limits to only a subset. In such cases, you can use our Net Terms and Manual Order settings to customize customer orders according to your preferences.
Giving customers & orders one-time order limit rules
Since Net Terms orders are submitted to you as unpaid, editable drafts, you can easily make any necessary adjustments. This allows you to review customer orders before approving them for payment. It's a useful way to apply special order limits to select customers without configuring them within the app, preventing other customers from being affected. You'll need to manually align the order with your preferred limits, which may require some extra effort. However, it ensures that specific orders adhere to limits that couldn't otherwise be enforced without applying them to all wholesale customers.
Excluding specific customers or orders from order limit rules
If there are select customers or orders that you wish to exclude from your already set WG order limits, our best suggestion is to use the 'Manual Order' setting, which you can read about here. This setting allows you to manually create an order for your customer via the backend of your shop, which will always bypass any order limits, shipping settings, and VAT tax settings that you've set up within the app. This is the perfect solution for situations where you want to hold 99% of your customers to an order limit, but need to give a break to select customers or even just specific orders that they place.
Customizing payment terms, deposits, & partial payments on orders
Net terms enable customers to submit unpaid, editable draft orders, giving you full control. Here are suggestions for handling various payment situations.
Delaying payments
Since the Net Terms orders are submitted to you as a draft, you're welcome to
hang onto them for as long as you'd like before either paying them out (which
your customer can do from the front end of your site via emailed link, or which
you can do manually in the backend of your shop) or simply marking them as 'payment
pending' or 'paid'.
Applying deposits on orders
While neither our app nor Shopify allows you to save customer payment information, you can use the 'Partial Payment' workaround listed below for situations in which a deposit is required on an order.
Applying partial payments
Since you're able to edit Net Terms orders to your liking (so long as they remain in the 'draft' format), you will have the ability to duplicate the order -- leaving you with two adjustable components. Our recommendation for handling partial payments is to go ahead and duplicate an order, and to then split the costs between the two orders depending on how you wish for payment to be supplied. For example, if you wish to collect a 50% deposit on an order, you could go ahead and have your customer send order A through via Net Terms checkout. This will present you with a draft order that you can then duplicate, generating draft order B. You'll then want to adjust the items and/or pricing on order A to equate to 50% of the total cost, and will do the same with order B. This leaves you with two copies of the order, each for 50% of the cost. Your customer can then pay for just one of the two orders now, saving payment on the second order for a later date of your choosing. You can technically duplicate the order as many times as needed, which leaves you with as many different "chunks" to pay down as you desire.
Pre-orders with net terms
Our Net Terms feature is perfect for pre-order scenarios, allowing customers to submit orders without immediate payment. You can modify the order content, adjust pricing, change shipping or tax costs, and even hold the order as long as needed. You can later send the customer an invoice via Shopify checkout or charge them externally. It's ideal when customers need to place orders for products not yet ready for payment.
Consider using our Product Exclusion feature to offer pre-order items exclusively to logged-in, tagged wholesale customers. For details, check this guide.
To keep customers informed about shipping dates, use the 'backordered' and 'restock date' display on the Quick Order Form. Alternatively, use custom messaging areas provided in the app to communicate when incoming stock will be available. You can set custom messages in various app sections, including the wholesale login, checkout, and customer account pages.