Corporate accounts on Shopify Plus: their people buy, the company gets one invoice.

The gap between Shopify B2B and a corporate program

Shopify B2B is built around a buyer purchasing for a business: a company, its locations, a catalog with negotiated prices, payment terms, and checkout on account. It is good at that.

A corporate account program is a different shape. The buyers are individual employees. There are fifty or five hundred of them per company. Each one has a cap, and the company decides what they are allowed to buy. Some purchases need a manager's sign-off. The company wants nothing to do with individual transactions; it wants one invoice a month with a PO number on it that its accounts payable team can process without a phone call.

Retailers who sell this way have almost always solved it with people: a "client services" role that manages rosters, checks eligibility, and builds the invoice at month end. It works, it does not scale, and it is often a job that stays open for months because the work is tedious and the stakes are real.

What the build includes

Company programs

Each client is a native Shopify B2B company with a program definition: who the approver is, the billing period, the PO reference, the per-employee cap and renewal, the allowed products or collections, and whether purchases need approval. Locations are used where a company has several sites that bill separately.

Employees as customers

Each employee is a Shopify customer linked to the company. They log in as themselves, or are attached to the sale at the register, and the program rules apply because of that link. Rosters are loaded by CSV and maintained by your team or, in a second release, by the client through a portal.

Caps and allowed products, enforced in checkout

A Shopify Function checks every cart against the employee's remaining cap and the program's allowed products. An employee with $60 of a $200 cap left cannot place a $90 order on the company's account. A hoodie in a safety-only cart is flagged before payment, online and at the register, with a message the employee understands.

Approvals

Where the client wants sign-off, the order is created as a draft, the approver gets a link, and approval turns it into a real order. Rejection tells the employee why. Thresholds and rules are per company, so one client can approve everything and another can approve nothing.

Orders recorded against the company

Every qualifying order, online or in store, carries the company, the program and the billing period. That is what makes the invoice reproducible: it is a query over tagged orders, not a spreadsheet someone assembled.

One invoice per company per period

Generated from the app or from your accounting system using the same data. Per-order or per-employee lines, PO number, subtotals by location if needed, and a statement of remaining caps for the client's own records. Companies on payment terms can pay it through Shopify's own B2B payment flow or however you already collect.

How it fits with store credit

Some clients prefer to fund up front. Instead of an invoice after the fact, the company buys a pool of store credit, each employee gets a balance, and redemption is limited by that balance rather than by a cap. Same program shape, different money flow. Many retailers run both, depending on the client's finance team. Both are built on the same company and roster layer, so choosing one does not lock you out of the other. The credit version is described on the store credit programs page.

Related builds we do for B2B sellers

Wholesale application forms that create the B2B company on approval, custom payment terms and deposit rules at checkout, and draft order automation for quotes. If your corporate program sits next to a wholesale channel, we scope both together.

Other custom builds

• Store credit and voucher programs: Company-funded credit, allowance programs and rewards paid in native Shopify store credit, with pools, rosters, expiry and a reconciliation report.
• Checkout extensions and Shopify Functions: Custom discount, payment, delivery and validation rules that run inside Shopify checkout, plus checkout UI that shows the right thing to the right buyer.
• Programs that work at POS and online: One balance, one set of rules, redeemed the same way in eight stores and on the website. Shopify POS extensions and native store credit at the register.
• Integrations, automation and reporting: Klaviyo, Shopify Flow, accounting and ERP hooks, plus the reports your finance team needs to invoice and reconcile a program.

Or read the overview: custom Shopify Plus development for merchants over $2M a year.

Corporate accounts and invoicing: common questions

Does Shopify support corporate accounts with one monthly invoice?

Partly. Shopify B2B on Plus gives you company records, company locations, payment terms (net 30, net 60) and the ability for a buyer to check out on terms. What it does not give you is one consolidated invoice per company for many people's orders, per-employee caps set by the client, an approval step before an order is placed, or a statement the client can reconcile. A custom app fills those gaps on top of the native B2B objects.

Can employees of a client company buy on the company's account?

Yes. Each employee is a Shopify customer linked to the company through native B2B, with a per-person cap and a set of allowed products defined by the program. They shop as themselves online or at the register, and the order is recorded against the company for invoicing. The employee never sees a bill.

How does approval work?

Where the client wants it, an order over a threshold or outside the allowed products is held as a draft order and the client's approver gets a link. Approve and it becomes an order and ships. Reject and the employee is told why. Where the client does not want approvals, the caps and product rules do the job silently in checkout.

What does the invoice look like?

One document per company per period, with a line per order or a line per employee depending on what the client's accounts payable prefers, a PO reference if they use one, and totals that match the Shopify orders exactly. It can be generated in the app and sent, or the data can be pushed to your accounting system to issue from there.

Can this work at the register too?

Yes. The employee is attached to the sale at POS as the customer, the company link and caps apply, and the order records against the company the same way an online order does. See the POS and online page for how the register side is built.

Is this the same as a wholesale store?

No. Wholesale means a buyer purchases inventory at trade prices. A corporate account means a company pays for its people's purchases at your normal (or negotiated) prices. Shopify B2B handles both, but the program logic, caps and invoicing on this page are the corporate account version. We also build wholesale application and payment terms flows, so if you need both, say so in the brief.