Wholesale buyers expect to order now and pay later, 30, 60, sometimes 90 days after invoice. If you’re moving a wholesale or B2B operation onto Shopify, the natural question is whether the platform can actually handle that, or whether you’ll be bolting on a workaround app and reconciling invoices by hand.
The short answer is that Shopify does have native net payment terms, but the feature lives specifically inside Shopify’s B2B functionality, which is a Shopify Plus feature, not something available on standard Shopify plans. This post walks through exactly how net terms are configured, what a buyer actually experiences at checkout, how overdue invoices are tracked, and how payment gets collected, plus where the honest limits of the native feature are.
What “Net Terms” Means in Shopify’s B2B System
In Shopify’s B2B model, net payment terms are assigned at the company location level, not to individual products or orders. A company location represents a specific buying entity, think a particular branch, warehouse, or division of a wholesale customer, and each one can have its own payment terms, price list, and catalogue.
Shopify supports the standard net terms options merchants expect: due on receipt, and net terms at fixed intervals such as Net 7, Net 15, Net 30, Net 60, and so on. When you assign net terms to a company location, every order placed by buyers under that location inherits those terms automatically, you’re not choosing terms order-by-order.
This is genuinely different from a standard Shopify checkout, where payment is always captured (or at least authorised) before the order is placed. Net terms change that fundamental checkout behaviour for approved B2B buyers.
Where Net Terms Are Configured
Net payment terms are set up in the Shopify admin under Settings > Companies, where you manage your B2B company accounts. The general workflow is:
- Create or open a company record for the wholesale customer.
- Add one or more company locations under that company (each location can have different terms, contacts, and catalogues if needed).
- On the company location, set the payment terms, due on receipt, or a net terms interval.
- Assign the buyers (staff at the wholesale customer) who are allowed to order under that company location, along with any purchasing permissions or approval rules you want.
Because this all sits inside Shopify’s B2B feature set, none of it is available on Basic, Shopify, or Advanced plans. Company accounts, company locations, and native net terms are a Shopify Plus feature. If you’re currently on a standard plan and want native net terms, the honest answer is that you need to move to Plus, there isn’t a lower-cost native equivalent. Some merchants approximate net terms on standard plans using third-party B2B or invoicing apps, but that’s a workaround, not the native mechanism this post is describing.
What Happens at Checkout for a Net Terms Buyer
This is the part merchants are usually most curious about, because it looks and feels different from a normal Shopify checkout:
- A logged-in B2B buyer, shopping under a company location with net terms assigned, goes through checkout as normal, building a cart, entering shipping details, and reviewing the order.
- At the payment step, instead of being asked for a card or other immediate payment method, the buyer sees their assigned payment terms (for example, “Net 30”) as the payment option.
- The buyer places the order without paying at the time of purchase. No card is charged, no payment is captured.
- Shopify creates the order and generates an invoice with a due date calculated from the order date plus the assigned term, a Net 30 order placed on 1 August has an invoice due 31 August.
From the buyer’s side, this is much closer to a traditional wholesale purchase order experience than a typical ecommerce checkout, which is exactly the point of the feature. It removes the friction of a buyer having to pay upfront for a large wholesale order before goods have even shipped, which is standard practice in B2B trade.
How Shopify Tracks Invoices and Overdue Orders
Once an order is placed under net terms, Shopify treats it as unpaid until payment is collected, and tracks it through a payment status lifecycle:
- Orders sit with an outstanding payment due status until paid, with the due date visible on the order.
- As the due date approaches and passes, Shopify surfaces the order’s status so you can see at a glance which invoices are current versus overdue, this is visible directly on the order in the admin, so you don’t need a separate invoicing tool just to know who owes you money and since when.
- You can filter and review orders by payment status in the admin, which is how most merchants build their day-to-day “who’s overdue” workflow, checking orders with an overdue payment status rather than manually cross-referencing a spreadsheet.
This tracking is a genuine improvement over the manual invoice-and-chase process a lot of wholesale operations run in spreadsheets or separate accounting software, the due date and status live directly on the order Shopify already generated.
How Payment Actually Gets Collected
Net terms orders can be settled in a couple of ways, depending on how the buyer wants to pay and what you’ve set up:
- Online payment against the invoice, if you’ve got Shopify Payments (or another supported payment method) enabled for B2B, the buyer (or you, on their behalf) can pay the outstanding invoice online through a payment link or the buyer’s account, and Shopify captures the payment and marks the order paid automatically.
- Manual mark-as-paid, if the buyer pays you outside Shopify (bank transfer, cheque, EFT, still common in Australian B2B trade), you record that payment against the order in the admin, marking it as paid manually once you’ve reconciled it against your bank records.
Neither path is inherently better, which one you use largely comes down to how your existing wholesale customers prefer to pay, and whether you want to chase bank transfers manually or let buyers self-serve payment online against their invoice.
A Practical Checklist Before You Turn On Net Terms
Before assigning net terms to your first company location, it helps to work through this checklist rather than configuring on the fly:
- Decide your terms by customer segment first. Not every wholesale buyer needs the same terms, a long-standing customer with a strong payment history might reasonably get Net 60, while a new account starts on Net 15 or due on receipt until they’ve proven reliable.
- Confirm who has purchasing permission at each company location. Net terms are only as safe as the buyers you’ve approved to place orders under them, review staff access at each company location before terms go live, not after.
- Align your accounting workflow before the first invoice is due. Decide whether overdue orders get reconciled inside Shopify admin, exported into Xero or MYOB, or handled through some hybrid, sorting this out upfront avoids a backlog of unreconciled invoices in month one.
- Set an internal policy for overdue accounts. Shopify surfaces overdue status, but it doesn’t decide what you do about it, agree internally on when you follow up, when you apply a late fee (if at all), and when you pause further ordering for a chronically late account.
- Test the buyer experience yourself. Log in as a test buyer under a company location with net terms assigned and place a real order through checkout, so you’ve seen exactly what your wholesale customers will see before you roll it out live.
Skipping this kind of upfront planning is the most common reason net terms rollouts get messy, not because the Shopify feature itself is unreliable, but because the surrounding credit and reconciliation process wasn’t defined before go-live.
The Honest Limitation: This Is a Shopify Plus Feature
It’s worth being direct about this, because it changes the cost conversation for a lot of merchants: native company accounts, company locations, and net payment terms are part of Shopify’s B2B functionality, which requires Shopify Plus. Standard Shopify plans do not include this native B2B checkout behaviour.
If wholesale is a small, occasional part of your business, the cost of moving to Plus purely for native net terms may not stack up, a manual invoicing process or a lighter-weight B2B app might be the more proportionate choice for now. But if net terms, company accounts, and purchase-order-style buying are core to how your wholesale customers expect to transact, native Shopify B2B on Plus removes a lot of the manual reconciliation work that comes with bolting a workaround onto a standard plan.
Getting the configuration right, company structures, terms by customer segment, catalogue and pricing rules, and how net terms interact with your existing accounting workflow, is genuinely fiddly the first time you set it up, and mistakes here tend to show up as payment disputes or reconciliation headaches down the track. This is the kind of implementation work our Shopify B2B development service handles end-to-end, from company account structure through to net terms and invoicing configuration.
FAQ
Do I need Shopify Plus for net payment terms?
Yes. Native company accounts, company locations, and net payment terms are part of Shopify’s B2B feature set, which is only available on Shopify Plus. Standard Shopify plans don’t include this native checkout behaviour, though some merchants use third-party apps as a workaround.
Can different wholesale customers have different net terms?
Yes. Terms are set at the company location level, so you can assign Net 30 to one wholesale customer and Net 60 to another, or even give different locations within the same company different terms if their purchasing arrangements differ.
What happens if a buyer doesn’t pay by the due date?
The order’s payment status shows as overdue in the Shopify admin once the due date passes, so you can identify and follow up on it. Shopify doesn’t automatically cancel or restrict future orders for an overdue account by default, chasing payment and deciding whether to restrict further ordering is a manual decision you make based on your own credit policy.
Can a net terms buyer pay early, online, instead of waiting for the due date?
Yes, if you have online payment enabled for B2B, the buyer or you can settle the invoice through a payment link before the due date, and Shopify marks it paid and captures the payment automatically at that point.
Is Shopify’s native net terms feature the same as a full accounts-receivable system?
Not quite, it handles the checkout behaviour, invoice generation, due dates, and payment status well, but it’s not a full accounts-receivable or credit-management platform. Many merchants still sync order and payment data into their accounting software (like Xero) for broader financial reporting and credit control.
Ready to Set Up Native B2B on Shopify?
If you’re evaluating whether Shopify Plus and native net terms are the right move for your wholesale operation, it’s worth talking through your specific buyer base and payment workflows before committing. Book a call with our team, or start with a Shopify audit to see how your current B2B setup compares to what native Shopify B2B could do for you.
