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Most B2B stores treat the buyer as the customer: Jane has an account, Jane gets the trade price, Jane places the orders. But Jane is rarely the whole story. The actual customer is Holloway Trade — and Jane is one of four people there who buy from you. A new purchasing assistant joins and needs the same prices. A director wants to approve anything over a few thousand. The finance team expects to pay on 30-day terms, not by card.

That’s the gap company accounts fill in B2B Suite for WooCommerce (Pro). One company record owns several buyers; every member sees the company’s trade prices, orders and credit; and the store can enforce roles and limits that match how a real purchasing team works — instead of pretending each login is a separate customer.

This post walks the whole flow end to end: create the company, give it a pricing group, invite its people, cap their spending, put the company on terms — and then what it looks like from the buyer’s side, order after order.

TL;DR

• A company account groups several WordPress users under one buying organisation. The company has a name, a VAT number and a pricing group; the people are its members.
• The company’s group overrides each member’s own — so every colleague pays the same agreed trade price, whether they were individually assigned a group or not.
• You invite members by email with a role: Admin (manages the company), Approver (approves orders), or Buyer (places orders). Invites are single-use and expiring.
• Set a per-buyer spend limit per order and per month. An order above the limit is held for approval instead of going through — the approver gets a notification and decides on a signed link.
• Give the company net terms and credit (Net 30/60/90). The buyer picks “pay on account” at checkout, and you track exposure against a real ledger with statements and overdue reminders.
• Members share the company’s purchase lists and message threads, so a team orders from one shared context instead of four personal ones.
• Company accounts are a Pro feature: they need the free B2B Suite plugin (which owns the schema and pricing pipeline) plus the Pro add-on.

Why a company account?

A wholesale-pricing plugin gives you groups and discounts — but it still sees one login, one customer. Real trade buyers don’t work that way, and the friction shows up in familiar places:

• Prices drift between people. Jane was assigned the trade group when she applied; her colleague Sam joined later and nobody assigned him, so Sam sees retail and emails you about it.
• Orders scatter across accounts. Jane, Sam and Priya each place orders under their own logins, so you can’t see Holloway Trade’s history in one place — and neither can they.
• No one can say no. Any buyer can place any order, because the store has no idea who’s allowed to commit the company’s money.
• “Pay by card” doesn’t fit. A business that buys on invoice simply won’t check out with terms it doesn’t have.

A company account fixes all four at once, because it moves the customer from person to organisation:

The company is the customer. The people are how it buys.

Step 1: Create the company and set its pricing group

In B2B Suite → Customers → Companies (Pro), create a new company. You give it a name, an optional VAT or tax number, and — the part that does the real work — a pricing group.

The pricing group is the same customer group you already use for wholesale pricing: the one that carries your percentage-off, fixed-price and quantity rules. What’s different is who it applies to:

Every member of this company pays this group’s prices, whatever group they belong to personally.

That one rule is what stops the Jane-and-Sam drift. Assign Holloway Trade to your “Wholesale — Distributor” group, invite three people, and all three see exactly the same prices from the moment they accept. When you renegotiate, you change the company’s group once — not three accounts.

You can also store the company’s billing details here, which then appear on its orders and invoices.

Step 2: Invite the people — Admin, Approver, Buyer

Next, add the people. Instead of handing out a shared login (which breaks audit trails and gets shared anyway), you invite each colleague by email with one of three roles:

• Admin — manages the company: invites and removes members, and changes settings.
• Approver — approves orders that trip a spend limit. An Admin can approve too, but a company often wants a finance lead doing it.
• Buyer — places orders. This is the everyday role for most of the team.

Each invite is single-use and expires, and it’s tied to the email address — so only the right person can accept it. When a colleague accepts, their account is linked to the company and they see the company’s trade prices immediately — no waiting for you to set them up.

What you don’t have to do is remember to assign each new starter a group. Their group comes from the company, so onboarding a new buyer is one invite, not a pricing-setup chore. And if someone leaves, removing them from the company sends their pricing back to their personal account — nothing lingers.

Step 3: Cap the spend with limits and an approval chain

A company that trusts its buyers still wants guardrails. B2B Suite lets you set two limits per member: a per-order limit and a monthly limit.

When a buyer tries to place an order that exceeds their limit, the order doesn’t just fail — it’s held for approval:

1. The order is placed into an “awaiting approval” state, and the items’ stock is reserved so they can’t be sold to someone else while the order waits.
2. The company’s Approver is notified. They can open the order from a signed link — no shared logins, no “log in as Jane”.
3. The approver approves or rejects. Approve, and the order proceeds (completing on account if the company has credit — more below, or by the normal payment link otherwise). Reject, and the buyer hears about it with the stock released.

This is the part that lets a junior buyer build a basket without giving them the keys to the company cheque book. Shopify B2B treats this as a flagship feature; on WooCommerce, it’s what turns a store into somewhere a real purchasing team can work.

Step 4: Put the company on terms and credit

Trade buyers expect to pay on invoice. On the company record you can set up a credit account: a credit limit and terms — Net 30, 60 or 90.

From then on, checkout offers the company’s buyers “pay on account” as a payment method, up to their available credit. Behind the scenes B2B Suite keeps an append-only ledger: every order debits it, every payment and refund credits it, and the store checks limit − outstanding balance at checkout, so a company can’t quietly exceed its exposure. Over the limit, the order is declined with a clear message.

When invoices come due, you don’t need to chase manually: B2B Suite sends the company a statement each month and overdue reminders on a schedule you set, all rendered from the same ledger. You see, per company, exactly what’s outstanding and what’s overdue — in the admin, not in a spreadsheet.

What a company buyer sees every day

Once the company is set up, the everyday experience is deliberately quiet — everything just works:

• Prices. A member browses the shop and sees the company group’s price, resolved through the same single pricing pipeline every B2B price runs through. If they (or you) ever wonder why a number is what it is, the price explainer shows the full decision — including the line that says a price list for their company won. Because one resolver answers the product page, the cart and the checkout, the price can’t change mid-purchase.
• Their own account, the company’s context. Each person logs in as themselves — order history is still per-person where it should be — but shared company features (below) treat them as one organisation.
• Consistent behaviour everywhere. Company pricing applies on the shop, in the bulk order form, and in the block checkout, because it’s resolved at the pricing layer, not patched per page.

Working together: shared lists and company threads

The last piece is what makes a team feel like one account rather than four people with a shared discount.

Shared purchase lists. Buyers in B2B Suite can save reorder lists — “Monthly restock”, “Site consumables”. With a company account, a member can share a list with the company. Every colleague then sees it (badged with who shared it) and can load it and order from it; only the owner edits it. The person who manages the supplier relationships builds the list once, and the whole team orders from it.

Company conversations. If a buyer messages you about an order, or you’re negotiating a quote, the thread is visible to the whole company — not trapped in one person’s inbox. A colleague can follow up or answer while the original buyer is on leave, and the conversation history travels with the company rather than with the individual. Quotes raised in those threads stay tied to the same company context.

The result: the company builds one shared working relationship with your store — one set of prices, one shared list of what it reorders, one thread of decisions — while each person still logs in with their own account and their own permissions.

FAQ

Do company accounts work with the free B2B Suite plugin?

Company accounts are a Pro feature. You need the free B2B Suite plugin for WooCommerce installed and active (it owns the database schema and the pricing pipeline), plus the Pro add-on. Everything else in the free plugin — groups, price rules, registration, bulk ordering — keeps working exactly as before.

Does the company’s group really override a member’s personal group?

Yes. Pricing is resolved member → company → group, and the company’s group wins. If a buyer belongs to a personal group too, the company’s pricing takes precedence while they’re a member — which is what keeps every colleague on the same agreed price. Remove them from the company and their personal pricing applies again.

What happens when an order exceeds a buyer’s spend limit?

The order is held for approval rather than blocked: stock is reserved, the company’s approver is notified, and they approve or reject from a signed link. Approve and the order proceeds; reject and the stock is released and the buyer is told.

Can buyers pay on invoice?

If the company has a credit account, yes — “pay on account” appears at checkout up to the available balance, and the order is tracked in a real ledger with statements and overdue reminders. Net 30, 60 and 90 are supported.

Does every member see the same order history?

Each person has their own account and their own order history, but company-shared context — purchase lists and conversations — is visible to every member, so the team works from one shared picture without sharing logins.

How do new starters get trade pricing?

You invite them by email with a role. When they accept, they’re a company member and see the company’s trade prices immediately — no separate group assignment needed.

Conclusion

A B2B store that treats each login as a separate customer ends up with drifted prices, scattered order history and no way to say no. Company accounts fix that by making the organisation the customer: one pricing group for the whole team, colleagues invited with real roles, spend limits with an approval chain, and pay-on-account terms tracked in a proper ledger.

Set up is four steps — create the company, pick its group, invite its people, set the limits and terms — and from then on the storefront quietly behaves like one account, because it is one.

Get B2B Suite free on WordPress.org and add Pro when your buyers need company accounts, spend limits and terms. Questions? The docs cover every setting, and support is here to help.

WholesaleX does role-based wholesale pricing, and does it well. The case for moving shows up when your buyer stops being a person and becomes an organisation: several people ordering on one account, spend limits and approval, pay-on-account terms with a real credit ledger, quotes, VAT validation. That’s the ground B2B Suite is built on — and it’s one plugin with a free core, not a stack of add-ons.

The worry with any switch is the same one: will I lose my data? The honest answer is no — and you get to prove it to yourself before you commit. The importer runs as a dry run first, it never writes back to WholesaleX, and it’s safe to run twice. Nothing changes until you say so.

This guide walks the whole move, step by step, using the importer built into the free B2B Suite plugin. You don’t need to spend anything to migrate and check your prices.

TL;DR

• The importer is in the free plugin: B2B Suite → Settings → Import. Pick WholesaleX as the source.
• It reads WholesaleX straight from WordPress storage (options, user meta, post meta and its quote posts), so WholesaleX doesn’t need to be active and nothing is ever written back to it.
• Customer roles, buyers, approval status, pricing rules and tiers, min/max quantity, buy-X-get-one, tax exemption, shipping access, sub-accounts, and request-a-quote all come across automatically.
• Wallet balances, max-spend caps, price-visibility rules and custom registration fields need a manual step — each one is called out by name in the report, so nothing goes missing quietly.
• Every import is a dry run first; nothing is written until you confirm. Running it again updates instead of duplicating, so you can import now and re-import at switchover.
• The free plugin includes one customer group. If you have several wholesale roles, run the import with Pro active so every group comes across in one pass. Pro-domain data imports now and switches on when you upgrade.

What the importer actually does

Before you touch a setting, it helps to know how the migration is built — because that’s what makes it safe to try on a live store.

It reads, it doesn’t rewrite. The importer reads WholesaleX’s data from where WordPress already keeps it: plugin options, user meta, post meta, and its quote posts. It only ever writes into B2B Suite’s own groups, rules and tables. WholesaleX’s data is left exactly as it is.

WholesaleX doesn’t need to be active. Because the data lives in WordPress storage, the import works whether the WholesaleX plugin is switched on or off.

Every run is a preview by default. The import shows you the groups, customers, rules, companies and quotes it would create, plus a warning for every record it can’t map cleanly. Nothing is written until you confirm.

Running it twice is safe. The importer records a map of “this WholesaleX record became this B2B Suite record.” Run it again and it updates those same records instead of creating duplicates — which is exactly what you want when you import early, keep selling on WholesaleX for a week, then re-import right before the switchover.

That combination — read-only towards WholesaleX, dry run first, idempotent — means you can run the whole thing on your live store today and decide afterwards.

What comes across automatically

Most of your setup migrates in one pass, no manual work:

• Customer roles → customer groups. Each WholesaleX role becomes a B2B Suite customer group. WholesaleX’s built-in guest and b2c roles are skipped — they aren’t real trade groups.
• Buyers and their role. Every user is placed into the group that matches their role.
• Approval status. Whether an account is approved or still pending carries over.
• Pricing rules and quantity tiers. Percentage, fixed-amount and fixed-price rules come across, including tier breaks.
• Minimum / maximum quantity and minimum order value. Role restrictions become quantity rules.
• Buy-X-get-one (BOGO). Dynamic reward rules map to B2B Suite’s BOGO rules.
• Per-role tax exemption. Exempt roles become tax-exempt groups.
• Shipping method access. Per-role shipping allow-lists carry over.
• Companies and sub-accounts. A parent account becomes the company admin; its sub-accounts become company buyers.
• Request-a-quote. WholesaleX quotes (from its request-a-quote add-on) import with their status intact.

What needs a manual step (and why)

A short list can’t be migrated automatically — not because it’s hard, but because copying it blindly would be wrong. The importer flags each of these in the dry-run report:

• Wallet balances. A WholesaleX wallet is a prepaid balance your customer has topped up. B2B Suite’s credit is the opposite — an amount the customer owes you against net terms. Silently turning one into the other would misstate money, so the importer leaves it to you to set up credit terms deliberately.
• Maximum order value caps. B2B Suite caps order quantity, not spend. A max-spend limit is flagged rather than guessed.
• Per-role price visibility. WholesaleX’s show/hide rules don’t map one-to-one onto B2B Suite’s guest price-hiding, so you set your visibility rule by hand (it’s a single setting).
• Custom registration fields. Recreate any extra fields you added to the sign-up form.
• Message / conversation history. Not carried over — there’s little value in it once the quote itself has been imported.

Everything here is surfaced as a named warning with a note on how to finish it. That warning list is your manual to-do list — work down it and you’re done.

Where each WholesaleX thing lands

If you think in WholesaleX terms, here’s the quick translation. Items marked Pro are Pro features — but the importer still writes them on the free plugin now, and they switch on when you upgrade. You migrate everything today and unlock later.

Migrate step by step

Seven steps, and steps 4–6 are the whole of it.

Step 1: Install B2B Suite (free)

Add B2B Suite for WooCommerce from WordPress.org alongside your existing setup. It won’t fight WholesaleX at this stage — you’re only reading data, not switching pricing engines yet.

Step 2: If you have more than one group, activate Pro

The free plugin ships with a single customer group. A store with several wholesale roles should run the import with Pro active so every group comes across in one pass. The dry run tells you how many roles it found either way, so you can decide before paying.

Step 3: Open Settings → Import and choose WholesaleX

Go to B2B Suite → Settings → Import. The importer detects WholesaleX’s stored data automatically. Choose it as the source and pick which roles you want to bring over.

Step 4: Run the dry run

This writes nothing. You get a full report: the groups, customers, rules, companies and quotes it will create, and a warning for every record it can’t map cleanly.

Step 5: Read the report — especially the warnings

Skim the counts first and confirm they match what you expect (for example, “5 groups, 214 customers, 38 price rules”). Then read the heads-up notices and the couldn’t-migrate list — that’s the short manual to-do list from the section above.

Step 6: Commit

Happy with the preview? Confirm, and the same import runs for real. Because it records a source-to-created map, you can safely re-run it later to pick up anything that changed on WholesaleX in the meantime.

Step 7: Switch the storefront over

Once your prices check out (next section), deactivate WholesaleX so only one plugin is resolving prices. Keep it installed-but-off for a while — that’s still your instant rollback.

Check your prices before you switch

Three checks, about five minutes, and you’ll know the migration is right before a real buyer does.

1. Check a price. In Pricing → Check a price, enter a product whose trade price you already know and a customer from an imported group. The tool shows the full precedence trail — which rule won and why — so you can watch the imported rule do its job.
2. View as customer. Use view-as-customer on a real imported buyer and walk the shop, cart and checkout. Confirm all three agree on the number. (B2B Suite resolves prices through one pipeline that covers both the classic checkout and Cart & Checkout Blocks, so a correct price is correct everywhere.)
3. Clear the warnings. Work down the dry-run warning list and recreate the handful of items that needed a manual step. Then you’re genuinely done.

Rolling back

Because nothing was ever written back to WholesaleX, rollback is simple: deactivate B2B Suite, reactivate WholesaleX. Your old store is exactly as you left it. This is why it’s safe to run the import — even the real, committed import — on a live store: the source data is never touched.

FAQ

Does WholesaleX have to stay active during the import?

No. The importer reads WholesaleX’s data from WordPress storage directly, so it works whether the plugin is active or not. Most people leave it on until they’ve verified prices, then switch it off.

Will importing change or delete anything in WholesaleX?

Never. The importer is read-only towards WholesaleX — it only writes into B2B Suite’s own groups, rules and tables. That’s exactly why deactivating B2B Suite restores your previous setup.

Do I need Pro to migrate?

No. The importer is in the free plugin, and you can migrate and verify pricing before spending anything. Pro matters in two cases: you have more than one customer group, or you’re bringing across Pro-domain data such as companies, tax exemptions or quotes. Even then the data imports on the free plugin and activates when you upgrade.

What happens to my customers’ wallet balances?

They’re flagged, not moved. A WholesaleX wallet is a prepaid balance the customer has topped up; B2B Suite’s credit is the opposite — an amount the customer owes you against net terms. Converting one into the other would misstate money, so the importer leaves it to you to set up credit terms deliberately.

Can I import, keep selling, and re-import later?

Yes — that’s the recommended way to switch a busy store. The importer maps each source record to what it created, so a second run updates those records instead of duplicating them. Import early, keep taking orders on WholesaleX, then re-import right before you flip the storefront over.

Does the migration cover the block checkout too?

Yes. B2B Suite controls prices through one pipeline that covers both the classic checkout and Cart & Checkout Blocks, so an imported price behaves the same everywhere.

Conclusion

Migrating off WholesaleX isn’t a leap of faith. It’s a preview you approve: read your roles, buyers, prices, companies and quotes into B2B Suite, check the numbers with the tools built for it, and switch the storefront over only when you’re sure. Nothing is written back to WholesaleX, so the door back is always open.

And once you’re across, the reason you moved is waiting for you — company accounts with sub-users, spend limits and approval, net terms with a credit ledger, quotes and VAT validation — all in the same plugin, on the same pricing pipeline as the free features you just imported into.

Get B2B Suite free on WordPress.org and run the dry run on your own store today. Need help? The docs cover every setting, and support is here if you get stuck.