Introduction to B2B for Adobe Commerce

Unlike the standard business-to-consumer model, integrated B2B (Business to Business) features are designed to meet the needs of sellers (Adobe Commerce merchants) who have customers that are companies. It accommodates companies with complex organizational structures and multiple users with various roles and levels of purchasing permission. A typical B2B customer might be the manager of a retail store, or a buyer that makes purchases on behalf of a company. In both cases, the transaction takes place between your business and theirs. You might also sell products direct to the consumer. B2B for Adobe Commerce is an integrated solution that provides support for both B2B and B2C models.

With the installation and enablement of the B2B extension in your Adobe Commerce store, the buying experience can be personalized with customer-specific catalogs and pricing, and targeted content and promotions.

Company accounts

The Company account component is a key entity within B2B on which all other features are in some way dependent. It allows joining multiple buyers that belong within a single company into a single company account (or corporate account). The company administrator can build a company structure (divisions, subdivisions, and users) that reflects the operational model for the company and provide different user roles and permissions for company members. This structure allows the company administrator to control user activity for the company account: ordering, quoting, purchasing, access to company credit information or profile, and so on.

From the Admin, the Commerce site administrator can configure how the company operates on the website. Configuration determines the B2B capabilities available for company users, including payment methods, pricing levels, the ability to negotiate prices using quotes, the ability to create requisition lists, and more.

For more information, see Company Accounts.

Company management

Company management helps merchant administrators streamline administration and management of B2B organizations with complex operational models.

From the Admin, users with appropriate permissions can build a Company Hierarchy that reflects the organizational structure of a business enterprise comprised of multiple companies. This hierarchy allows them to view and manage companies as a group. For example, the administrator can designate a parent company, and assign all companies that operate as subsidiaries of the parent company. Then, the parent company administrator can view and manage company accounts for all assigned companies.

For more information, see Company Management.

Services for Adobe Commerce

Services for Adobe Commerce are hosted services that provide extended capabilities to Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source. Services that support B2B workflows are:

Shared catalogs

Shared catalogs are the pricing levels that allow setting custom prices per product for different companies on one or multiple websites. By using shared catalogs, you can sell products by applying different pricing levels for different customer groups. Support for Shared catalogs is available only for Commerce stores configured to support Company accounts.

For more information, see Working with Shared Catalogs.

Quick Order

Configure Quick Order to reduce the order process to several clicks for logged in customers when they know the product name or SKU of the products they want to order.

For more information, see Quick Orders.

Negotiable Quotes

Use the Quotes feature to initiate price negotiation between a company buyer and seller.

Buyers and sellers use the quote to manage the negotiation process–such as adding items, updating quantities, requesting and applying discounts—until they reach an agreement. The Quotes grid in the Admin lists each quote received, and maintains a history of the communication between buyer and seller.

Support for Negotiable Quotes is available only for Commerce stores configured to support Company accounts.

For more information, see Negotiable Quotes.

Purchase order approvals

When Purchase Orders are activated for a company account, all orders are automatically created as Purchase Orders (PO). Company users with the required permissions can create, edit, and delete POs that they create and POs created by subordinate users. Depending on their role, and the order, company users could be subjected to several approval rules.

For more information, see Purchase Orders for Companies.

Requisition lists

Customers can use requisition list to save time when purchasing frequently ordered products because they can add items to the shopping cart directly from the list. They can maintain multiple lists that focus on products from different vendors, buyers, teams, campaigns, or anything else that streamlines their workflow.

For more information, see Requisition Lists.