How to send B2B quotes in Shopify

First, what a wholesale buyer is actually asking for

When a café owner emails “what is your price on forty 5lb bags of the house blend, and twenty of the Ethiopian?”, they are asking for four things at once: specific products, specific quantities, a price per unit that is not the one on your storefront, and a date by which that price stops being true. They expect to say yes or no to the whole thing, and then receive an order built from what they said yes to.

That is why a discount code is not a quote. A code applies a rule to a catalog for anyone who has it. A quote is a single agreement with a single buyer on a single set of line items. Whatever method you use, the test is the same: does the buyer end up paying the number they agreed to, and does that number stop being available when you meant it to?

Method 1 — a draft order built by hand

This is free, needs no app, and is the right answer more often than people admit. In the Shopify admin go to Orders, create a draft order, and add the products the buyer asked for at the quantities they asked for. Attach the buyer as the customer. For each line, open the unit price and enter a custom price. That replaces the listed price rather than discounting it. If the buyer wants something that is not a product in your catalog, “Add custom item” takes a name, a price and a quantity. Then send the invoice: the buyer receives an email with a link to a checkout page where they add billing details, pick shipping, and pay.

For a buyer you have already agreed terms with, this is complete, and you should use it before paying for anything. Where it falls short is everything that happens before and around the order. There is no intake form, so the request still arrives in your inbox and someone retypes it. There is no deadline on the price: the documentation lets you reserve inventory until a date you choose, but nothing marks the quoted price itself as lapsed. There is no acceptance step: the buyer's only way to say yes is to pay, which is a problem when their side needs sign-off before money moves. And there is no margin view.

Source: Shopify Help Center, “Creating draft orders” and “Sending invoices for draft orders”.

Method 2 — Shopify's native B2B features

Shopify has a built-in B2B layer: you create a company, give it one or more locations and contacts, and assign catalogs that determine which products that company can buy and at what price. Catalogs also support quantity rules and volume pricing with price breaks at quantity thresholds. Shopify's documentation says B2B is available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans and not on Starter or Retail, and that the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans can assign up to 3 active catalogs across all B2B markets.

This is the right tool when the agreement is standing rather than one-off: the same buyer reordering the same lines at the same negotiated prices, logging in and checking out themselves.

It is a different shape from a quote. A catalog is a price list that stays in force; it does not expire on a date, is not accepted or declined, and is not tied to one request for one set of quantities. And the buyer has to be set up as a company contact and log in, a real onboarding step for a prospect who only wanted a number.

Source: Shopify Help Center, “B2B on Shopify” and “B2B catalogs”.

Method 3 — a quoting app

This is what Quotient does, and it is the draft order from method 1 with the missing pieces added in front of it. A quote begins as a request: a buyer submits one from their customer account on your store, a new wholesale prospect fills in your application form, or you create the quote yourself from an email. You pick the products from your own catalog, set the quantities, and type a negotiated price per unit on each line. The discount off list updates as you type and anything past the limit you set in Settings is flagged. Lines that have a unit cost on record show an estimated margin; lines without one show margin as unknown.

Sending the offer emails the buyer a link to a branded page that lists every line, the quantities, the agreed prices, your terms and the deadline, with one button to accept and one to decline. No account and no login. Every offer expires after the number of days you set, the buyer is reminded before the deadline, and once it passes the offer can no longer be accepted. When the buyer accepts, one click converts it into a Shopify draft order at exactly the prices on the offer. From there it is an ordinary draft order: invoice, payment and fulfilment stay in Shopify.

What it does not do: it does not price your catalog, run a wholesale storefront, take payment, or do accounting. It reads your products, creates draft orders, reads and writes customers, stores the company, contact name, email and quote lines, and never sees card details. The Free plan is $0 and includes quote requests, offer building and up to 3 sent offers a month. Standard is $9.99 per month with a 14-day free trial and unlimited sent offers, billed through Shopify in USD.

Which one to pick

If you quote a few times a month to buyers you already trust, build the draft order by hand, set custom prices, send the invoice, and spend nothing. If your wholesale buyers reorder the same lines on standing prices and your plan includes B2B, set them up as companies with a catalog and let them check out themselves. A quoting app earns its place when requests arrive faster than you can retype them, when a price needs to stop being valid on a date, when the buyer has to say yes before anyone pays, or when you want a margin figure before you commit.

Questions

Is a discount code a B2B quote?
No. A discount code applies a rule to a catalog for anyone who has the code. A quote is one agreement with one buyer on specific products and quantities at specific per-unit prices, with a deadline, that the buyer accepts or declines.

Can I send a B2B quote in Shopify without an app?
Yes. Build a draft order in the Shopify admin, attach the buyer as the customer, set a custom price on each line, and send the invoice; the buyer pays through the checkout link. There is no intake form, no deadline on the price, no acceptance step before payment and no margin view.

Which Shopify plans include native B2B features?
Shopify's documentation says B2B is available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans and not on Starter or Retail. Companies and catalogs set standing prices per buyer; they are not a one-off quote with an expiry.

What does a quoting app add over a draft order?
A request intake form, a per-line negotiated price with the discount off list shown as you type, an emailed offer the buyer accepts or declines in one click without logging in, an expiry date after which the offer cannot be accepted, and conversion of the accepted quote into a draft order at the agreed prices.

How much does Quotient cost?
The Free plan is $0 and includes quote requests, offer building and up to 3 sent offers a month. Standard is $9.99 per month with a 14-day free trial and unlimited sent offers, billed through Shopify in USD.