WooCommerce gives you a foundation for selling online, but wholesale stores have a different set of requirements. There is plenty of functionality not native to WooCommerce: account approval before anyone sees pricing, group-based rates for different buyer tiers, VAT validation at registration, and the ability to order across dozens of SKUs in a single session. Without additional tooling, you’re either managing access manually or leaving pricing exposed to everyone. A WooCommerce B2B plugin such as B2BKing solves that.
Building a WooCommerce wholesale store with B2BKing will let you accept trade applications, hide pricing from the public, apply group-specific prices with volume tiers, and give buyers a bulk order form. I’m using B2BKing Pro throughout this one and will be right up your street if you’re moving manual wholesale processes onto WooCommerce.
WooCommerce B2B Tutorial: Fast Facts
- B2BKing is a WooCommerce plugin that adds B2B and wholesale functionality including account registration, group pricing, dynamic rules, and a bulk order form.
- B2BKing Pro adds subaccounts, purchase lists, an invoice payment gateway, and the full range of dynamic rule types. A free version is available from the WordPress Plugin Directory.
- Everything in B2BKing is organized around customer groups: pricing, payment methods, tax rules, and product visibility all operate at a group level.
What Is B2BKing?
B2BKing essentially adds the infrastructure wholesale WooCommerce stores need. This includes registration workflows, group-based pricing, access controls, and buyer tools on top of the cart and checkout WooCommerce already handles.
👉 For a full feature overview before you start, our B2BKing review covers the plugin in detail.
The plugin runs in two modes: B2B Shop for stores selling exclusively to businesses, and B2B and B2C Hybrid for stores serving both wholesale and retail customers from the same installation. Everything ties back to customer groups as this controls pricing, payment options, tax exemptions, and product visibility.
What You’ll Need
I’m using an example of an office supplies wholesaler selling paper, printer cartridges, pens, notebooks, and desk accessories to trade buyers.
There’s going to be two customer groups covering different buying arrangements: Retailers are independent shops buying for resale who pay by card, and Distributors are volume buyers on 30-day invoice terms at lower prices. Both groups need manual approval before accessing the catalog. Neither should see pricing until they log in.
Before starting, make sure you have the following in place:
- A WordPress site with WooCommerce installed and active.
- Your existing product catalog in WooCommerce as group pricing is added in a later step.
- A B2BKing Pro license from the B2BKing site.
- The B2BKing plugin installed and activated.
If your catalog runs to more than a few dozen products the pricing step will take longer, but there’s a bulk import option I’ll get to later.
WooCommerce B2B: How to Build a Wholesale Store with B2BKing
While it looks like there are a lot of steps, many of these take a few seconds to a couple of minutes to do. I’m going to take you through these seven steps now, starting with setting up your shop mode.
1. Set Your Shop Mode
Shop mode is the first decision B2BKing asks you to make, which is how the store behaves for every visitor. For a dedicated wholesale operation, the right choice here can remove retail paths and public pricing entirely.
First, go to B2BKing > Settings > Main Settings and locate the plugin status selector. From here, select B2B Shop. If you’re building a hybrid store that also sells to retail customers, B2B and B2C Hybrid keeps both tracks running without B2C customers encountering wholesale functionality.
Directly below the mode selector is a list of toggles that control what appears in your customers’ My Account panel. If you enable the bulk order form and purchase lists here, I’ll show you how to configure both later.
2. Create Your Customer Groups
You should set up groups first as they need to exist before you configure pricing, payment methods, or visibility. To do this, head to B2BKing > Groups > Business (B2B) Groups and create two groups: Retailers and Distributors.
When you open each group, you’ll find controls for available shipping and payment methods. For Distributors, enable the invoice payment gateway and remove card payment. In this example, volume buyers on account terms don’t pay by card at checkout, while Retailers use standard card payments only.
Each customer belongs to one group and group-level settings mean a payment method is either available or not. As such, belonging to multiple groups would produce conflicts. If you need tiered pricing within a group, dynamic rules handle that without requiring separate groups for every pricing band.
3. Restrict Pricing From Guest Visitors
Before any buyer can access the store, you need to decide what unregistered visitors see. For a wholesale operation, this is usually the first thing you’d want to lock down. In general, trade pricing shouldn’t be public and your catalog should give prospects enough to justify registering without giving away your rates.
You find these settings within B2BKing > Settings > Access Restriction.
Here, choose Hide prices. The product catalog stays visible to unregistered visitors but hides all pricing until they log in. The three alternative settings are worth knowing for other scenarios:
- Hide shop and products removes the catalog from guest view entirely.
- Hide website / force login redirects any unauthenticated visitor to a login page before they see anything.
- Replaces prices with “Request a Quote” keeps the catalog visible but replaces pricing with a request-a-quote flow.
If you need pricing hidden only for a specific category while leaving the rest visible, you can handle this through B2BKing > Dynamic Rules using a Hidden Price rule.
4. Set Up Trade Registration
Registration is where B2BKing starts separating wholesale buyers from everyone else. This involves connecting each customer role to a group behind the scenes.
The standard registration option (Enable drop-down and fields) within Settings > Registration lets you access the User Type drop-down menu on the My Account page, so ensure that’s enabled.
Next, go to the Registration Roles page, create a Retailer role and a Distributor role, and set both to manual approval.
You link each role to its group within the Automatic Approval to Group drop-down menu: Retailer to Retailers, Distributor to Distributors. From the moment you approve an application, B2BKing places the customer in the right group with their pricing, payment methods, and visibility already in place.
The B2BKing > Registration Fields screen lets you configure what each role collects at signup.
I’m adding a Company Name field and a VAT Number field for both roles and marking both as required. However, B2BKing supports a range of field types so you can request trade certificates or company registration documents without any custom development.
B2BKing also sends email alerts at each approval stage, which you configure within WooCommerce’s email settings panel.
5. Configure Wholesale Pricing
B2BKing adds group-specific pricing fields to each product’s edit screen so every group sees only the rate that applies to their account. To set yours up, open any product in WooCommerce and scroll to the Product Data section. Under the General tab, you’ll find a pricing field for each customer group.
Enter the wholesale price for Retailers and a lower price for Distributors. For products where volume orders should unlock lower pricing, add tiered pricing in the same section.
You set quantity thresholds and a price per unit at each level, so a ream of paper might have one price up to 50 units, a lower price for 51 to 200, and lower still above that. If you tick Show Tiered Pricing Table within the Product Data > B2BKing panel, you can generate a pricing breakdown on the product page so buyers see what they save before they commit.
If percentages are easier to manage than calculating final prices, you can enable the percentage input option on the B2BKing > Settings > Tiered Pricing screen. For larger catalogs, the B2BKing > Tools page lets you export a spreadsheet, add group pricing across all rows, and re-import it. The B2BKing documentation covers the column structure and import format.
6. Add the Bulk Order Form
A bulk order form is a great way to give those who know your catalog a quicker way to purchase. They can set quantities across multiple products and add everything to the cart in one session.
This form will appear in a B2B customers’ My Account panel by default once you enable it in the main settings. You can also add it to any page using shortcodes (with three themes available).
Two of these themes support even more parameters for controlling what the form displays. For instance, you could limit the form to a specific category or put your most-ordered products at the top by default.
7. Set Dynamic Rules for Discounts and Shipping
Dynamic rules are B2BKing’s way of applying pricing and order conditions beyond the standard settings. Each rule has a type, a target (a group, a specific user, or all users), optional conditions such as minimum quantities or order values, and an action it fires when those conditions are met.
To do this, head to B2BKing > Dynamic Rules. For this office supplies store example, two rules are worth setting up:
- Free shipping for Distributors. Set the rule type to Free Shipping, assign it to the Distributors group, and add a minimum order amount condition. Every qualifying order clears the threshold and gets free shipping applied automatically.
- Volume discount for Retailers. Set the rule type to Discount (Percentage), apply it to the Retailers group, select the relevant product category, and add an order value condition. B2BKing evaluates both conditions before applying the discount, so it only fires when a buyer hits the category and the spend threshold at the same time.
There are plenty of other rule types, such as minimum and maximum order quantities, fixed prices for individual accounts, required purchase multiples, and much more. Again, the B2BKing documentation covers each type.
WooCommerce B2B: How to Take Your Store Further With B2BKing
Your WooCommerce B2B store should now be able to handle guest access controls, trade registration with VAT validation, group-based pricing with volume tiers, a bulk order form, and automated shipping and discount rules. Each buyer group gets the pricing and payment options that match their account, and new registrations go through approval before anyone can access the catalog.
Once you’re live, subaccounts are worth setting up if any of your buyers have purchasing teams — a distribution company with multiple buyers needs multiple logins under one company account. Purchase lists let regular buyers save order templates and reuse them, cutting the friction on repeat orders.
Related Articles
- B2BKing Review: An All-in-One WooCommerce B2B Solution
- WooCommerce Beginners Guide
- WooCommerce Custom Fields: How to Create and Display Them
Will B2BKing be central to your WooCommerce B2B store? Let me know your opinions in the comments section below!
