✦ Approval Workflows
Shopify B2B Approval Workflows
Approving a wholesale account is a commercial decision with a dozen settings attached. The workflow either makes that decision once and applies it consistently, or leaves it to whoever is on the inbox that morning.
Capabilities
What a real approval process handles
Approval is not a yes or no button — it is a set of consequences.
Review Queue
Pending applications in one place with the submitted data and uploaded documents attached to the record.
One-Click Approval
Approving a company grants it access to your wholesale storefront and checkout, with every downstream setting applied at the same moment.
Approval Presets
Named bundles of catalog, payment terms, and tax settings applied on approval, so tier decisions are consistent across your team.
Company Groups
Presets applied per group of companies, so an independent retailer and a regional distributor get consistently different catalogs and terms.
Access on Approval
Approval is what unlocks B2B pricing and checkout, so the access rules and the approval state stay tied together.
Outcome Messaging
Approval, rejection, and more-information-needed messages that tell the applicant what actually happens next.
Approval is where your pricing policy lives
Every wholesale approval answers more than "do we trade with these people". It answers which catalog they get, what discount tier, whether they are on net terms or prepayment, and how they are taxed. In a manual process those answers are made afresh each time, by whoever happens to handle it. The result is a customer base where similar accounts are on different terms for reasons nobody can reconstruct.
Approval presets fix that by turning a tier into a named object. Instead of choosing a catalog, a payment term, and a tax setting individually, a reviewer picks "Independent Retailer" or "Regional Distributor" and every consequence follows. The policy is written once, applied identically, and changed in one place.
How far to automate approval
Approval itself is a judgement call, and most merchants want a person making it. What genuinely should be automated is everything that follows: Onboard B2B documents one-click approval with presets that set catalogs, payment terms, and tax settings for different company groups, so the reviewer makes one decision and the account is fully configured.
Where teams do want rules-based auto-approval for low-risk applications, that is custom work rather than something to assume any app provides. We usually start by watching what reviewers actually decide for a month, then automate only the patterns that turn out to be genuinely mechanical.
Rejections and partial approvals
Most applications that fail are not fraudulent, they are incomplete: a missing resale certificate, an unreadable upload, a tax ID typo. Treating those as rejections loses real customers. A request-changes action keeps the application open, tells the applicant exactly what is missing, and preserves everything they already submitted.
For the genuine no, an explicit rejection with a reason recorded matters for consistency — and for the awkward conversation six months later when the same business applies again. This ties directly into B2B customer onboarding, where approval is one step in the wider path from application to first order.
Related
Elsewhere in the Shopify B2B cluster
Wholesale Development
Building the wholesale storefront itself — catalogs, minimums, and order forms.
Learn more →FAQ
Common questions
A preset bundles the settings applied when an account is approved — catalog, payment terms, and tax configuration. A reviewer picks the preset instead of setting each field, so accounts in the same tier are configured identically.
Approval is normally a person clicking approve — the automation worth having is what happens next, where presets configure the catalog, terms, and tax settings instantly. Rules-based auto-approval is possible but is custom work, and we would keep anything involving credit terms with a human.
A request-changes action is better than a rejection. It keeps the submitted data, tells the applicant precisely what is missing, and lets them complete it without starting over.
Whoever owns the commercial relationship — usually sales rather than support. The workflow should make it possible for them to approve from a queue in seconds, which is what stops approvals sitting for days.
Approvals taking too long?
We will map your current approval decisions into presets and rules, so the routine ones stop waiting on a person.
Streamline Your Approvals