Dealer Order Portal: How to Set Up Price Lists, Permissions and Order Flow
In businesses that work with dealers, orders usually arrive like this: a WhatsApp message, a phone call, sometimes an Excel file attached to an email. Someone collects them, enters them into the system, checks the price, looks at the stock, confirms. As the number of orders grows, this stops being one person’s day and turns into a bottleneck. A dealer order portal lets the dealer run this flow themselves. This article explains which parts the portal consists of and which decisions need to be made when setting it up.
Why B2B ordering is different from retail e-commerce
From the outside, both look like “add to basket, place order”. The differences between them are the differences that define the scope of the project.
| Retail e-commerce | Dealer portal | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Same for everyone | Specific to the dealer or group |
| Access | Open to everyone | Open to authorised users |
| Order quantity | By unit | Cases, pallets, minimum orders, multiples |
| Payment | At the time of order | Deferred terms, current account, credit limit |
| Basket size | A few products | Dozens of lines, repeat orders |
| Product search | Visual, browsing by category | Product code, fast bulk entry |
| Documents | Invoice | Pro forma, delivery note, account statement |
These differences are why an off-the-shelf retail e-commerce platform often cannot fully meet B2B needs. Some platforms offer B2B add-ons; their suitability should be checked at the start of the project.
Pricing: the most critical part of the job
Pricing is where the most mistakes are made and the most customisation is needed in a dealer portal. Before building, write down your own rules:
- What does the price depend on? The dealer group, the individual dealer, or the region?
- Are there quantity discounts? Tiered, or a single threshold?
- How do campaigns work? On specific products, on specific dates, for specific dealers?
- Is there a surcharge for payment terms? Does the price change according to the payment term?
- Are there special agreements? How will exceptions like “we agreed a special price on this product with this dealer” be kept in the system?
- What happens when a price changes? Will the price in unconfirmed baskets be updated, or stay fixed?
The last item is frequently skipped and causes disputes later. Make the decision at the start.
Permissions and user structure
A dealer is not a person but a company, and more than one person in that company may place orders. The setup usually looks like this:
- Dealer account: The account record, price list, credit limit and address details are tied to this account.
- Users: Several people at the same dealer; some can place orders, some can only view.
- Approval flow: At some dealers, an order goes through a manager’s approval within the company.
- Your own team: A regional manager sees only their own dealers; management sees all of them.
- Ordering on behalf of a dealer: Your team being able to create an order for a dealer who calls by phone.
Order flow and stock
The portal takes the order; the real question is what happens to the order afterwards. Points to clarify at the start:
- Should stock be visible? Actual quantities, or an indication like “in stock / low / out of stock”? Most businesses prefer the latter so as not to give information to competitors.
- Can out-of-stock products be ordered? If pre-orders are accepted, the customer should be given an estimated date.
- Order statuses: Received, confirmed, being prepared, shipped, delivered. The dealer being able to see this in the portal is one of the features that reduces phone calls the most.
- Partial shipments: What happens if only part of the order is ready?
- Exceeding the limit: Will a dealer who has used up their credit limit be able to order, or will the order go to approval?
Connection to your existing system
The value of a dealer portal depends largely on whether it can talk to your ERP or accounting system: product and price lists should come from there, orders should land there, and account balances should be read from there.
Whether this is possible depends on whether the system you use offers an external connection interface (API) and gives you access to it. Some systems offer this directly, some provide it with an additional module or licence, and in some only file transfer is possible. The first thing to do before the project starts is to find out the name and version of the system you use and check its technical suitability.
If integration is not possible, the portal can still be built — products and prices are transferred periodically, and orders are exported and entered into the system in bulk. This is still faster than taking orders by hand, but it is not real time; expectations need to be set accordingly.
Getting dealers to use the portal
A portal that works technically but that nobody uses is the most common form of failure. If a dealer is used to ordering via WhatsApp and the portal is slower than that, they go back to WhatsApp.
Approaches that work:
- Fast order entry: Being able to paste product codes and add them in bulk is much faster than browsing a catalogue, and dealers know their products by code.
- Repeating a past order: Most dealers place similar orders again. One-click reorder is the most used feature.
- Their own lists: Letting the dealer save the products they buy frequently.
- Working on a phone: The dealer is often in the warehouse or on the road.
- Access to information: If the account statement, past orders and documents are in the portal, the dealer logs in for those too.
- Transition period: Keeping both channels open for a while and giving a small advantage to orders placed through the portal speeds up the transition.
What should be in the first version?
- Dealer login and permissions
- Dealer-specific price list
- Product list, search and fast order entry
- Basket and order creation
- Order status tracking
- An order management screen on your side
Account statements, document downloads, a campaign engine, target and bonus tracking, and dealer performance reports can be left to the second phase.
Frequently asked questions
Can it be built on top of my existing e-commerce site?
It depends on the platform. Some e-commerce platforms offer B2B features; whether your pricing rules and permission needs fit into that mould needs to be examined. If they do not, it is healthier to build the portal separately and share the same product data.
My dealers are not comfortable with technology. Can they use it?
What decides it is not technical knowledge but whether the portal is faster than the current method. Fast order entry and repeating past orders are the two features that put this group most at ease.
Can my competitors see my prices?
The portal sits behind an authorised login; prices are not visible to outsiders. This is why setting up permissions correctly is a critical requirement.
Do orders land in the ERP automatically?
It depends on the connection options your ERP offers. If you share the name of your system, we check before the project starts; if it is not possible, bulk transfer methods are evaluated.
My dealers work in different currencies. Is that possible?
It can be set up. Which exchange rate will be used, where it will be taken from and how often, and at what moment the price is fixed should be clarified in the scope.
Let’s talk about your own dealer flow
Share the number of dealers you have, your pricing rules, the ERP or accounting system you use and how orders arrive today; together we will define the scope of the first version. You can look at our custom software development and e-commerce development services and get in touch — we work in English or Turkish.