Shopify Net Terms for B2B and the Credit Call Shopify Skips

Yes, Shopify supports net terms for B2B. On the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans a merchant can give a buyer company Net 7 through Net 90, due on fulfillment, or a fixed date, and that buyer checks out without paying on the spot. What Shopify does not do is decide whether a buyer already on terms should be allowed to order more, and that credit call is the part distributors usually have not written down.

This post walks through what Shopify ships for payment terms (every Shopify fact below comes from Shopify's own help pages, fetched 2026-10-17), what happens when a term runs out, and then the decision Shopify leaves with you.

Which payment terms can you set on Shopify B2B, and where?#

Shopify B2B runs on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Shopify Plus plans, and is not available on Starter or Retail (Shopify Help Center, B2B, fetched 2026-10-17). Inside it, the payment terms page (fetched 2026-10-17) lists four kinds of terms:

• No payment terms. Payment is due immediately. This is the default.
• Net terms. Net 7, Net 15, Net 30, Net 45, Net 60 or Net 90.
• Due on fulfillment. Payment comes due when the order ships.
• Fixed date. A specific due date, available only on individual draft orders.

You can set terms on a single company location, on every location in a company, in bulk for several companies from the Companies page, or differently on a draft order. So yes, a buyer can pay on Net 30 on a non-Plus plan, and a Net 30 account and a Net 60 account can live side by side.

The plan split matters for the money features around those terms. From Shopify's B2B features by plan page, fetched 2026-10-17:

If you need a deposit up front on a large first order, that is a Plus feature. Below Plus, the deposit conversation happens outside the checkout. For the catalog side of the same split, see Shopify B2B limits by plan.

What happens when a Shopify net terms invoice comes due?#

Less than most operators expect. Shopify's payment terms page says payments are not automatically captured when the terms expire. The order shows as Overdue in the buyer's customer account, and the buyer can still pay after that.

There is one newer option. On 2026-06-17 Shopify's changelog announced a Flow action, Charge vaulted payment for B2B order (fetched 2026-10-17), that charges a buyer's vaulted credit card or debits a vaulted bank account for an order with payment terms when payment is due. It runs only if the merchant builds that Flow, and only for buyers who have a payment method vaulted.

Notice what both paths have in common. They deal with an order after it exists. Neither one asks, at the moment the buyer submits, whether this account should be carrying that much open balance in the first place.

What does Shopify leave to you? The credit call at submit#

None of the Shopify pages above lists a credit limit among B2B features. Shopify tracks terms and due dates; whether an account has room for one more order is your decision.

On a phone order, an inside sales rep makes that decision. Someone glances at the aging report, remembers this account has been slow lately, and either takes the order or says they will call back. That produces a decision, but the rule lives in one person's head, applied unevenly, with no record of why an order was held.

Self-serve ordering removes that person from the loop. This is the moment most distributors find out they did not have a credit policy, they had an employee. Ordering by phone, fax or email never removed the credit decision. It hid it.

The decision reduces to one number: available credit, which is the credit limit minus current exposure. Every argument about terms ordering is really an argument about what belongs in exposure.

The naive answer is open invoices. That fails because an order exists before an invoice does. A buyer can submit five orders in one morning, none invoiced yet, and clear the full limit five separate times.

Work it through with a bearing distributor and round numbers. A plant maintenance buyer on Net 30 has:

• Credit limit: 25,000
• Open, unpaid orders: 18,000
• An approved order for 6205-2RS bearings, not yet shipped or invoiced: 4,000

Available credit is 3,000, not 7,000. The 4,000 order is a commitment you already accepted. So when the same buyer submits a 5,000 order for pillow block units that afternoon, the right answer is that it does not fit.

The symmetry runs the other way too. If approved but unbilled orders count against a buyer, then a credit memo you have issued should count for them as soon as it is issued, not only once the back office applies it to a specific invoice. A buyer who returned 3,000 of goods on Tuesday should be able to reorder on Tuesday. That is a policy choice for finance to sign, and it is worth writing down before anything goes live.

Should the store warn or deny when a buyer is over the limit?#

There are two defensible behaviors, and choosing between them is a business call.

Warn. The order still submits and is flagged for a person to review. This fits long-standing accounts, where a stopped order costs more than the credit risk.

Deny. The order is refused at submit, with the numbers shown. This fits new accounts, thin margins, and any relationship where you would rather talk before the goods leave than after.

Many distributors would like a different answer per customer tier, a twelve-year account and an account opened in March treated differently. Whatever tooling you use, decide the policy first and then check whether the tool can express it, or whether the exceptions stay with a person.

One rule gets missed constantly. A credit limit of zero, or one that was never set, means not configured. It does not mean no credit. If enforcement treats an unconfigured account as having nothing available, you will block your oldest and largest customers on day one, because those are exactly the accounts nobody ever entered a number for.

And whatever the store does, show the buyer the actual figures: the limit, the current exposure and the shortfall. A vague failure at submit sends the buyer straight back to the phone, which is the outcome self-serve exists to prevent. The same logic applies to a buyer's own internal sign-off, which is why credit and a purchase order approval workflow belong in the same conversation.

Do you need a net terms app on Shopify?#

It depends which gap you are filling. There are roughly three layers:

• Shopify's native terms. The terms, due dates, Overdue state and, if you build it, the Flow charge described above. For many stores this covers the payment side.
• Apps that automate which terms each buyer gets. For example, TermStack: Net Terms for B2B by Varr Labs. Its App Store listing (fetched 2026-10-17) describes automating net terms and deposits for Plus B2B wholesale buyers, setting terms by company, tags, order value, first orders and order count, with plans listed at Core $99, Growth $249 and Scale $499 a month, free on development stores, and a 14-day free trial on paid plans.
• A credit layer that holds the order against a limit at the moment of submit, which is the decision this post is about.

A broader map of the category is in the best Shopify B2B apps.

One more decision belongs in your policy even though no app makes it for you: a buyer with four branches is either one credit relationship or four. Independent limits per location are simple, but four branches at 25,000 each is a 100,000 relationship nobody approved. A pooled limit over the parent matches how many industrial buyers purchase centrally. Decide which before the first multi-location buyer goes live.

Where Copiara fits#

Copiara is ours. It is a Shopify app in early access, not yet on the Shopify App Store and not installable. It does not replace Shopify's terms: it reads the payment terms set in Shopify and shows them, and never writes them. On top, it adds a credit limit per company, live exposure that counts orders in approval, approved, or placed and not yet paid, and a warn or deny at submission that is set store-wide. Payment status is read back from Shopify, which stays the system of record and keeps taking the money. The merchant sets a company's credit limit and a contact's spending limit from the app. Shopify handles what native Shopify B2B covers; the rest is in Copiara's modules.

If you are working out where the credit call should live in your Shopify B2B store, ask for early access.

Shopify net terms FAQ#

Does Shopify B2B support net terms without Plus? Yes. Net terms are on the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans as well as Plus, per Shopify's plan features page (fetched 2026-10-17).

Can buyers pay on Net 30? Yes. Net 30 is one of six net options, alongside Net 7, 15, 45, 60 and 90.

Are deposits available on non-Plus plans? No. Shopify lists deposit requirements, partial payments and payment requests per fulfillment as Plus only.

Does Shopify collect payment automatically when terms expire? Not by default. The order shows as Overdue and the buyer can still pay; a Flow action can charge a vaulted card or bank account if the merchant builds it.

Does Shopify enforce a credit limit? No Shopify page fetched for this post lists a credit limit feature, so plan to handle it in process or with an app.