Shopify Wholesale Registration Form: Native Requests vs Apps

Can Shopify collect wholesale applications without an app?#

Yes. On the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, Shopify's company account requests let a prospective buyer fill in a form built with the free Shopify Forms app, and each submission creates a company, a company location and a customer that cannot order or see B2B pricing until you approve them. Registration apps add things the native form does not cover, such as conditional logic, tax ID checks and document workflows.

Some older guides still say native B2B needs Shopify Plus. It does not. Shopify's B2B help page says B2B "is available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Shopify Plus plans" and not on Starter or Retail (help.shopify.com, fetched 2026-10-27). So the honest question for a distributor is not whether Shopify can take an application, but whether the native form is enough for how you vet accounts.

How do Shopify company account requests work?#

Every fact in this section is from Shopify's company account requests help page, fetched 2026-10-27, unless noted.

Before you start. You need the Shopify Forms app installed, and customer accounts must be on. Shopify's sign-in help page says "You must activate customer accounts to use Shopify B2B," and legacy customer accounts cannot be used for B2B customers and orders (help.shopify.com, fetched 2026-10-27).

Building the form. You add the request form to your theme with Shopify Forms and choose the fields you want: company name, contact, phone, address, plus anything your vetting needs. By default a submission is stored as a metaobject, and you can choose to store a field as a company metafield or a customer metafield instead. If you ask for a file, such as a resale certificate, each upload must be 20 MB or less and be a GIF, HEIC, JPEG, PDF, SVG, WebP or XML file.

What a submission creates. When a buyer submits, "a company, a company location, and a customer are automatically created in your Shopify admin." That company cannot place orders or access B2B pricing until you approve it.

Reviewing and approving. In the admin you go to Customers, then Companies, open the Ordering not approved tab and click the company. You review the submission in its Metafields section, then click Manage permissions, select locations and assign permissions. You can tick Notify customer that they can start placing B2B orders to send the buyer an email.

Declining. Shopify's instruction is short: "To reject an application, delete the company."

If you want the full picture of how sign-in and gating fit around this, we covered it in setting up a Shopify wholesale portal.

Can you approve wholesale accounts automatically?#

You can. Shopify Flow has a template called "Allow ordering for companies created by company account requests," which approves new requests without a person clicking through each one (help.shopify.com, fetched 2026-10-27).

Whether you should is a different question. Auto-approval suits a low-risk catalog at one wholesale price. It rarely suits an industrial distributor, who usually wants some of these in hand first:

• A resale or tax-exemption certificate on file
• A credit application, if the account will buy on terms
• A named purchasing contact, not a generic inbox
• A trade reference or a minimum opening order

None of those are things a form can judge for you. A form can collect the documents. A person still has to read them. If you use the Flow template, a reasonable middle ground is to auto-approve only the companies that match a narrow rule and route everything else to the Ordering not approved tab for a human.

Where does the native form stop?#

Shopify documents its own limits clearly, which helps. From the company account requests page (fetched 2026-10-27):

• It cannot add a buyer to an existing company. "This feature doesn't allow customers to be added to an existing company." If a second purchasing agent at an account you already serve fills in the form, you get a new company, not a new contact on the old one.
• It does not work on a gated store. "The form isn't accessible to non-logged in B2B customers in a gated store." Shopify's sign-in page says the same from the other side: prospective customers cannot request access through company account requests when store access is restricted (help.shopify.com, fetched 2026-10-27).
• Approval sets locations and permissions, nothing else. Approving a request does not attach a catalog or payment terms. That is a separate step in the company record, and if you skip it, the account can order at whatever pricing applies to it by default.
• Field data has quirks. Local field data is only viewable in metaobjects, not on the company or customer profile, and if a customer submits the same field more than once, the profile shows only the most recent submission.

For most distributors the first two limits matter most. Multi-contact accounts are normal in MRO: the maintenance planner, the storeroom lead and the purchasing manager may all need to order. And many wholesale-only stores restrict access to B2B customers, which switches the native form off. Once an account is approved, the next friction point is how fast that buyer can place a repeat order; we compare the options in Shopify's native Quick order list vs a quick order app.

What do wholesale registration apps add?#

Several apps on the Shopify App Store sell a registration and approval flow on top of, or alongside, native B2B. Three that rank for this search, described only from their own listings fetched 2026-10-27:

Each app does more than registration, so read the full listings. The pattern across them is consistent with the native gaps above: document handling and renewal, tax ID checks, conditional fields, and approvals that write into Shopify's own B2B companies rather than a parallel customer list.

If you are weighing apps more broadly, our roundup of Shopify B2B apps compared covers the wider field.

What happens after you approve the account?#

Here is where most registration content stops, and where the real work for a distributor starts. Take one worked example.

You run an MRO distributor with a bearing and power transmission line on Shopify. An electrical contractor with three shops applies through the form, attaches a resale certificate and a credit application, and asks for net 30. You approve the company and assign its location. Now that account needs:

1. Its contract price. Say the contractor was quoted $6.85 a unit on the 6205-2RS deep groove bearing at 50 or more, below your list price. That number needs to live where checkout will apply it.
2. All three shops covered. The form created one location. The contractor has three, and each one should see the same contract price.
3. Spending guardrails. The storeroom lead at one shop should not be able to drop a $9,000 order without the purchasing manager signing off.
4. Credit visibility. You granted net 30 in Shopify. You also want to know how much this account already owes before the next order goes through.

Native Shopify gives you the building blocks for the first two: catalogs, price lists with volume pricing, company locations and payment terms. How catalogs attach depends on your plan: direct catalog assignment to a company is a Plus feature, and below Plus catalogs attach to B2B markets.

That is where Copiara comes in, and it is ours. Copiara is the wholesale layer for Shopify stores, a Shopify app in early access that is not yet listed or installable. It does not provide a registration form: the native form or one of the apps above handles the application. What it adds starts after approval. Contract pricing is set up on Shopify's own company page: you create the price list, add items and volume breaks, assign it to the company and push it, and the push assigns the catalog to every location of that company, up to 25. On the buying side, spending limits and approval rules are cleared before an order is placed in Shopify, and credit limits sit on top of Shopify's payment terms, with live exposure counting orders in approval, approved, or placed and not yet paid. Buyers sign in once, with the store's own login. You can see what Copiara adds to Shopify module by module.

If your reps still take orders on behalf of these accounts, see how sales rep ordering on Shopify B2B fits alongside self-serve.

Shopify wholesale registration FAQ#

Do I need Shopify Plus for a wholesale registration form? No. Shopify B2B, including company account requests, is available on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus, per Shopify's B2B help page, fetched 2026-10-27.

Can a second buyer at an existing company register through the form? No. Shopify says the feature does not allow customers to be added to an existing company. You add the new contact to the company yourself.

Does the native form work if my store is restricted to B2B customers? No. Shopify says prospective customers cannot request access through company account requests when store access is restricted.

Does approving a request set the account's pricing? No. Approval sets locations and permissions. Catalogs and payment terms are a separate step on the company.

If you onboard wholesale accounts on Shopify and want to see how contract pricing, approvals and credit would work once they are approved, request early access.