How Copiara works in your store, step by step.

02 · Setup

Five steps, before a buyer ever sees the portal.

Setup runs on Home, Pricing, and Settings, in this order.

1. 1

   Import the catalog

   The setup guide on Copiara's Home starts the first import, which reads your store's products, variants, SKUs, and inventory into Copiara. After that, product changes you make in Shopify sync automatically. Settings, Catalog sync shows the last import, product and variant counts, and an Import again button. A product with no SKU is skipped.

2. 2

   Sync companies

   Copiara pulls your store's B2B companies, their locations, and their contacts, so quotes, approvals, and credit apply to the right buying organization. This needs at least one company in Shopify, with a location and a contact.

3. 3

   Push contract pricing

   From the Pricing screen, list your price lists, preview a change, then push it. The push writes through Shopify's own catalogs and price lists, so the price a given company sees is a real Shopify price, not a Copiara-only one. A company's price list is also reachable from its page in the Shopify admin, through the Copiara contract pricing block.

4. 4

   Put the portal on your storefront

   The app creates a page on your storefront at the handle copiara-portal. In the Shopify theme editor, add the Wholesale portal block to that page, or put single blocks (Quick order, Quotes, Orders, Reorder and lists, Approvals, Team) on pages of your own. Until a block is placed, the page is there but the portal is not live. The Blocks in your store list on Home, Welcome, and Settings shows every Copiara block, where it goes, and whether it is placed.

5. 5

   Turn on the chat assistant, if you want it

   It is a theme app embed named Chat assistant and is off by default. First, in Copiara, open Settings, Storefront concierge, turn on Concierge on your storefront, and save. Then, in the theme editor, open App embeds, turn on Chat assistant, and paste in the embed key that Copy embed key gives you in the same Settings section. Make sure your store's domain is listed under Allowed storefronts. Without the key the chat answers signed-in buyers only.

03 · What your buyers see

Where a buyer signs in, asks for a price, and orders.

Buyers use your own theme and Shopify's customer accounts, not a separate Copiara site. Each piece below is a block you place once, or a setting you switch on.

• Signing in

  Buyers sign in through the store's own customer accounts, which must be the new customer accounts. A buyer needs to be a contact on a company in Shopify. If they are not, the page says so and tells them to ask the store.

• Asking for a price

  A buyer can send a quote request from the Quotes block or the Wholesale portal. The form takes priced lines, a branch to ship to, and a note. Quick order has a Request a quote button too. The request lands in Quotes in Copiara.

• Add to quote

  A button for product pages. Add the Add to quote block once to the product template, under the buy buttons. A signed-in trade buyer who presses it adds the chosen option and quantity to their quote request and stays on the product page. Signed-out shoppers and retail customers see nothing. The item needs a SKU that Copiara has in its catalog.

• Quick order, lists, and orders

  Quick order takes a pasted list or an uploaded CSV and matches each line by SKU or product name. Reorder and lists keeps saved lists, and Orders shows each order with its status. A buyer places an order from the order list, and one that needs approval goes to an approver first.

• The Trade account page

  A page in Shopify's customer accounts, shown to buyers as Trade account, with Quotes, Approvals, and Lists. To add it, open Settings, Checkout, Customize, then Apps in the Shopify admin. Press the plus on Trade account, choose Add page to Accounts, save, then choose Add to menu for its link in the account menu. Approvals show for buyers who can approve.

• Managing the team

  A company admin manages the company's team in the Wholesale portal on your storefront: its Team tab, or the Team block on a page of its own. It lists the people at the company, who approves orders, each person's spending limit, and the company's approval rules. Only company admins can use it. The Trade account page does not manage the team.

• The Trade account team line

  Optional. On the Profile page of customer accounts, Shopify can show company admins a short line under Staff and permissions: how many people are on the team, how many can approve orders, and a link to the Team tab of the Wholesale portal. Shopify draws it only after you switch it on in the checkout and accounts editor, and whether your store's editor offers it is up to Shopify: it may ask you to open the Profile page in a B2B preview. If it is not offered, skip it, because company admins manage the team in the Wholesale portal. It shows company admins only, and the link appears once your store has a Wholesale portal page.

• Needs your action

  A block for the Orders page in customer accounts. It lists the quotes with new prices, the approvals, and the orders waiting on the signed-in buyer. Its buttons open the Trade account page or, for an order still to be finished, your store's portal page in a new tab. It shows nothing when nothing is waiting. Place it from the same editor by choosing the Orders page.

04 · The quote desk

Where a price gets negotiated, and where it settles.

• How a request reaches you

  Buyer requests land in Quotes. If an approval rule applies to the buyer's company, the request waits for the buyer's own approver and you see it once that clears. You can also start a quote yourself with New quote.

• What you can do on a quote

  Edit the lines, counter line by line, send a message on the quote thread, apply or remove a discount, accept, and decline. A quote can list one product on several lines. The buyer then picks the option they want when they accept. Rules can do the first answer for you.

• The margin floor

  Enforced on the server, evaluated on the whole quote's blended margin, never per line. It works from the cost per item you keep in Shopify. When no line on a quote has a cost, the floor cannot be evaluated and the quote passes. You set it in Settings, Margin floor, and it starts at 8 percent. A counter, a saved price, a discount, or an accept that would take the quote below it is refused. A buyer can still accept a counter your team sent before you changed the floor.

• Automatic answers

  Rules you write can accept, counter, or decline routine quote requests for you. A rule accepts only when the buyer asked at or below their contract prices, every line has a cost in Shopify, no line is sold below its cost, the margin stays above your margin floor with room to spare, the request is within any size ceiling you set, nothing is overdue on the account, and the buyer wrote no notes. A rule counters with prices from the formula you chose, and declines only with a reason you wrote. Anything else waits for you in Quotes. An accept or decline rule starts in test mode, where it records what it would have done and answers nothing. A counter rule starts off until you switch it on. Automatic answers are off until you turn them on in Settings, and you can hold a waiting answer from the quote page. An accepted request becomes an order in your Shopify store. By default the order waits as a draft until you place it; you can choose to place these orders automatically.

• What accepting produces

  The order is placed in Shopify with the agreed prices locked, raised under the buyer's own company so it inherits that company's tax. If the buyer's location has payment terms in Shopify, the order is completed under them and waits for payment. If it has none, Shopify sends the buyer a payment link. Switch on Review orders before they are placed in Settings, Orders, and each order waits as a draft in Shopify until you press Place order. Copiara is not in the payment path, and it reads payment and fulfillment state back from Shopify.

05 · Approvals and credit

Approval rules, spending limits, and credit, set in the admin.

Your staff set approval rules, spending limits, and credit limits in the Copiara admin, on an account's page and in Settings.

• Approval rules

  The Approvals card on an account sets rules as sentences, such as orders over an amount go to an approver. You choose who decides: contacts with the Approver role, or the company's admins. Rules can be added, edited, and removed, and a rule that nobody can act on is flagged.

• Spending limits

  In Manage on a contact who has a portal login, Spending limit is the most that person can order without an approver. Blank means no limit.

• Credit limits

  The Credit card on an account sets its limit and shows what is used. Blank or zero means no limit, and nothing is held back for that account.

• Warn or refuse

  In Settings, Credit limits, you choose for the whole store what happens to an order that would go over a company's limit. It goes through with a warning, which is the default, or it is refused.

• What counts toward credit

  Orders that are still in approval, approved, or placed, and not yet paid. For an order placed in Shopify the amount is what Shopify says is still owed, so a paid order frees the credit. Copiara does not issue invoices.

• What buyers see

  A buyer whose account has a limit sees the credit left, or that they are over it. An approver decides from the Trade account page or the Approvals block. A quote an approver rejects goes back to the person who asked, as not sent, with the reason, and you do not see it.

06 · Shipping and ship dates

Shipping, tax, and ship dates, worked out by Shopify.

Shopify works out the freight and the tax. Copiara asks Shopify and shows the answer before the order is placed.

• Shipping and tax before placement

  Copiara asks Shopify for the rates and the tax, using the ship-to branch's shipping address in Shopify. It asks when a quote is requested, countered, or accepted, when an order is submitted, and again before the order is placed if the figure is more than a day old. Buyers and your staff see the shipping row and the tax, marked as estimates until the order is placed. After placement, Shopify's real figures replace them.

• Choosing a rate

  The buyer picks among the rates Shopify offers, with the cheapest chosen to start. Your staff can change it. If Shopify offers no rate, for example because the branch has no shipping address in Shopify, the order still goes through and shows Shipping to be confirmed.

• Shipping set up in Shopify

  Home's setup guide has an advisory step, Shipping set up in Shopify. It checks that your branches have shipping addresses and that Shopify returns rates for them. It never blocks anything.

• Ship in parts

  A buyer can split an order into two to six shipments with their own dates, the last no more than 60 days out. Each shipment becomes its own Shopify order, placed on its date at 6 a.m. store time, with its own shipping rate. Each part must meet Shopify's quantity rules for the product. A later part keeps the agreed price, or Shopify's price on the day if that is lower.

• Approval and credit on a split order

  An order is approved and checked against credit once, on the combined total, before it is split. Nothing is held in stock for a later part until it is placed. A part that falls due while the company is on credit hold waits, and your staff are told. With Review orders before they are placed switched on, a part that falls due waits as a draft until staff press Place order on its order page.

• Changing a part

  On the order's Shipments card, staff can move a part's date, place a part now, or cancel a part that has not been placed. The order lists number the parts, such as Part 2 of 3. For a card payment, Shopify sends a payment link for each part when it is placed.

07 · Sidekick

Ask Sidekick about your wholesale desk.

Copiara adds tools to Shopify's Sidekick. They work in the Shopify admin, for your staff.

• Lookups

  Sidekick can look up quotes and counter offers, orders and approvals, buyer companies with their contacts and branches, contract price lists with quantity breaks, the product catalog with contract prices, and setup status. The lookups only read. The first time, Sidekick asks you to allow access to Copiara data.

• Quotes

  Sidekick can start a new quote for a buyer company, or open a quote and stage counter prices or a message. It fills in the fields on the Copiara page. Nothing is sent, accepted, or declined until you press the button in Copiara.

08 · Store events

Store events for your own analytics.

Copiara can tell your store's analytics what buyers do on the blocks you placed. It does this through Shopify, not through Copiara.

• What is published

  The storefront blocks, Add to quote, the Chat assistant, and the Trade account and Needs your action pages publish named events to Shopify's customer events. Examples are a quote request sent, a quote accepted, an order submitted, and a chat question answered. Every name starts with copiara_.

• Where they go

  A custom pixel you own, added in Shopify under Settings, Customer events, can forward them to Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager. Copiara receives none of this data and stores none of it. The events carry no names, email addresses, or free text. Events from the Trade account and Needs your action pages reach a pixel only where Shopify delivers them, which Shopify documents for stores that use a custom domain for customer accounts.

• Two settings, off by default

  Under Store events in each block's settings, and in the checkout and accounts editor for the account pages, Include company and branch ids adds Shopify ids, never names. Include amounts, on the blocks whose events carry a total, adds the currency and the total Copiara holds at that moment. That total is an indicator, not a revenue figure, and it is left out for a quote that offers options. Both settings are off until you turn them on.

• What these events are not

  Orders that Copiara places in Shopify are not created at checkout, so they do not appear as purchases in Google Analytics. Use Shopify's own reports for revenue. The events show the steps before an order, such as a quote request or an acceptance.

Read what events publish in the privacy policy

09 · Billing and the trial

Billed through Shopify App Pricing.

The app is not listed yet, so there is nothing to subscribe to today. Billing runs through Shopify App Pricing: you choose a plan in the Shopify admin, the charge lands on your Shopify invoice with everything else you pay Shopify, and no card or bank details reach Copiara. Refunds, proration, and cancellation follow Shopify's app billing.

• Free

  Free, covering 5 active buyer companies and 50 AI replies a month. No trial needed.

• Growth

  $59 a month, covering 250 active buyer companies and 1,500 AI replies a month. 14-day free trial.

• Scale

  $129 a month, covering 2,000 active buyer companies and 3,000 AI replies a month. 14-day free trial.

See the plans in full →

10 · Uninstalling and data deletion

What happens when you uninstall.

Uninstalling the app from the Shopify admin ends Copiara's access to your store immediately. Shopify sends a shop/redact request about 48 hours later, that timing is Shopify's own platform behavior, not a Copiara commitment. We record a deletion request when it arrives and act on it, and you can always ask about its status.

• What gets deleted

  On the shop/redact request, Copiara deletes the Shopify connection data it holds for your store: the stored access tokens, the links between Shopify customers and Copiara buyer records, the links between Shopify products and Copiara catalog records, queued work for your shop, and any buyer data-request package we still hold. It also deletes every concierge conversation for your store, whether a buyer, a storefront visitor, or your staff held it, the saved copy the concierge keeps for any reply that waited on a tool, and the business facts the concierge recorded about your buying companies. Your store is marked uninstalled.

• What is retained

  Your Copiara workspace and the other records the app created in it are retained and flagged rather than destroyed, because a workspace can predate a store, outlive it, and be reconnected by reinstalling. If you reinstall the app, your store reconnects to the same workspace. Deleting a workspace is a separate step, and you can ask for it.

• Your Shopify store

  Copiara makes no change to your Shopify store when you uninstall. Your products, companies, and orders stay as they are. The catalogs and price lists Copiara created to carry contract pricing are not removed by Copiara, which loses its access to your store at that point, so review them in Shopify and delete any you no longer want.

• Getting your data

  Ask us and we produce a full export of the data Copiara holds for your store. A generated export is kept for 30 days, and its download link expires after 24 hours.

Read the deletion policy in the privacy policyRead the export details on the security page

11 · Getting support

Write to a person.

Every "contact support" link in the app points here. Reach us through the form at /contact or by email at hello@copiara.com. Include your store's myshopify domain, what you were doing, and the error code the app showed, if it showed one. That is usually enough to answer without a second round trip.

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