Maropost Commerce has the ability to allow you to run a wholesale and retail website from one platform without the need to register a separate website or account. Every site is different, however we’ve provided a guide to help consider the different features available to wholesale merchants.
Enhance Webstore Functions
Install a Premium Webstore Theme
Maropost Commerce has a range of themes available specifically for wholesale merchants. You can find and install a theme by navigating to Webstore > Themes in your Maropost Commerce control panel.
Hide Product Prices on your Website
If a customer is not logged in to your website, all pricing and buying buttons across the site are replaced with a 'Login or register to view pricing' message, along with Login and Register buttons. Some themes have this functionality built in. Alternatively, follow the steps to tweak your webstore in our designer documentation. You can also request a design tweak to be completed by a design partner.
Require Customers to Log in
You can force customers to create and/or login to their account before purchasing. This can be done by turning off the ‘guest checkout’ in your checkout settings.
Wholesale Registration
As an addition to requiring customers to log in, you can also gather more information from wholesale customers.
Capture Purchase Order Numbers
Business purchases often include a purchase order number with their order. Purchase order numbers can be entered against the customer’s order in Maropost Commerce so that it appears on the customer's invoice for tracking purposes. You can also capture the purchase order number in your checkout, once it is enabled in the settings.
Product Price Add-ons
Set up Price Groups to Display Customer Specific Prices
Each product can display a different price to your customers based on the group they're in. Install the Customer Groups add-on to classify your customers into different groups, then add the different group prices to your products.
Set up Multi-level Prices
Multi-level pricing allows you to offer discounts per product, based on the number of items a customer purchases on a single order. Multi-level discounts are automatically applied.
Set up Products to Exclude GST for Wholesale Customers
Maropost Commerce has the capability to show prices for both Retail and Wholesale customers. Retail customers want to see prices including GST while Wholesale customers want to see prices excluding GST. Although only one global tax setting for the site is possible, other tax requirements can be accommodated at the product level.
- Option 1: Perform a design tweak to show the different prices on the products, cart, and invoice pages.
- Option 2: Set up two separate products - one to include GST and another to exclude GST (at the product level). This will still require a design tweak for the products that exclude GST to display correctly.
Please Note: Using a design tweak has several potential implications that you should be aware of:
- The checkout page cannot be tweaked.
- Rounding errors may occur on some products.
- Integrated accounting systems may be affected with different prices .
- If product prices are GST inclusive and a wholesale customer is shipping internationally, the changes will remove a further 10% as its based on user group, not location.
Set up Product Kits
Product kits/bundles can then be used to manage stock levels by creating one of the products as a kit of the other product.
Payment Option Features
Set up Payment Terms
Different payment schedules (e.g. 30/60/90 days) can be created, along with specific credit limits and invoice terms.
Set up Specific Payment Methods
Display different payment methods to specific customer groups using the Customer Groups add-on.
Set up Automatic Payment Reminders
Maropost Commerce can send automatic payment reminders to customers who have outstanding invoices. By default, Maropost Commerce can send up to three payment reminders per invoice.
Customer Management
Manually Approve Customer Accounts
If you'd like new customers to go through an approval process when they make an account, you can change the customer settings so that all new accounts need to be manually approved.
Create Different Invoice Formats For Different Customers
Create templates sets with the invoice templates add-on, and select the invoice template you wish to use on the customer card. This work can also be completed by our design partners.
Drop Shipping
Maropost Commerce can be used by both the drop shipping supplier, and the drop shipping seller. Drop shipping for suppliers allows your sellers to:
- Access custom inventory feeds to update their inventory in real time.
- Bulk upload orders into your system automatically via FTP or manual file uploads.
- Display logo and company information on address labels, packing slips and consignment notes sent with orders.
Drop shipping for retailers allows for items to be drop shipped directly via merchant websites, automating the end-to-end drop shipping process.
- Automatically send suppliers paid order notifications via e-mail.
- Upload order updates / tracking information from supplier systems.
- Provide a secure portal for suppliers to login to process orders on your behalf.
- Print packing slips, invoices, consignment notes etc from within the seller's control panel.