B2B Ordering Portals for Singapore Wholesalers

A B2C storefront assumes one price, one buyer and a card payment. Wholesale ordering breaks all three. A usable portal needs:

• Customer-specific pricing: contract price lists, quantity breaks and promotions per account, read from the same source your invoices use.
• Trade units and rules: cartons, cases and pallets, minimum order quantities, and products that only some customers may buy.
• Fast repeat ordering: reorder from past orders, saved order templates, and search by your item code or the customer's own code.
• Credit terms: visible credit limits, outstanding balance, statements of account and overdue invoices, with orders held automatically when an account goes over its limit.
• Several users per account: a purchaser who orders, an owner who approves above a threshold, an accounts clerk who downloads invoices.
• Delivery detail: multiple outlets per customer, delivery days by zone, cut-off times, and delivery orders customers can download.

If your sales reps also take orders by phone or WhatsApp, they should key them into the same portal on the customer's behalf. That keeps one order book, whatever the channel.

Hosted commerce platforms such as Shopify, and plugins for WooCommerce, offer B2B features including company accounts, price lists and payment terms; check which plan includes which feature before you commit. Some ERP and accounting vendors also sell customer portals. These suit wholesalers with a few hundred products, simple price lists and an accounting system the platform already connects to.

A custom portal earns its cost when:

• pricing logic lives in your ERP and is too complex to copy into a store platform;
• credit control has to block or release orders in real time;
• you run several warehouses or outlets with stock reserved per location;
• your ERP or accounting system has no ready connector for the platform you would buy;
• you want a branded customer app, or a delivery app for drivers, alongside the portal.

The decision rule

• Use an off-the-shelf B2B store when your catalogue and price lists are simple and your accounting system already connects to it.
• Build a custom portal when pricing, credit control or stock logic lives in an ERP and must apply in real time.
• Either way, keep pricing in one system, post invoices automatically, and plan for InvoiceNow before your phase arrives.

We work on both routes through B2B portal development and ecommerce development, including building on a hosted platform where that is the better fit.

A portal that shows yesterday's stock or last month's prices creates more phone calls than it saves. Plan the data flows first.

• Inventory: sync available stock at least every few minutes, or check it live at checkout, and reserve stock when an order is confirmed.
• Pricing: keep one source of truth, usually the ERP, and let the portal read from it. Never maintain prices in two places.
• Accounting: post invoices and credit notes to your accounting system automatically and match incoming payments to invoices. Budget this as system integration work in its own right, not an afterthought.
• GST: calculate GST at the current 9% rate, which has applied since 1 January 2024 according to IRAS, in exactly the way your accounting system does, so the portal total and the tax invoice always agree.
• Payments: most trade customers pay by bank transfer on terms. A PayNow QR code on each invoice lets customers pay to your UEN without keying in account numbers; the ABS PayNow factsheet explains how PayNow Corporate works. Card payment can be offered to cash-on-order accounts.

InvoiceNow

InvoiceNow is Singapore's nationwide e-invoicing network, built on Peppol. Since 1 November 2025, newly incorporated companies that register for GST voluntarily have had to send invoice data to IRAS through it, and from 1 April 2026 that applies to all new voluntary registrants. At Committee of Supply 2026, IRAS announced the extension to all GST-registered businesses: from 1 April 2028 for new compulsory registrants and existing businesses with annual supplies up to S$200,000, then 1 April 2029 for up to S$1 million, 1 April 2030 for up to S$4 million, and 1 April 2031 for everyone above that.

For a portal, the practical rule is simple. Issue tax invoices from an InvoiceNow-Ready accounting solution, or through an accredited access point, rather than building your own transmission. The portal creates the order and the invoice data; the accounting system or access point sends it. Design the invoice data model now, with UEN, line items and GST breakdown, so the switch later becomes a configuration change.

The EDGE Grant, as of October 2026

From 30 September 2026, Enterprise Singapore replaced the Productivity Solutions Grant, the Enterprise Development Grant and the Market Readiness Assistance grant with a single EDGE Grant. The EDGE Grant FAQ sets an annual cap of S$100,000 per company, of which up to S$30,000 can go to digital solutions, integrated enterprise systems and selected automation. Applications are not supported if work has started or a deposit has been paid before you apply, so check eligibility for your portal project before signing with any vendor, us included.

• Start with your top 20 accounts. Import their price lists and order history so the first login shows familiar products and a one-click reorder.
• Keep reps in the loop. Reps who enter phone orders in the portal maintain one order book and see what customers order on their own.
• Measure two numbers. Track the share of orders placed through the portal, and order errors per hundred orders before and after launch.
• Do not force it. Customers who move to the portal because it is faster tend to stay; customers pushed onto it complain. Make reordering quicker than a phone call and adoption follows.

A first version with customer pricing, reorder, credit display, invoice download and one accounting or ERP integration commonly takes 8 to 14 weeks after scope sign-off. Each extra integration, warehouse or mobile app adds to that.

RawERP is an ERP for cement, steel, sand and aggregate dealers in India, covering trading, GST billing, fleet dispatch and two self-service portals. MultiVendorOS, now sold as SupplyRoute, is a Shopify app that splits each order across the suppliers who ship it and tracks what the merchant owes each one. The patterns carry over to Singapore wholesale: per-customer pricing, credit control, and orders that flow straight into accounting.

From Greater Noida, our day runs 2.5 hours behind Singapore, roughly 12:00 to 21:00 your time. We work over video calls and shared project boards, and deliver to a staging server every two weeks.

Can each customer see different prices?

Yes. Customer-specific price lists, quantity breaks and contract prices are standard in a B2B portal. Keep them in your ERP or pricing system and let the portal read them.

Does our portal need to support InvoiceNow?

The portal itself does not transmit invoices; your accounting solution or an accredited access point does. Make sure the invoices the portal generates flow into an InvoiceNow-Ready solution before your implementation date.

Can customers still order by WhatsApp?

Yes. Have your sales team enter those orders in the portal on the customer's behalf, so stock, credit and invoicing stay in one place.

Should we use Shopify or build custom?

Use a hosted platform if your catalogue and pricing are simple and it connects to your accounting system. Go custom when multi-warehouse stock, credit holds or ERP-driven prices have to work in real time.

Send us your price list structure, your accounting or ERP system and a rough count of trade accounts. Get in touch and we will come back with a recommended approach and, after a short discovery call, a written scope and fixed quote.