What Should a B2B Buyer Portal Include?
Updated · Vanta Foundry
Short answer
What features should a B2B buyer portal include?
A B2B buyer portal should give each business buyer an account where they see their own pricing, request and accept quotes, download the documents for their orders, and reorder without starting over. Behind it, the portal connects to the systems that hold inventory, orders and invoices. Start with the features your buyers ask for most, rather than building every one at once.
Accounts
Approval matters more in research supply than in most categories. Checking who a buyer is before they can order lets you keep to research-use-only terms and decline businesses that market products for human or veterinary use.
- An account per buyer business, with more than one user where needed.
- Approval before an account can see pricing or order.
- Saved shipping and billing addresses.
- Order history with status and tracking.
- Roles where useful: one person requests, another approves.
Pricing
B2B prices are usually set per buyer, per product or per quantity, so the portal should show each buyer their own prices once they are signed in, and nothing to visitors who are not.
If prices change often or depend on the full order, a portal can show products without prices and route the buyer to a quote instead.
Quotes
- A way to build a request: products, sizes, quantities, destination.
- Quotes returned inside the portal, with each line, total, lead time and validity.
- Accepting a quote turns it into an order without re-entry.
- Past quotes kept for reference.
Documents
Documents should stay available after the order closes. A buyer who needs a report months later should find it on the order, not have to ask for it again.
- Invoices and packing slips per order.
- For research supply, the certificate of analysis for each lot shipped, linked from the order.
- Lot numbers recorded on each order line.
- Policies and terms that apply to the buyer.
Reorders
Most B2B buying is repeat buying. Let buyers reorder a past order or quote in one step and change quantities before sending it. If stock or pricing has changed since, the reorder should go back as a fresh quote rather than assume old terms.
Integrations
Vanta Foundry builds custom-coded websites for any lawful business. If a buyer portal is part of what you need, describe it in the brief form on the website development page and it will be scoped and quoted in writing.
- Inventory, so buyers see what can actually ship.
- Order management or fulfillment, so accepted orders reach whoever ships them.
- Accounting, so invoices are not keyed in twice.
- Email or messaging, for quote and shipping notifications.
- Payments, where buyers pay online, through a processor that has approved the business.
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