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Shopify B2B Catalogs: How They Work and How to Create Them

  • Updated

TL;DR

Shopify B2B catalogs help you show the right products and prices to your business customers. You can create different catalogs for different customer groups and assign them to company locations, so each customer sees the products and pricing meant for them.

EAS app also helps automate B2B sales. If an order comes in with no tax charged (for example, VAT 0%) and the customer has entered a company name at checkout, the order is automatically treated as a B2B order on EAS side.

If a customer signs in through customer accounts and has been set as not taxable, VAT is not collected during checkout. This makes it easier to manage tax-free B2B purchases and helps reduce manual work.

Why B2B catalogs matter

Catalogs are useful when you want to tailor the wholesale experience for different buyers. For example, you can use them to offer customer-specific pricing, limit access to selected products, or separate B2B-only products from products sold to direct-to-consumer customers in a blended store. Shopify also supports multiple catalogs, which makes it possible to adjust pricing and availability by customer group or location.

What a catalog controls

A B2B catalog can control:

  • product inclusion or exclusion
  • catalog-specific pricing
  • fixed prices for products or variants
  • quantity rules
  • volume pricing

Shopify allows a catalog to contain both an overall price adjustment and fixed prices for selected products. When both are used, the fixed prices override the overall adjustment. This makes catalogs flexible enough for both broad pricing rules and product-level exceptions.

How to create a B2B catalog

To create a catalog in Shopify:

  1. In Shopify admin, go to Markets > Catalogs.
  2. Click Create catalog.
  3. Enter a title for the catalog. This title is not shown to customers.
  4. Choose whether the catalog should contain all products or specific products.
  5. Optionally change the catalog currency.
  6. Optionally enable automatic inclusion of new products.
  7. Click Save.

If you choose Specific products, then after saving the catalog you can go into Products and pricing, select Manage, and then Manage products and pricing to include the products you want in the catalog.

After products are added, you can configure pricing by:

  • applying an overall percentage increase or decrease
  • setting fixed prices for products
  • setting fixed prices for specific variants

When the catalog setup is complete, change the catalog status to Active.

Assigning catalogs to company locations

Creating a catalog is only one part of the setup. To make it usable for a B2B buyer, the catalog must be assigned to a company location.

To assign a catalog:

  1. Go to Markets > Catalogs.
  2. Open the catalog.
  3. Under the title, select Company location from the dropdown.
  4. Click Add a company location.
  5. Select the location or locations.
  6. Click Done.

Once assigned, the catalog controls the products and pricing shown to that B2B customer group.

What happens when multiple catalogs apply

If multiple catalogs are assigned to the same company location, Shopify combines product visibility and uses catalog rules to determine which price is shown.

  • If different catalogs contain different products, customers can see all included products.
  • If the same product appears in multiple catalogs at different prices, Shopify shows the lowest price.
  • Quantity rules and volume pricing are taken from the catalog with the lowest price for that variant.

This allows merchants to combine pricing strategies without manually resolving every overlap.

Updating a catalog

Catalogs can be updated at any time from Markets > Catalogs. You can edit the catalog directly in Shopify admin, or use CSV workflows for larger updates.

To update a catalog manually:

  1. Go to Markets > Catalogs.
  2. Open the catalog you want to edit.
  3. Make the necessary changes.
  4. Click Save.

Adding or removing products later

If your product assortment changes, you can update the product list inside the catalog:

  1. Go to Markets > Catalogs.
  2. Open the catalog.
  3. In Products and pricing, click Manage, then Manage products and pricing.
  4. Use the Included tab to remove products or the Excluded tab to add products.
  5. Save your changes.

This makes catalogs practical for ongoing wholesale management, especially when certain customers should only have access to a selected set of products.

How EAS app processes B2B sales automatically

EAS app can also detect B2B sales automatically based on the information included in the order.

EAS app identifies a sale as B2B automatically when both of the following conditions are met at checkout:

  • the order is created without taxes, for example VAT 0
  • the Company name field is filled in during checkout

When those conditions are met, the order is treated as a B2B order automatically, so no separate manual tagging or handling is needed.

How tax-free B2B checkout works for signed-in customers

When creating a B2B customer in customer accounts, the customer can be marked as not taxable. When this setting is used, VAT is not collected when that customer is signed in.

In practice, this means:

  • the customer signs in through customer accounts
  • the customer has been set as not taxable
  • Shopify checkout does not collect VAT for that signed-in customer
  • the resulting order can then be recognised by EAS app as a B2B sale when it also includes the company information

This helps automate B2B order handling and reduces the need for manual review of tax-exempt wholesale purchases.

How B2B catalogs and automatic B2B detection work together

These features support different parts of the B2B flow:

  • B2B catalogs control what products and prices a wholesale customer sees
  • customer accounts control who is signed in and whether the customer is handled as taxable or not taxable
  • EAS app automatically recognises B2B orders based on tax status and company details in checkout

Together, this creates a more automated wholesale flow: the customer gets the correct B2B pricing through Shopify catalogs, and the order is automatically handled as B2B in EAS app when the order data matches the required conditions.

Recommended summary

If you are using Shopify B2B, catalogs are the core feature for managing wholesale pricing and product availability. They let you control who sees which products, what those products cost, and what purchasing rules apply. Combined with customer accounts and your app’s automatic B2B order detection, they also help create a more automated wholesale workflow with less manual processing.

Shopify Help Center links

Shopify’s own helpcenter articles:

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