Magento B2B Development: 12 questions answered.

Typical phased timelines:

• B2B Audit: 1-3 days, discovery + written report.
• Standard B2B Build: 8-10 weeks, B2B module setup, companies/roles, quote workflow, multi-tier pricing, requisition lists, 1 ERP connector, Net-30 + credit limits, sales-rep dashboard, blue-green deploy.
• Enterprise B2B: 12-16 weeks, everything above plus multi-region orchestration, headless GraphQL B2B, multiple ERP integrations, custom sales-rep CRM, ABM integration.

Add 2 weeks for UAT with your real B2B buyers, regression QA, and the production cutover. We work daily on staging with review access from week 2.

Fixed-price tiers, no per-hour surprises:

• B2B Audit: $999 USD, written scope, integration plan, risk register.
• Standard B2B Build: $4,999 USD, full B2B build on Adobe Commerce, 1 ERP connector, sales-rep dashboard.
• Enterprise B2B: Custom quote, multi-region, headless, multiple ERPs, custom CRM.

Adobe Commerce licence (~$22,000, $100,000+/year depending on GMV tier) is paid directly to Adobe. We can supply pricing letters for procurement. Adobe Commerce B2B module is included free with the licence.

Adobe Commerce B2B ships Payment on Account with built-in credit-limit enforcement:

• Each company gets a credit limit ($X) and current balance (running total of unpaid invoices).
• At checkout, the order total is checked against (credit limit − current balance). If over, the order is blocked or routed to an approver.
• Buyers see their account statement (open invoices, due dates, balance) in their dashboard.
• Net 30 / Net 60 / Net 90 terms are configurable per company.

For dunning + payment collection we integrate with Stripe Invoicing, Authorize.net Recurring, GoCardless, or your existing AR system. Auto-invoice + auto-statement generation runs nightly. We’ve also built custom workflows for lockbox + ACH + wire reconciliation against open invoices.

Adobe Commerce B2B supports four overlapping pricing strategies:

• Customer groups, e.g. "Tier-A Distributors" get 30% off list across all SKUs.
• Tier prices, volume breaks (buy 10+ for $9.50, buy 100+ for $8.75).
• Contract pricing, customer-specific or company-specific overrides per SKU (Acme Corp buys SKU-123 at exactly $7.20, regardless of group/tier).
• Catalogue rules, conditional discounts ("15% off if customer is in Texas and SKU is in category X").

Prices can be hidden behind login (visitors see "Login for price"), and synced from ERP in real-time. We build the rule matrix in the discovery call so it matches your existing pricing logic without surprises.

Yes, ERP integration is the single most common Magento B2B project. We’ve shipped connectors to:

• SAP (S/4HANA, ECC, Business One)
• NetSuite (SuiteCloud, RESTlets)
• Microsoft Dynamics (365 Business Central, NAV, AX)
• Sage (50, 100, 200, X3, Intacct)
• Acumatica
• Odoo
• Pimcore (PIM)

Sync points typically: products + stock + customer-specific prices (ERP → Magento, real-time or every 15 min), customers + companies (bidirectional), orders + invoices (Magento → ERP). Protocols: REST, SOAP, EDI (X12, EDIFACT), SFTP. We use queue-backed connectors so a slow ERP doesn’t take down the storefront.

It depends on what you’re building. Magento ships a full GraphQL B2B API covering companies, quotes, requisition lists, shared catalogues, and customer-specific prices. Use cases that justify headless:

• Sales-rep mobile app, reps quote, order, and track orders on the road.
• Buyer portal app, large customers want a branded ordering app.
• Dealer / distributor portals, embedded in their existing systems.
• Composable commerce, Magento as commerce engine, separate frontend (Next.js, Nuxt, Hyvä).

Headless adds complexity (separate frontend deploy, GraphQL caching, auth flows). For 70% of B2B stores, the Hyvä theme on top of Adobe Commerce hits the same speed targets without the headless overhead. We assess both routes in the audit.

Yes, this is the Companies feature in Adobe Commerce B2B. One company account contains many buyer users with role-based permissions:

• Company admin, manages buyers, sees all orders, edits company info.
• Purchaser, can place orders up to a limit; orders above route to approver.
• Approver, reviews and approves pending orders.
• Finance, sees invoices, statements, credit balance only.
• Custom roles, you define new roles with granular permissions (view-only, view-and-quote, view-and-order, view-and-approve, etc.).

Approval workflows trigger by order value, SKU, category, payment method, or any combination. We’ve built 5-step approval chains for enterprise procurement and simple 1-step approvals for small distributors.

The Adobe Commerce B2B module ships these out-of-the-box:

• Companies & roles, multi-buyer accounts under one company; admin / purchaser / approver / finance roles; org charts.
• Approval workflows, orders over $X route to an approver before submission.
• Request for Quote (RFQ), buyers convert their cart to a quote; sales reps respond; quote → order conversion.
• Customer-specific pricing, tiered pricing per customer group, contract pricing, hidden prices behind login.
• Requisition lists, saved cart templates per buyer.
• Shared catalogues, SKUs visible only to designated companies.
• Payment on account, Net 30 / Net 60 with credit-limit enforcement at checkout.
• Quick order, SKU-based bulk add-to-cart (paste a list, attach a CSV).

Everything else (ERP integration, custom approval matrices, sales-rep dashboards) is layered on top.

Yes, but expect a significant build cost. Open Source ships the core e-commerce engine but no B2B features, so you’re building (or buying) custom modules for companies + roles, quote workflow, customer-specific pricing, requisition lists, payment on account, and shared catalogues. Community modules exist (Mageplaza, Amasty, MGS) but they patchwork rather than integrate as one cohesive B2B model.

Our recommendation: if your annual B2B GMV is > $1M, Adobe Commerce pays for itself in fewer custom modules, faster build, fewer integration bugs, and Adobe support. Below $1M, an Open Source + 3-4 well-chosen B2B modules can work, we audit both routes in the discovery call.

Magento Open Source is the free version, it ships with the core e-commerce engine but does not include the B2B module. To run B2B on Open Source you must build the B2B features yourself (custom companies, quote workflow, customer-specific pricing). That is doable but expensive, you’re reinventing what Adobe ships out-of-the-box.

Adobe Commerce (the paid edition, formerly Magento Enterprise) ships the official B2B module at no extra cost: companies + roles + permissions, request-for-quote workflow, requisition lists, shared catalogues, multi-tier pricing, and credit limits / payment-on-account. For 95% of B2B stores, Adobe Commerce + B2B module is the right starting point. Annual licence runs from ~$22,000 USD/year and scales with GMV.

The Adobe Commerce B2B quote workflow:

1. Buyer adds products to cart, hits "Request a quote" instead of "Checkout".
2. Buyer adds notes (volume, custom terms, project deadline).
3. Quote routes to assigned sales rep in the admin.
4. Sales rep adjusts prices, adds discounts, attaches PDF, replies in-thread.
5. Buyer reviews, accepts, counter-proposes, or declines.
6. On accept, quote converts to a regular order with the negotiated prices.
7. Custom email templates fire at each stage (request received, quote sent, accepted, expired).

We customise the routing matrix, approval logic, expiry rules, and PDF templates to match your sales process. Account-rep dashboards (custom built) give sales managers a pipeline view.

Honest comparison:

• Magento / Adobe Commerce B2B, the most flexible. Companies, multi-tier pricing, quote workflow, ERP integration, custom approval matrices, headless GraphQL. Best for $1M+ GMV B2B with custom workflows or ERP-heavy stacks.
• Shopify Plus B2B, fastest to launch, B2B added in 2023 (companies, catalogue access, payment terms). Limited customisation, you live within Shopify’s data model. Best for < $5M GMV B2B with simple workflows and no heavy ERP.
• BigCommerce B2B Edition (powered by B2B Ninja / BundleB2B), mid-ground. Quote workflow, customer groups, price lists. Less mature than Magento for complex flows.

If your B2B has 5+ approval roles, custom pricing logic, an ERP, or 5,000+ SKUs, Magento wins on TCO and capability. If you’re a small distributor wanting to launch in 30 days, Shopify Plus B2B is faster. We’re happy to recommend the route that actually fits your business, even if it isn’t Magento.