School + university B2B portal, PO, Net-30, W-9, how do you wire it?

School + university accounts are 20-40% of revenue for most art-supply retailers. They buy on purchase order, pay Net-30, and need W-9 on file plus a state-specific tax-exempt certificate validated per state.

The Magento architecture:

• Adobe Commerce B2B Companies (native) or Open Source + Aheadworks B2B Suite ($2k one-time vs ~$30k/yr for Adobe Commerce). Both handle company-account hierarchies (teacher requests, procurement approves), shared shopping lists per classroom, department budgets.
• PO upload at checkout, PDF/image upload field at checkout, attached to the order, visible in admin for verification before fulfillment.
• Net-30 invoicing via Apruve, Resolve, or TreviPay, they underwrite the credit and pay you day 1, school pays them day 30. Cost: 1.5-3% per transaction. Worth it because you stop chasing collections.
• W-9 + tax-exempt cert upload, customer account section. State validation: matching the cert state against the ship-to state, expiry-date tracking with auto-reminders 30 days before lapse. Adobe Commerce ships with cert upload native; on Open Source it’s a custom module or the Avalara CertCapture integration (~$200/mo).
• Multi-buyer roles, teacher creates a requisition list, department head or procurement approves and converts to order. Native to Adobe Commerce B2B Companies.

One gotcha: California + New York + Texas have the strictest art-supply tax-exempt rules. If you sell into all three at school B2B volume, factor in a quarterly tax-exempt-cert audit ($200, $500 of admin work).