Trade accounts and contract pricing online: a guide for office dealers

Ask an office dealer where a customer’s contract prices live and the honest answer is often “it depends who you ask”. The rep has a spreadsheet. The back-office system has a price file. The customer has a PDF from last year’s review. When their new office manager orders on your website, she sees retail prices, rings to complain, and the order goes back to email.

This guide is for dealer principals and sales directors fixing that. It covers how dealers run contract pricing today, what an account customer expects when they buy online, the trade terms worth understanding before you choose a system, and the three main ways to put trade accounts online. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce, one of those ways, so we have a stake in this. Where Orbit comes up we say what it does and which plan it is on.

How do office dealers run contract pricing today?

Usually with three methods, often at the same time:

• A spreadsheet per account. The customer’s core lines (paper, toner, kitchen and washroom basics) at fixed net prices, agreed at the review and sent as a PDF. Easy to start and hard to keep right: nobody updates it when a wholesaler’s cost moves, and the latest version lives in one person’s inbox.
• Price files in the ERP. Contract prices held against the account in the dealer’s back-office system, sometimes with price bands (A, B, C) so similar customers share one level. This is the most reliable record, as long as the website reads from it rather than copying it.
• List less discount by band. No line-by-line list: the account gets list price less a set percentage, often by category or brand, such as list less 20% on stationery and less 10% on furniture. Simple to agree, and easy to get wrong when your own buying discount differs by brand. The arithmetic is in markup vs margin for trade price lists.

Most dealers mix them: fixed net prices on the 50 to 200 lines an account buys every month, and a discount off list for everything else. The trouble starts when the mix lives in three places and the website knows about none of them.

Should contract prices be fixed prices or a discount off list?

Fixed for the lines the buyer watches, a discount for the rest. A finance team budgets against the price of copier paper and toner; it does not check the price of treasury tags. But a fixed price is a promise you keep when your cost rises, so write that into the agreement.

A worked example, with assumed figures. You agree £22.00 ex VAT a case for copier paper, fixed for 12 months, from a cost of £17.60: a 20% margin. Four months in, the wholesaler raises your cost to £19.10, an 8.5% rise. Your margin on that line falls to 13.2%, and at 40 cases a month you give up £60 a month for the rest of the term. A clause that fixes prices “unless a supplier increase exceeds 5%”, or a review every six months, protects you without surprising the customer. Try your own figures in the margin calculator.

What does an account customer expect when they buy online?

The bar is set by the other places their staff already buy. Amazon Business’s UK page, for example, lists price discounts in up to five quantity tiers, a Business Credit Account with a 30-day term subject to credit approval, items that come with a VAT invoice, purchasing approval workflows and spending limits, and more people on one account (business.amazon.co.uk, checked 29 October 2026). Your customer will not read that list to you. They will just notice which supplier is easier to buy from. Seven things matter most:

1. Their prices when they sign in. Not a discount code, a PDF or a phone call: the contract price on the product page, in the basket and on the invoice.
2. Several buyers under one account. The office manager, the facilities lead and the PA at the second site, each with their own login, all buying on the company’s terms.
3. Spending control. A limit per buyer, or an approver for anything over a set amount, so the finance director trusts the account.
4. Reorder. Office supplies are repeat purchases. Last month’s order, or a saved list of the usual lines, in two clicks.
5. Ex VAT prices. VAT-registered buyers compare prices without VAT. The UK advertising code allows VAT-exclusive prices where everyone the price is aimed at pays no VAT or can recover it, with the VAT rate or amount shown prominently (CAP Code rule 3.18, asa.org.uk, checked 29 October 2026). A site that also sells to the public should let the buyer switch.
6. Proper invoices. If you make a standard-rated or reduced-rated supply to a VAT-registered customer, HMRC says you must give them a VAT invoice, normally within 30 days of the tax point (VAT Notice 700, paragraphs 16.2.1 and 16.2.3, gov.uk, checked 29 October 2026). Many buyers also need their own order reference on it.
7. A restricted range, where the account asks for one: only the approved chair and the agreed paper, so staff cannot order outside the contract.

Why bother? Because routine reorders drift to whichever supplier is quickest to use. The case is made in how independent office dealers win against Amazon Business.

Which trade terms should you understand before choosing a system?

Every vendor’s feature list uses these words. Here is what each means in practice, so you can ask sharper questions in a demo. They are general concepts, not a description of any one product.

What is pay on account, and how do credit terms work?

Pay on account means the customer orders now and pays later against an invoice, within agreed credit terms such as 30 days from invoice, up to a credit limit you set. Online, it means the checkout lets an approved account order without paying, checks the order against the limit, and can stop the account when invoices are overdue. In the UK, an agreed payment date must usually be within 60 days for business transactions, or 30 days for public authorities (gov.uk, checked 29 October 2026), and statutory interest on late business-to-business payments is 8% plus the Bank of England base rate (gov.uk, checked 29 October 2026). In a demo, ask how credit limits are enforced and who chases overdue accounts.

What is a PO number at checkout?

Many organisations will not pay an invoice that does not quote their purchase order number. A PO field at checkout carries that number onto the order and the invoice. Without one, someone at your end copies it across from an email.

What are order approvals?

A buyer fills the basket and an authoriser at the customer approves it before it reaches you, usually above a set value. This is different from approving a trade account application, which is you deciding who may buy at trade prices.

What are quantity breaks?

The unit price falls at set quantities: one price for 1 to 4 boxes, a lower one from 5. They suit consumables bought in bulk, and matter less where an account already has a fixed contract price on the line.

What is punchout?

The buyer opens your webstore from inside their own purchasing system, fills a basket at their prices and sends it back for approval and a purchase order. Large organisations and parts of the public sector ask for it; most small accounts do not.

What are your options for putting trade accounts online?

Three routes. Which suits you depends mostly on where your contract prices live today.

An ERP-tied dealer webstore

If contract prices sit in your dealer ERP, the webstore built on it reads them directly. ECI’s EvolutionX, for example, offers customer-specific pricing and product visibility, real-time pricing from its Horizon ERP, statements and invoices for customers to view, and checkout by invoice, card or PO number; ECI says it is trusted by hundreds of dealers across the UK and Ireland (ecisolutions.com, checked 29 October 2026). Prima GO, on Prima ERP, lets the dealer choose what each user can see and how much they can spend per transaction, with several levels of authorisation, and updates accounts, pricing and product visibility from the ERP in real time (primasoftware.co.uk, checked 29 October 2026). Neither publishes prices.

Built for: dealers whose contract prices, stock and invoices already live in that ERP.

A general platform’s B2B features

General platforms have added B2B tools. Shopify’s are on its Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. Payment terms, PO numbers, quantity rules and quantity price breaks are on all four, but below Plus you get up to 3 active B2B catalogues and cannot assign a catalogue directly to a company (help.shopify.com, checked 29 October 2026). Wholesaler product data and ERP links come through apps or integration work.

Built for: dealers with a development partner who want a general platform and its app ecosystem.

Orbit Commerce

This one is ours, so read it with that in mind. Orbit is built for dealers who want a store with published prices that sells to the public and to account customers from one site.

• On every plan: shoppers switch prices between ex VAT and inc VAT, with UK VAT at 20%, 5% and 0%. Customers reorder a past order from their account, and a Buy it again element lists what they bought before. Buyers pay at checkout by card or by a manual method such as bank transfer. The Xero and QuickBooks plugins (£9.99 a month each) turn paid orders into sales invoices in your accounts.
• Enterprise plan only (£999 a month, or £749 a month billed yearly, ex VAT): company accounts with several users and permissions; trade sign-up, where a buyer applies from your storefront and you approve them into a company; a price catalogue per company, with a fixed price or a percentage off per product or variant; restricted catalogues, so a company sees only the products on its list; and a spending limit per buyer, so an order over it is stopped at checkout.
• Supplier ranges, on every plan: connect a supplier on Orbit and its products import with images, variants, brand, category and specs, priced by your markup or margin rules, with stock syncing.

The detail is on B2B on Orbit, and every option above is compared in the best ecommerce platforms for UK office supplies dealers.

How do you move account customers online without losing them?

Whatever you choose, the move is the same seven steps:

1. Start with 10 to 20 accounts that order often and need little hand-holding. Learn on them.
2. Clean each price list first. Check every fixed price against today’s cost before it goes live. A website applies a wrong price perfectly, every time.
3. Set up the buyers you know, with the right roles: who orders, who manages the account, who only views.
4. Build a reorder list from their last three orders, and show it to the office manager in person on your next visit. Ten minutes at their desk does more than an email with a link.
5. Keep the phone and email route open. The website takes the routine reorder; the urgent and the unusual stay with a person.
6. Check the first month’s orders by hand: prices, VAT, delivery and the references on the invoices.
7. Review at renewal using what each account actually bought online.

For running trade and retail customers from one store, see selling wholesale without a second platform. For how Orbit is set up for supplies dealers, see Orbit for office supplies dealers, and for the wider office trade, the office industry page.