Shopify B2B Multi-Location Company Setup: Catalogs, Terms, Buyer Permissions, and Approval Controls

Model the parent company first, then decide what belongs at each location

Shopify currently defines a company as the parent organization for one or more company locations. A company location is the business entity you are selling to in the B2B transaction, and each location can carry its own tax ID or exemptions, shipping and billing addresses, pricing, payment terms, checkout settings and contacts. That makes location a better operating boundary than creating unrelated customer records for every branch of the same account.

Consider a restaurant group with headquarters plus 14 venues. Headquarters negotiates the commercial relationship, but individual venues receive goods and may have different contacts or payment arrangements. Keep the chain under one company, then represent the venues that genuinely need different buying settings as company locations. Do not create a new location merely because two employees work in the same branch. The location should represent a commercial or operational distinction that matters to ordering.

Write down which fields are parent-level policy and which are branch-level execution before importing customers. For example, the master agreement might be parent-level, while ship-to address and buyer contacts are location-level. Shopify gives you several location-level controls, but your own contract or accounting system can still contain information that Shopify does not model as a native location field.

Use buyer permissions to separate ordinary ordering from location administration

Shopify currently documents two customer permission levels for B2B company locations. Ordering only lets a buyer place orders for assigned locations and view that buyer's own order history. Location admin can place orders, view all orders for the assigned location and edit billing and shipping addresses. Those roles solve access to location information; they are not a multi-step spend approval chain.

For a branch with several purchasers, give routine requesters the smallest permission that fits their job. A buyer who only replenishes supplies usually does not need authority to rewrite the saved billing address. A branch manager who needs visibility into every branch order may need Location admin. Keep permission design boring and explicit. The fewer people who can alter account-level data, the easier it is to explain later why an address or order history changed.

A buyer assigned to more than one company location is prompted to choose the location they are buying for before adding products. Shopify then uses the relevant location context for the buying experience, including the applicable catalog pricing. That location choice is important in testing because the same employee can legitimately see different commercial terms when ordering for different branches.

Design catalogs around your Shopify plan before promising branch-specific pricing

Current Shopify B2B plan documentation matters here. Companies, company locations and location-level customer permissions are available on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. But catalog assignment is not identical across plans. Basic, Grow and Advanced currently support up to three active catalogs across B2B markets and require the new Shopify Markets experience for B2B catalog features. Shopify Plus supports unlimited B2B market catalogs and direct assignment of catalogs to a specific company or company location.

That means a merchant with 40 branches should not casually promise 40 independently assigned branch price books on a non-Plus plan because the company-location model itself exists there. Separate the question 'Can I create these locations?' from 'Can I directly assign a distinct catalog to each location on my plan?' They are different capabilities.

A practical architecture is to group branches into a small number of commercial cohorts when their pricing is genuinely the same, then reserve location-level differences for fields Shopify supports on the plan you use. If every branch truly requires negotiated direct pricing, verify the plan requirement before designing the migration around that assumption.

Keep merchant draft review separate from the buyer company's internal approval chain

Shopify can configure a company or company location so orders are submitted as drafts for merchant review. When that setting is active, the order reaches the merchant as a draft instead of being finalized automatically. This is useful when the seller needs to inspect an order, confirm availability, check a negotiated exception or review a high-risk account before accepting it.

That review happens on the seller side. It should not be described as the buyer organization's internal procurement approval. A branch requester might still need a manager or finance approver before the request is allowed to become an order at all. Treat those as two gates: buyer-side authorization decides whether the company is allowed to commit the spend, while merchant-side draft review decides whether the seller accepts the resulting order.

B2B Procurement OS is useful when you need the first of those gates inside the ordering workflow. Its current listing advertises multi-level approval with conditional rules based on order amount and gives Purchasing, Manager and CFO as an example sequence. That is materially different from turning every order into a Shopify draft for your own team to review.

Layer credit policy onto the company without inventing branch-level credit limits

The current B2B Procurement OS listing advertises per-company credit limits and net terms that can block over-limit or overdue orders. For a parent account with several branches, that can be valuable because the seller may care about total exposure to the customer group, not only what one branch ordered this morning.

Do not silently convert 'per-company' into 'per-company-location.' The public listing does not currently promise a separate credit ceiling for every location. If your finance policy requires a 20,000 USD limit for Branch A, 10,000 USD for Branch B and a separate parent-level ceiling, verify the app's current support for that exact hierarchy before rollout. The article recommendation is intentionally bounded to the capability the listing documents.

Also keep payment terms separate from credit exposure. A location's Shopify terms can describe when payment becomes due. A procurement credit limit answers how much unpaid exposure you are willing to accept. Your approval threshold can add a third control, such as requiring finance authorization above a certain order value. Those controls can work together without being treated as synonyms.

Build the reorder and exception paths around how branches actually buy

Multi-location customers often repeat the same baskets. B2B Procurement OS currently lists saved-list and CSV reordering, which can reduce retyping for branches that buy a known assortment. Use that for repeat procurement, then reserve quote requests for quantities or commercial conditions that genuinely need a non-standard decision. The same listing says buyers can request volume quotes priced from merchant data.

After submission, the app also advertises self-service editing of unfulfilled orders for quantity, shipping address, purchase-order number and cancellation. That can be useful when a branch catches a mistake before fulfillment. It should not be presented as unrestricted order editing after warehouse work begins. Build an operational cutoff around the verified unfulfilled-order boundary and make staff ownership clear for exceptions that arrive after that point.

A good branch workflow therefore has a normal lane and an exception lane. Normal replenishment uses the correct location, catalog, permissions, saved list and payment terms. Exceptions such as a large spend, non-standard quote or account-credit problem move to approval or review instead of forcing every ordinary order through the same manual queue.

Pilot one parent company before migrating the whole wholesale book

Choose one representative customer with at least two locations and test the model end to end. Give one user Ordering only access, one user Location admin access and, if relevant, one user access to more than one location. Confirm that the location selector, addresses, catalog context and payment terms are correct for each path. Then test an order that should submit normally and one that should require review or procurement approval.

If you use B2B Procurement OS, add a controlled approval scenario, an over-limit or overdue scenario that matches the documented company-level policy, a saved-list or CSV reorder and an edit while the order is still unfulfilled. Do not extrapolate from a successful checkout to every location. Compare the resulting order's company and location context with what operations and finance expect to receive downstream.

As of September 15, 2026, the official B2B Procurement OS listing shows Starter at $79 per month, Growth at $199 and Enterprise at $499, each with a 14-day free trial. Choose a plan only after verifying the current listing and the workflow you need. The strongest reason to add it is procurement depth around approvals, credit policy, repeat ordering and buyer self-service, not the mere fact that your customer happens to have multiple addresses.

• Parent company: one commercial relationship that can contain multiple locations.
• Company location: branch-level buying context such as addresses, terms, contacts and supported pricing context.
• Ordering only: routine buyer access with limited account administration.
• Location admin: broader order visibility plus address administration for assigned locations.
• Merchant draft review: seller-side acceptance control, not a substitute for buyer-side procurement approval.
• B2B Procurement OS: use verified company-level approvals, credit, reordering, quote and unfulfilled-edit workflows where they solve a real procurement need.

Apps mentioned in this guide

Frequently asked

Can one Shopify B2B company have multiple locations?

Yes. Shopify models a company as the parent organization for one or more company locations, and each location can carry its own operational and commercial settings such as addresses, contacts and payment terms.

Can a buyer order for more than one company location?

Yes. When a B2B customer is assigned to more than one location, Shopify prompts the buyer to select the location they are purchasing for before adding items to the cart.

Does Shopify's submit-as-draft setting replace internal purchasing approval?

No. Submit-as-draft is merchant-side review of the order. A buyer company's internal multi-level approval is a different control. B2B Procurement OS currently advertises multi-level approval rules based on order amount for that procurement use case.

Does B2B Procurement OS provide a separate credit limit for every company location?

The current public listing advertises per-company credit limits. Do not assume that means separate location-level ceilings. Verify that exact requirement before rollout if branch-specific credit limits are essential.

Is B2B Procurement OS available in English?

Yes. B2B Procurement OS is available in English. The promotional App Store link on ShopRadar requests the English listing locale; that URL parameter does not change the installed app's language settings.