How do you send a quote to a B2B customer in Shopify?

21 October 2026

The short answer is that Shopify has no quoting step. It gives you companies, company locations, catalogs, price lists, quantity rules and payment terms, and nothing that sits between "what would this cost us?" and an order. Here is what merchants actually do instead, what each approach costs, and one thing about draft orders that almost nobody knows.

Option 1: a spreadsheet and an email thread

This is what most wholesalers do, including ones running a perfectly good Shopify B2B setup. A rep opens a sheet, prices the lines by hand, exports a PDF, and emails it. When the customer says yes, somebody retypes the whole thing into an order.

It works, and it is free, and the retyping is not really the problem. The problem is that nothing in a spreadsheet knows what that customer already pays. A rep takes 10% off the retail price they looked up, feels generous, and quotes $18.00 to a company whose catalog says $15.00. The customer is being asked to pay more for a quote than for a normal order, and nobody finds out until the invoice is disputed.

The second problem is memory. Six weeks later, when the customer asks why this quote is different from the last one, the answer is in somebody's sent items.

Option 2: a draft order in the admin

Shopify draft orders are the closest native thing to a quote. You build one in the admin, attach the customer, and send them an invoice link. They can pay it directly.

This is a genuinely reasonable approach for a handful of buyers, and it is underused because of one detail most people get wrong.

So a draft order with the company location attached already gives you the right prices and the right payment terms. That is further than most people think.

Where it runs out:

• It is an invoice, not a quote. The customer can pay it or ignore it. There is no decline, no counter-offer, no way to ask for a change without starting an email thread.
• No expiry. A draft order sits there indefinitely at whatever price you set in March.
• No history of the negotiation. Edit the draft and the previous version is simply gone. The record shows what it says now, not what you offered a fortnight ago.
• You cannot see what you are discounting from. The line shows one price. Whether that is their catalog price or something you typed over it is not visible once it is saved.
• A negotiated price needs care. If you agree a figure below the catalog price, that is a manual override on the line, and it is on you to make sure it survives into the final order.

Option 3: a quoting app

There are a lot of them, and they are not all solving the same problem, so it is worth knowing what to look for.

Most apps in this category are request-a-quote apps built for retail stores. They hide your prices, show a form instead of an Add to Cart button, and email you the enquiry. That is useful if your problem is that you do not want to publish prices. It is not quoting, and many of them have no concept of a Shopify company or catalog at all.

If you are running real Shopify B2B, the questions worth asking are:

• Does it read the buying company's actual catalog price, or does somebody type the price in?
• Can the buyer accept, decline or ask for a change without creating an account?
• When a quote is accepted, does the order carry the purchasing company, so payment terms and tax exemption still apply?
• Does a price you negotiated actually stick, or does Shopify recalculate it from the catalog when the order is created?
• Is there a record of what was offered, and when?

That last group matters more than the feature list. An accepted quote that becomes a consumer order loses net terms and tax exemption, and you find out when the customer calls about an invoice that says due on receipt.

Which one you should use

A handful of quotes a month, a few buyers you know well: draft orders with the company location attached. It is free, it is native, and it gets the prices right. Just keep your own note of what you offered.

Enough quotes that you have lost track of one: the spreadsheet is costing you margin you cannot see, and that is the point at which the question stops being about convenience.

Reps quoting on your behalf: this is where it stops being optional. A rep working from retail prices cannot tell a good discount from a terrible one, and you will not find out from the order.