Running a B2B or wholesale operation on Shopify isn’t just a bigger version of DTC — it’s fundamentally different. You’re not just selling in bulk — you’re managing complex accounts, handling special pricing logic, approving draft orders, and supporting longer sales cycles. And most of it happens outside the box of Shopify’s native tools.
That’s where automation becomes a force multiplier. With the right workflows, you can handle customer segmentation, monitor edge cases, and trigger follow-up actions based on specific conditions — all without relying on someone manually keeping track.
In Part 8 of our What You Should Automate in Shopify series, we’re diving into the workflows that keep your wholesale operations moving: tagging accounts, cleaning data, routing orders, and flagging issues before they snowball.
Automations to keep wholesale operations organized
B2B and wholesale stores depend on structured customer data. Tags, loyalty tiers, account types, and payment statuses all play a role in how you manage relationships — and how your store logic functions. These workflows help ensure customer records stay clean, complete, and updated in real time as things change.
- Automatically assign loyalty tags to customers after purchase
- Automatically tag customers by preferred currency
- Submit customer data erasure requests in bulk
- Alert admin for unpaid orders when customers place new orders
Automations to handle volume and edge cases
Wholesale teams don’t just deal with bigger carts — they deal with more exceptions. That might mean spotting customers who’ve had issues in the past, identifying products with chronic fulfillment problems, or tracking when payment conditions shift. These workflows help your team react quickly to edge cases that affect large accounts or long-term value.
- POS – verbal discount or adjustment logged
- POS – log damaged or defective product
- POS: customer was upset, needs follow-up
- Daily report: variants that dropped below inventory threshold
- Daily summary of expiring payment authorizations
Automations to support merchandising and catalog ops
Wholesale catalogs are often segmented, complex, and tied to specific pricing or account logic. You might have separate tags for B2B-only products, hidden collections, or tiered discount logic. These workflows help you update product tags, rotate content, and retire old materials — without relying on dev time or manual checks.
- Bulk tag products that contain a video media file
- Use tags to track percentage difference between compare at and price
- Tag orders going to a certain state or province
- Automatically unpublish a blog post on a certain date
Automations for order routing and fulfillment
Once the order is placed, things don’t get simpler — especially if you’re coordinating drop-ship vendors, internal teams, or external partners. These workflows help push the right info to the right place as soon as an order is created, so nothing gets held up in fulfillment queues or buried in inboxes.
- Create a Trello card when an order includes a file from Upload Kit
- Send a dropship order request to a specific vendor
- Track daily POS sales for each store location
- Send email if order is unfulfilled after one week
Conclusion: automation unlocks wholesale scale
DTC brands often survive on manual hustle. Wholesale brands don’t have that luxury. Big accounts, high-value orders, and multi-step operations make automation the difference between staying lean and getting overwhelmed.
With the right workflows in place, you can keep your B2B operations sharp — from account structure to fulfillment. Arigato makes it easy to run a wholesale business like a well-oiled machine — without needing to build your own ERP or babysit your backend.
Arigato Automation gives wholesale merchants the tools to scale — without breaking what makes B2B great in the first place.