Give customers a direct route to your team.
Ordering and account visibility from the same ERP records.
Let trade customers browse their catalogue, place orders and see invoices and statements. Your team reviews incoming orders in Cobalt, with the agreed customer terms attached.
Can the customer reorder without another email?
The buyer selects the products and quantities. Your team reviews the order, checks stock and confirms fulfilment in the same sales workflow.
Can the customer place a repeat order themselves?
The portal keeps the buyer’s selection connected to the customer account.
Customer portalIllustrative records| Stage | Record | Team review |
|---|---|---|
| Customer selects | Products and quantities | Buyer checks the basket |
| Draft arrives | Customer terms attached | Sales reviews the order |
| Order confirmed | Fulfilment requirement | Warehouse receives the work |
The team reviews the same order the buyer created.
Check product quantities, pricing and availability before confirming the delivery arrangement.
- Unlimited portal accounts — buyers and suppliers never take a staff seat, on every plan.
- Their own prices — each buyer sees their agreed prices, labelled as contract prices. They can ask to be told when an item is back in stock, and reorder from a past order.
- A basket built for trade orders — add many lines at once, choose the delivery address, keep saved lists that go into the basket in one go, and let colleagues work on the same basket safely.
- You approve every order — checkout sends a quote request or a draft order, and your team approves it before anything is committed.
- Their account at a glance — what they owe, any credit, how old each amount is, discounts for paying early, and twelve months of invoiced spend with this year compared to last.
- Standing orders and returns — buyers pause, restart or place standing orders themselves. On Scale and above, portal returns include return labels and tracking links, with credit notes handled through the returns workflow.
Buyers, suppliers and the public, each with their own front door.
All three work from the same records, each with its own rules about what people can see.
On every plan. Agreed prices, basket and checkout, quotes to accept or decline, orders, invoices, documents, standing orders, request tracking and notification settings. Returns with labels and tracking require Scale or above. On Scale, a buyer's own admin can invite colleagues and set the order value above which each one needs approval.
Portal access is included on every plan. Suppliers can confirm or reject purchase orders and submit invoices. The request-for-quotation workflow, including supplier responses, requires Scale or above. Compliance documents with expiry tracking require Premier or above.
On Growth. Choose which products to publish and edit their web addresses, pick one of three ways to show prices and one of four ways to show stock, and take enquiries from visitors, with prices checked again on our side. You can accept trade account applications and see what visitors search for, including searches that found nothing.
Your team confirms every portal order.
The portal saves you typing. The decisions stay with you.
Checkout in the portal never creates a confirmed order. Whatever a buyer puts together arrives as a quote request or a draft order, and someone on your team approves it before stock is set aside or an invoice exists. Pricing, credit and stock stay your decisions, so opening the portal to two hundred customers doesn't let two hundred people commit your stock at three in the morning. Requests land in the same sales order queue your team already works from, and carry on through quote to cash just like an order taken over the phone.
Buyers also never see what you paid. Cost price, margin, where a price came from and why it was overridden are visible to staff only, and we test for this specifically so none of it ever reaches a buyer. Stock cover is hidden for the same reason, because a buyer who knows how little you hold has a stronger hand in a negotiation. They see their price and their contract label, and nothing about how you got there. The rest of the wholesale ERP works the same way.
Frequently asked questions.
What is a B2B customer portal?
It's a signed-in area where your trade customers see their agreed prices, past orders, invoices and account balance, and put an order together themselves instead of emailing or phoning it in. In Cobalt ERP the portal uses the same records as your sales, stock and invoicing, so your team reviews the same records rather than copying them between systems.
Do portal users count towards my plan's user limit?
No. Portal accounts are unlimited on every plan and never use a staff seat. Only your own staff count towards the plan, so inviting a hundred customers and fifty suppliers doesn't change your bill.
Can customers see my cost price or margin?
No. Cost price, margin, where a price came from and why it was overridden are visible to staff only, and we test specifically that none of them ever reach a buyer. Buyers never see stock cover figures either, and that's a deliberate choice.
Can buyers place a confirmed order directly?
No, and that's on purpose. Checkout creates a quote request or a draft order, never a confirmed one, so your team signs off pricing, credit and stock before anything is committed. The one thing buyers can move forward on their own is a quote you've sent them, which they can accept or decline.
Is there a supplier portal as well?
Yes. Supplier portal access is included on every plan for purchase-order confirmation, invoice submission and payment visibility. The request-for-quotation workflow, including supplier responses, requires Scale or above. Compliance documents with expiry tracking require Premier or above. Portal accounts do not override the workspace's feature limits.
Which plan do I need for the portal and storefront?
The buyer portal, supplier portal and unlimited portal accounts are included on every plan. The public B2B storefront requires Growth or above. Supplier RFQs, portal returns with labels and tracking, and buyer-managed teams with approval limits require Scale or above. Supplier compliance documents require Premier or above.
Related pages.
Let your customers do the typing.
A buyer portal, a supplier portal and a trade storefront, with unlimited accounts and no per-seat charge.
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