Managing B2B Customers and Trade Accounts

B2B and B2C customers behave very differently. A wholesale customer may place one large order per month under agreed payment terms — compared to a consumer who makes small, frequent impulse purchases. Averaging the two together in a single customer view produces metrics that are meaningful for neither.

AskBiz separates B2B trade accounts from consumer customers automatically based on signals from your connected platforms (Shopify B2B, Xero customer type, QuickBooks customer class, or a tag you apply manually). Each trade account gets its own account view showing spend history, payment behaviour, and profitability.

To classify customers as B2B trade accounts in AskBiz:

For Shopify B2B: AskBiz automatically imports Shopify B2B companies and their associated contacts. No additional setup is needed.

For other platforms: Apply a customer tag in your connected platform (e.g. 'wholesale', 'trade', or 'b2b') and AskBiz will group tagged customers as trade accounts.

Manual CSV approach: Go to Customers → Trade Accounts → Import and upload a CSV of your wholesale customer names and account IDs. AskBiz will match them against order history.

Once classified, trade accounts appear in their own view under Customers → Trade Accounts, separate from your consumer customer list.

For each trade account, AskBiz shows:

• Total spend: lifetime and trailing 12-month revenue
• Order frequency: how often they order and whether it is increasing or declining
• Average order value: is the account growing basket size over time?
• Payment behaviour: average days to pay vs agreed terms (early, on time, or late)
• Gross margin: what margin you make on this account after COGS and any trade discounts
• Account health score: AskBiz's composite score (0–100) combining spend trend, payment behaviour, and order frequency

Low account health scores (below 60) are flagged in your Daily Brief as accounts at risk of churning or becoming problematic debtors.

Go to Customers → Trade Accounts → Profitability Ranking to see all accounts ranked by gross profit contribution (not just revenue).

The ranking often surprises: your highest-revenue account is rarely your most profitable one. Large accounts frequently negotiate the steepest discounts and pay the slowest — eroding margin and locking up working capital.

Filter by accounts where:

• Gross margin % is below your overall average → over-discounted, needs renegotiation
• Payment days exceed 60 → cash flow drain, consider tightening terms
• Spend is declining → at-risk account, needs commercial attention
• Spend is growing + margin is above average → invest more in the relationship

Rather than reviewing every account manually each week, set automated alerts for the signals that matter most.

Useful B2B account alerts:

• No order in X days (e.g. 45 days for a weekly buyer) → prompt outreach before the account goes cold
• Invoice overdue by more than 14 days → finance team follow-up
• Order value drops more than 30% vs prior period → commercial team review
• Account health score drops below 60 → at-risk flag

Set these in Intelligence → Alerts → Trade Account Alerts. Alerts can be routed to specific team members — e.g. overdue invoice alerts to the finance manager, order drop alerts to the account manager.