Shopify B2B order review rules on Shopify Plus

Wholesale teams we work with usually sit at one of two extremes. Either every trade order waits for someone to check it, or none do. The first slows down your best customers. The second lets a risky order through on a Friday afternoon.

Shopify Plus now lets you set rules for which B2B orders need review. You decide the conditions, such as order value, cart contents or who the customer is. Orders that match go to draft for review. Everything else completes as normal. For trade businesses, that means your team checks the orders that deserve it and stops checking the ones that don't.

What changed on the 1st of October 2025?

Shopify added a new operation called orderReviewAdd to the Payment Customization Function API. It's described in Shopify's changelog entry on B2B order review.

Shopify says you can "define custom business rules to automatically send orders to draft for review". Those rules can look at order value, cart contents or customer attributes. Shopify gives three examples.

• High value orders.
• Orders containing pre-order items.
• Orders from new customers.

Before this, review was a static setting. Shopify calls it all or nothing. You either reviewed every order in scope or none of them. Rules replace that with something closer to how a credit controller actually thinks.

Who this affects

This is for Shopify Plus stores that sell to trade buyers through Shopify's B2B features. Shopify is clear that the operation only works for B2B purchases on the Plus plan. Your consumer orders keep flowing as they do today.

It matters most in three kinds of business.

• Wholesalers with a mix of large accounts and small independents, where order sizes vary widely.
• Brands that take trade pre-orders for future stock, where a quick check protects the allocation.
• Businesses onboarding lots of new trade accounts, where a first order is the moment to confirm details.

If your team currently reviews every order by hand, this is the one to look at. If you review none, it's a low cost way to add a safety net.

What rules make sense for a wholesale store?

The code is the easy part. Agreeing the rules takes longer, and it should involve the people who carry the risk.

Start by writing down why orders get checked today. Most answers fall into a short list.

1. The order is much bigger than the account's usual size.
2. The order includes pre-order stock with limited allocation.
3. It's the customer's first order, or their details are new.
4. The cart mixes products that shouldn't ship together.
5. The account has a note on it from finance or sales.

Turn each reason into a condition Shopify can see. Order value and cart contents are straightforward. Customer attributes are where good data pays off. If you tag accounts or store details against the company, those can drive the rule.

Keep the first version small. Two or three rules that catch the real risks will do more than 10 that catch everything. Review what lands in draft after a few weeks, then tighten or relax.

What a merchant should do now

Because this is a Function, it isn't a toggle in settings. It's built with the Payment Customization Function API and deployed to your store. That means planning it like a small development project.

• Agree the rules with sales, finance and whoever handles customer service.
• Decide who reviews drafts, and how quickly they should act.
• Tell trade customers what to expect if an order is held, so a pause doesn't look like a fault.
• Test each rule with real account scenarios on a development store before it goes live.
• Check how held orders reach your ERP, so nothing is picked before it's approved.

That last point catches people out. If your ERP expects every order the moment it's placed, a draft step changes the flow. Our note on connecting Shopify to Business Central for wholesale covers how we map that kind of hand off.

Where this fits in a trade operation

Order review is one piece of a wider B2B setup. The same store often needs gated products, account pricing and a clean split from consumer shopping. We've written about hiding wholesale products from the Shop app and about whether to run B2B and DTC in one store or two.

On Fáilte Foods, the Scottish wholesaler we moved from Magento to Shopify Plus, the work centred on making trade ordering easy. Business Central sync, date based pricing and a favourites list for reordering all served that goal. Customer onboarding rose by over 500%. Rules like these sit well in that kind of build, because they add control without adding friction for good customers.

Where parallel helps

We build B2B commerce on Shopify Plus, including the Functions, account structure and ERP links underneath. We'll help you turn your review habits into rules, build them, and test them against real accounts. See how we approach B2B commerce on Shopify.

If your team spends too long checking orders that were always fine, book a call and tell us how review works today.