OnWebPoint 
WooCommerce handles business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce well out of the box. WooCommerce wholesale Ireland — selling to trade customers, distributors, and business buyers — is a different challenge entirely. It requires trade account registration and approval, tiered pricing based on customer type or volume, VAT handling for business customers, purchase order workflows, and a catalogue that may show different products or prices to different customer segments. For Irish businesses selling to both retail and trade customers, WooCommerce can handle all of this — but it requires the right plugin setup and configuration. This guide covers what you need and how to approach it.
What Makes WooCommerce Wholesale Ireland Different from Standard Stores
Standard WooCommerce assumes a single customer type — a consumer who browses publicly, adds to cart, and checks out. B2B WooCommerce needs to handle multiple customer types simultaneously: retail customers who see standard prices, approved trade customers who see wholesale prices, and sometimes tiered trade pricing where larger orders receive additional discounts. The store may also need to hide certain products entirely from retail visitors, require trade customers to register and be approved before they can order, and handle VAT differently for Irish business customers versus consumers.
None of this is built into core WooCommerce — it requires either a dedicated B2B plugin or a combination of user role, pricing, and catalogue visibility plugins configured to work together.
B2B Plugin Options
B2BKing
B2BKing is the most comprehensive dedicated B2B plugin for WooCommerce and the one most commonly used on Irish wholesale sites. It handles the full B2B stack in a single plugin: trade registration with manual or automatic approval, wholesale pricing (percentage discount from retail, fixed wholesale price, or tiered quantity pricing), customer-specific pricing, catalogue visibility control, VAT exemption for verified business customers, purchase order payment method, order minimum quantities, and a wholesale-specific product catalogue. Pricing starts at around €170/year for a single site.
Wholesale Suite
Wholesale Suite is a bundle of three plugins — Wholesale Prices, Wholesale Lead Capture, and Wholesale Order Form — that work together to handle trade pricing, wholesale customer registration, and a streamlined bulk ordering interface. It is modular (you can buy components separately) and well-suited to simpler wholesale setups where you need discounted pricing for trade customers but do not require the full catalogue control and customer segmentation of B2BKing. Pricing from $148/year for the bundle.
WooCommerce B2B (YITH)
YITH’s B2B plugin covers registration, pricing rules, and catalogue visibility at a lower price point (around €130/year). It is less feature-rich than B2BKing but sufficient for straightforward wholesale setups where you need trade accounts and discounted pricing without complex segmentation.
Trade Account Registration and Approval
For most Irish B2B stores, the first requirement is a gated registration process — trade customers apply for a wholesale account, you review their details (business name, VAT number, trade type), and approve or reject the application. Until approved, they see standard retail prices or no pricing at all.
B2BKing handles this with a customisable registration form that captures the business details you need. Approved customers are automatically assigned to a wholesale user role and immediately gain access to trade pricing. You receive an email notification of new registrations to review. The approval workflow can be manual (you approve each application) or automatic (any registrant who completes the form is instantly approved) — most Irish wholesale businesses use manual approval to maintain control over who accesses trade pricing.
WooCommerce Wholesale Ireland: Pricing Structures
Irish wholesale businesses typically use one of three pricing structures, all supported by the main WooCommerce wholesale Ireland plugins:
Flat percentage discount: All trade customers receive, say, 25% off the retail price on all products. Simple to manage, easy for trade customers to understand.
Category or product-specific discounts: Different discount rates apply to different product categories. A food wholesaler might offer 20% off ambient products and 15% off chilled lines.
Tiered quantity pricing: The unit price drops as order quantity increases. 1–11 units at €10 each, 12–23 units at €8.50, 24+ units at €7. This incentivises larger orders and is common in Irish trade supply businesses.
B2BKing and Wholesale Suite both handle all three structures. Configure pricing rules once and they apply automatically for any customer in the trade role.
VAT Handling for Irish B2B Customers
VAT treatment for B2B transactions in Ireland differs from B2C in several important ways. Irish VAT-registered businesses purchasing from another Irish VAT-registered business pay VAT but can reclaim it — so the pricing display is often shown ex-VAT for trade customers (showing the net price without VAT, since the VAT is ultimately reclaimed). For EU business customers outside Ireland purchasing goods, the reverse charge mechanism may apply — no Irish VAT is charged, and the customer accounts for VAT in their own country.
B2BKing supports VAT-exempt customer designation — when a trade customer provides a valid EU VAT number, the plugin removes VAT from their prices at checkout. This requires integration with a VAT validation service (VATstack or similar) to verify the EU VAT number in real time. The broader WooCommerce EU VAT guide for Irish businesses covers the full compliance picture, including OSS obligations for cross-border sales.
Catalogue Visibility and Product Restrictions
Many Irish B2B stores need to show different products to different customers. A wholesale distributor might have trade-only lines not available to retail customers, or minimum order quantities that make retail purchase impractical. B2BKing allows you to:
- Hide specific products or categories entirely from retail (guest/logged-out) visitors
- Show prices only to logged-in trade customers (“Log in to see trade prices”)
- Set minimum order quantities per product or per order for trade customers
- Create a completely separate wholesale product catalogue if needed
Purchase Order Payment Method
Many Irish trade customers prefer to order on account — placing an order and paying on invoice within 30 days rather than paying by card at checkout. B2BKing includes a Purchase Order payment method that trade customers can select at checkout. The order is placed with payment pending, you fulfil and invoice it, and mark it paid when the invoice is settled. For Irish businesses already managing debtor accounts, this integrates with standard credit control processes.
For trade customers paying by card, the standard WooCommerce payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal) apply. Some Irish wholesale businesses offer both — card payment for smaller orders, purchase order terms for approved accounts above a minimum spend.
Wholesale Order Forms
Trade buyers placing large orders through a standard WooCommerce product grid — clicking into each product, adding to cart, going back — is slow and frustrating. Wholesale Suite’s Order Form module, and similar tools in B2BKing, provide a tabular order form where customers can see all products in a single list with quantity fields and add multiple items to the cart in one action. This significantly improves the ordering experience for trade customers placing regular bulk orders.
Building a B2B WooCommerce Wholesale Store for Ireland
A well-configured WooCommerce B2B store for an Irish business is a meaningful development project — the plugin configuration, user role setup, pricing rules, VAT handling, and checkout workflow all need to be correctly integrated and tested before going live. Errors in trade pricing or VAT handling are not just inconvenient — they create billing disputes and potential compliance issues.
As part of WooCommerce development projects at OnWebPoint, WooCommerce wholesale Ireland functionality is scoped and built with the full workflow tested — registration, approval, trade pricing, VAT handling, checkout, and order management. If you are an Irish business planning to add wholesale selling to your WooCommerce store, or building a trade-only ecommerce site from scratch, get in touch to discuss the scope and what it involves.
