Our price is not the one on your website
A regional housing maintenance contractor buys heavily from one of your suppliers. They agreed a price list last year: lower prices on the fifty items they buy most, quantity breaks on a few more, valid until the end of March. When their buyers log into your marketplace, they see the public prices. So they email the supplier's rep with their order, the rep keys it into the supplier's own system, and your marketplace sees none of it.
The supplier would happily sell through the marketplace, if it could show the agreed prices. Your platform shows one price per listing.
Why one price per listing is not enough in B2B
Trade pricing is personal. Large and regular buyers negotiate. Suppliers run price tiers for different customer groups, quantity breaks, contract prices for named customers and time-limited deals. A consumer marketplace model, with one visible price per product, cannot represent any of this.
Suppliers also hold their price agreements in their own systems or spreadsheets, and changes during the year, such as a price review or an extended contract, need to reach the marketplace too.
| Pricing arrangement | What the marketplace needs to support |
|---|---|
| Customer group tiers | Price per buyer group, per supplier |
| Contract prices | Named buyer, named products, validity dates |
| Quantity breaks | Price by quantity band, per buyer or group |
| Time-limited deals | Start and end dates |
| Company with many sites | Same prices for all users of the account |
What missing contract pricing costs
Your biggest buyers, who could bring the most volume, are the ones most likely to order around the marketplace. Suppliers see the marketplace as a channel for small, one-off buyers rather than their core accounts. When contract prices are applied by hand after the order, mistakes creep in and buyers query invoices.
Contract prices that expire without anyone noticing cause the opposite problem: a buyer charged the old contract price months after the supplier reviewed it, and a difficult conversation about who absorbs the difference.
The buyer pricing we build
- Price list structure: prices can be set per supplier for a buyer group, a named buyer account or a named site, with products, quantity breaks, start and end dates.
- Supplier maintenance: suppliers upload or update price lists through a portal or file import, or by feed from their own system where it supports it, with changes previewed before they go live.
- Checkout application: when a buyer logs in, the prices they see and pay are resolved from the most specific applicable list, falling back to the public price where no agreement exists.
- Line checks: each order line records which price list applied, so invoices and disputes can be checked against the agreement.
- Expiry alerts: suppliers and your account team are told before contract prices expire, so reviews happen before the buyer gets a surprise.
- Confidentiality: buyers only ever see their own prices, and suppliers only see price lists they created.
Many marketplace platforms support customer-specific pricing to some degree. We use what your platform offers and add what is missing, rather than rebuilding it.
When key buyers can order on the platform
The contractor's buyers log in and see their agreed prices, with quantity breaks shown on the product page. Orders flow through the marketplace, with the consolidated invoicing and credit terms that come with it. The supplier's rep spends time with the buyer rather than keying orders. Your team can finally see how much trade your biggest relationships represent.
Price reviews become an event with a date, visible to both sides, rather than an email chain that may or may not reach the marketplace.
Do your key buyers order around you?
- Large buyers email suppliers directly because their prices are not on the site.
- Your platform supports only one price per listing.
- Contract prices are applied by hand after ordering.
- Expired contract prices have caused invoice disputes.
- Suppliers see the marketplace as only for small buyers.