One login, shared by everyone
A facilities management company buys consumables and parts for dozens of sites. Their site supervisors need to order, often urgently. Head office needs orders above a certain value approved and every order coded to the right site and contract. On your marketplace, the company has one account with one login. The password is shared by email. Anyone can order anything. So head office has told the supervisors not to use it, and they order by phone from local merchants instead.
Why buyer organisations need more than a login
Businesses buy in teams. The person placing the order is often not the person who approves the spending or pays the invoice. Buyer organisations have policies: who can order, what they can order, up to what value, charged to which budget. Without the tools to apply those policies, they either restrict use of the marketplace to a few people, or they avoid it.
Many marketplace platforms were built with a consumer account model, one person, one basket, one payment method. B2B buyers need a company account with many users.
| Buyer need | What the marketplace must provide |
|---|---|
| Many users, one company | User roles under a company account |
| Spending control | Per-user limits and approval rules |
| Cost allocation | Cost centres, sites or job numbers on orders |
| Budget visibility | Spend against budget by site or cost centre |
| Audit | Record of who ordered and who approved |
What missing controls cost
You lose the orders from the people who actually need the goods, because their organisation will not let them use the marketplace. Larger buyers, the ones with the most spend, are the ones most likely to have strict policies. Shared logins create security problems and make it impossible to tell who ordered what, which leads to disputes the buyer has to sort out internally.
Buyers who cannot code orders to sites or jobs also struggle to pay invoices, because their accounts team cannot allocate them.
The buyer account controls we build
- Company accounts and roles: each buyer company has an account with users in roles such as requester, approver and administrator, managed by the buyer's own administrator.
- Spending rules: limits per user or role, and approval rules by value, category or supplier, set by the buyer's administrator within options you provide.
- Approval flow: orders above a limit go to the approver by email or in the marketplace, with a one-click approve or reject, and the requester sees the status.
- Cost codes: orders carry the buyer's cost centre, site or job number, chosen from lists the buyer maintains, and appear on invoices and statements.
- Budgets: optional budgets by site or cost centre show spend to date, with warnings when an order would exceed the budget.
- Reporting: buyer administrators see spend by user, site, category and supplier, and can export it for their own accounts.
If your platform already supports company accounts, we extend them. If not, we add a company layer above individual logins.
When buyer organisations can trust the account
Site supervisors order what they need, when they need it. Head office sets the rules once and approves only what needs approval. Invoices carry the codes the accounts team needs. The buyer's whole team uses the marketplace instead of one person, and the orders that used to go to local merchants start coming through the platform.
Are buyer organisations holding back?
- Buyer companies share one login across many staff.
- Buyers ask for approval workflows or spending limits.
- Orders cannot be coded to sites, cost centres or jobs.
- Large buyers restrict marketplace use to a few people.
- Buyers cannot see who in their team placed an order.