How to Set Different Delivery Rules for Mixed B2B and DTC Orders on Shopify

You run B2B and DTC on one Shopify store. Wholesale buyers see trade pricing. Consumer customers see retail pricing. Shopify handles this natively with catalogs and customer tags.

But what about delivery?

Your DTC customer orders one candle and wants it delivered by Friday. Your wholesale buyer orders 500 candles and wants them dispatched in three weeks when their warehouse has capacity. Both orders go through the same checkout. Both see the same delivery options. That’s the problem.

Shopify’s native checkout shows identical delivery dates to every customer. It doesn’t differentiate between a consumer buying one unit and a trade account buying 500. The delivery rules that work for DTC — next-day delivery, weekend options, same-day cut-offs — are wrong for B2B. And the rules B2B needs — future ship dates, extended lead times, draft order support — don’t exist for DTC customers.

What needs to be different between B2B and DTC delivery

The two channels have fundamentally different delivery requirements:

Date type. DTC customers choose a delivery date — when they want the order to arrive. B2B buyers choose a ship date — when they want the order to leave your facility. The delivery date is calculated downstream from transit time.

Lead times. DTC orders fulfil within hours or days. B2B orders might be scheduled weeks or months in advance, especially for made-to-order or seasonal stock replenishment.

Fulfilment timing. DTC orders enter the fulfilment queue immediately. B2B orders should hold until their ship date — releasing to fulfilment only when they’re due to dispatch.

Order creation. DTC orders come through the storefront. B2B orders also come through phone calls, email, sales reps creating draft orders, and trade portal checkouts.

How Flare handles mixed B2B and DTC delivery rules

Flare lets you run both sets of delivery rules from one Shopify store — differentiated by customer tag, account tier or location. No separate storefronts. No custom code.

Customer tag-based delivery logic. Tag your wholesale accounts as “B2B” or “trade” in Shopify. Flare applies different delivery rules based on the customer tag. Your DTC customers see standard delivery dates with next-day options and weekend delivery. Your B2B customers see future ship dates with extended lead times and dispatch scheduling. Same store, different checkout experience.

Dispatch mode for B2B, delivery mode for DTC. Flare supports both dispatch date and delivery date modes. Your DTC checkout shows “Choose your delivery date.” Your B2B checkout shows “Choose your ship date.” The mode switches based on the customer’s account tag — automatically, at checkout.

See how delivery and dispatch modes work →

Auto-hold for wholesale, immediate fulfilment for DTC. When a B2B buyer selects a ship date two weeks from now, Flare’s auto-hold and release keeps the order out of your fulfilment queue until the ship date. DTC orders flow straight through to packing. Both run from the same fulfilment infrastructure — Flare just controls the timing.

Draft orders inherit the same rules. Your sales rep creates a phone order for a trade account? Flare applies B2B delivery rules to draft orders — the same zones, lead times and blocked dates that the trade portal checkout uses. No manual date calculation. No email to confirm timing.

“We recently transitioned from Magento to Shopify, and Flare offered the complex functionality our customers need without us having to upgrade to Shopify Plus. An intuitive App, supported by excellent customer service from Daniel & Alex.”

— Fine Food Specialist, United Kingdom

Zone rules that apply to both channels

Your postcode and ZIP code delivery zones work for both B2B and DTC simultaneously. A London postcode gets 1-day transit for both DTC and B2B orders. A Highland postcode gets 3-day transit for both. The transit calculation is the same — the date type (delivery vs dispatch) and lead time differ by customer tag.

This means one zone configuration serves your entire operation. You don’t maintain separate postcode rules for wholesale and retail. The zone data is shared; the customer experience is differentiated.

Why this matters for mixed-channel operations

Without differentiated delivery rules, mixed-channel stores face two bad options: show DTC rules to everyone (and B2B buyers can’t schedule future dispatch), or show B2B rules to everyone (and DTC customers see unnecessarily long lead times). Neither works.

Flare eliminates the compromise. 700+ Shopify brands trust Flare to manage delivery logic — including brands running both B2B and DTC from the same store with 99.8% order accuracy.

Set up differentiated delivery rules for your mixed store

Read the ship date vs delivery date guide for B2B or see Flare’s wholesale industry page for the full B2B feature set.

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