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The Boutique Hotel Order That Turned My Online Store into a B2B Business

By Carmen Rivera, Online Store Owner — San Diego, CA

I launched Coastal Provisions in 2018 — a Shopify store selling artisan pantry goods sourced from small California producers. Sea salts, specialty honeys, California olive oils, dried citrus, hand-packed sardines. Curated gift sets for the sort of person who reads food magazines. I was doing about $4,200 a month, entirely retail, entirely direct-to-consumer.

In early 2020, the purchasing manager at a boutique hotel group in La Jolla emailed. They were putting together welcome amenity kits for their rooms — could I supply them?

The order was for 240 units at $42 per kit. $10,080.

I had no idea how to invoice a hotel purchasing department.

The B2B Invoice Problem

My Shopify store was set up for consumer checkout — credit card at purchase, automated confirmation email, retail pricing. The hotel purchasing manager needed a formal invoice with their PO number, net-30 payment terms, and my business tax ID. The Shopify order confirmation I sent her was not going to work.

I went down a two-hour rabbit hole trying to figure out how to create a professional B2B invoice outside of Shopify. I tried Google Docs templates, a web-based invoicing service that required a subscription I didn’t want, and eventually downloaded InvoiceFlow. I had the invoice built in twenty minutes.

Wholesale Order — [Company Name] — [PO Number] — [Date]:

Items:

The “resale certificate on file” line was something I’d never thought about before. Wholesale buyers who resell products don’t pay sales tax on the purchase — they collect it at point of sale. Getting their resale certificate on file before processing the first wholesale order is essential.

Building the Wholesale Pricing Structure

Invoice Flow app invoice editor of an online store — stoneware mug sets and bowls at wholesale unit pricing with a discount, billed in EUR with PO and incoterms
Units, wholesale pricing, PO and incoterms — an export order the platform could never generate.

After the hotel order, I formalized a wholesale pricing tier. Retail prices on my site are full margin. Wholesale pricing for resellers is a discount from retail — typically 40–50% off.

My pricing tiers:

I built a separate wholesale invoice template in InvoiceFlow for each tier. When I onboard a new wholesale account, I ask for their resale certificate, set up a customer profile with their tier and payment terms, and generate invoices from the appropriate template.

Recurring Wholesale Account Invoices

The hotel group placed a standing quarterly order — the same amenity kit configuration, adjusted for seasonal product availability. I set up a recurring quarterly invoice in InvoiceFlow.

Quarterly Wholesale Order — [Account Name] — [Quarter]:

Items:

The quarterly structure gave me predictability. Twelve weeks of inventory planning instead of one week.

Custom Gift Set and Corporate Order Invoices

Invoice Flow app client list of an online store — a German wholesale buyer in EUR, a Canadian retailer in CAD and a US boutique in USD
Berlin in euros, Toronto in Canadian dollars, home boutique in USD — each buyer billed as a local.

The second major B2B channel was corporate gifting — companies ordering customized gift sets for clients, employees, and holiday programs.

Corporate Gift Order — [Company Name] — [Date]:

Corporate gift orders use a 50% deposit because I’m sourcing and packaging products specifically for the order. If the client cancels after I’ve pulled inventory and assembled kits, I have no path to recover those costs.

Net-30 vs. Credit Card: Managing Wholesale Receivables

Invoice Flow app analytics of an online store — year-to-date revenue across wholesale, retail and custom orders with a monthly trend
Every channel summed into one trend — the picture no single platform dashboard shows.

After the hotel order, I offered net-30 to all wholesale accounts by default. That was a mistake.

Six months in, I had $18,400 in outstanding wholesale receivables. Several accounts were at 45–60 days. One account had placed three orders and paid none of them within terms.

I restructured:

The first-three-orders rule eliminated most late payment problems. By the time an account is on open net-30 terms, I’ve seen them pay on time at least three times.

The Business Five Years In

Current revenue breakdown:

In 2018, before B2B, I was doing $4,200/month. The B2B channels now represent about 69% of revenue.

What InvoiceFlow Does for Online Store Owners

Online store B2B billing spans wholesale account invoices with resale certificates and net-30 terms, standing order invoices for recurring accounts, corporate gift orders with deposit structures, and subscription box recurring billing. InvoiceFlow handles all of these from one Android app — separate templates for retail, wholesale, and distribution pricing tiers, PO reference fields for corporate clients, deposit tracking for custom orders, and net terms that match each account type.

Download InvoiceFlow. Build the wholesale invoice template with PO field, resale certificate note, and net-30 terms. Build the corporate gift template with the deposit structure. The hotel account that orders quarterly is worth more than a month of retail sales — and it starts with a professional B2B invoice.

Carmen Rivera is the owner of Coastal Provisions in San Diego, California, selling artisan pantry goods direct-to-consumer, to wholesale hotel and retail accounts, and through corporate gift programs and subscription boxes.