Glossary: Onboarding
Reseller
A reseller is a business that buys products from a supplier in order to sell them to its own customers. Resellers are the usual buyers on a wholesale account and often qualify for wholesale prices and tax rules that apply to resale.
In detail
A reseller buys goods, adds its own margin and sells them on. It may be a shop, an online store, a salon, an installer or a marketplace seller. What defines it is that it takes ownership of the goods and carries its own price, unlike an affiliate, who earns a commission but never buys the stock, and unlike an end user, who buys to use the product.
Suppliers treat resellers differently from shoppers. They offer wholesale pricing, minimum order quantities and invoice terms, and they ask the reseller to apply. A typical application collects the business name, address, a tax ID and sometimes a resale certificate or a trade licence, so the supplier knows the buyer is a real business that is buying to resell.
In the United States, a reseller usually gives the supplier a resale certificate so the sale is made without sales tax, since tax is collected from the final customer instead. Other countries use different documents and VAT rules, and the rules vary by state and country, so check the requirement for your market before you treat an account as exempt.
Reseller is a broad word. A distributor is a kind of reseller that buys in large volume, often straight from the manufacturer, and sells on to other resellers or retailers. Some programs add more levels, such as authorized resellers or value-added resellers, with their own pricing and rules. Set those levels up as customer groups so each one sees its own price.
Example
A garden shop applies for a wholesale account, uploads its business registration and tax ID, and is approved as a reseller. It now sees the 40% trade discount, and its orders carry no sales tax once the resale certificate is on file.
On Shopify
In Shopify's native B2B, a reseller is set up as a company with one or more company locations. Each location can be set to collect tax, not collect tax, or collect tax unless exemptions apply, with selectable exemptions, and it has a Tax ID field.
Sources: Shopify Help Center: Company locations (read October 4, 2026); Shopify Help Center: Tax overrides and exemptions (read October 4, 2026).
In BSS B2B apps
BSS B2B Solution's registration form collects business details, tax ID and document uploads (up to 10 MB per file), so a reseller can apply and you can approve the account. Customer groups can then see their own prices. Some form features and fields need a paid plan, see the pricing page.
Learn more
Read the Customer onboarding hub for guides, use cases and setup docs, or the complete Shopify B2B guide.