If you already run your operations on Brightpearl and sell through Shopify, you have probably noticed the wholesale gap. Retail orders flow neatly into Brightpearl, but trade customers still email spreadsheets, phone in repeat orders, or wait for a rep to send over a price list. Someone then re-keys it all, and every re-key is a chance for a wrong price, a missed pack size, or a delayed shipment.
The good news is that you do not need a new back office to close that gap. SparkLayer adds B2B ordering to your existing Shopify store and connects to the Brightpearl account you already rely on. To show how it works, let's follow one wholesale order from login to fulfilment, covering pricing, ordering, and syncing along the way, plus what to check before you start.
- 1In BrightpearlSam is set upTagged as a wholesale customer
- 2On ShopifySees their pricesTheir own price list and pack sizes
- 3On ShopifyOrders in minutesQuick order, saved lists, one-click reorder
- 4In BrightpearlLands in BrightpearlInto your existing fulfilment workflow
Two tools, one clear job each
Brightpearl is a retail operations system built for retailers and wholesalers. It covers financial management, inventory and sales order management, purchasing, CRM, fulfilment, and warehouse logistics, which makes it the home of your operational truth.
SparkLayer is the buyer-facing layer. It turns your Shopify store into a proper wholesale ordering experience, with more than 100 B2B features out of the box. The SparkLayer for Brightpearl integration joins the two. It uses the native B2B features inside Brightpearl, such as price lists and customer groups, rather than asking you to rebuild them somewhere else.
Step 1: Sam is set up in Brightpearl
Sam is a fictional buyer who owns an independent homeware shop and has just agreed to stock your range. Your team adds Sam to Brightpearl and tags the record as a wholesale customer.
That tag is the key. Brightpearl becomes the master of your B2B customer data, and tags are matched to SparkLayer customer groups, including sub-groups such as a VIP tier. Sam is matched by primary email, and everything from company details and addresses to credit limit, balance, price list, and sales rep assignment syncs across automatically. If you serve different types of buyer, such as independent retailers, distributors, and VIP accounts, each customer group can have its own pricing and rules.
Sam then appears in Shopify as a pending account and receives an email inviting them to activate their B2B login. Nobody on your team has to create an account by hand or chase a password reset. The integration guide walks through the tagging setup step by step.
Step 2: Sam logs in and sees their own prices
Price lists you create in Brightpearl import into SparkLayer automatically, including tiered price breaks. You assign them to customer groups, so every account signs in to its own price list, payment terms, and pack rules. Trade pricing stays private, while everyone else sees your normal retail prices.
On top of those lists, you can configure:
- Tiered pricing, such as buy three and save 15%
- Customer-specific rules, such as a minimum order value
- Pack sizing, so products can only be bought in sensible multiples, for example cases of 12
For Sam, that means no price list PDF to dig out and no awkward email asking whether the discount applies. The right price is simply there. If you want to go deeper on how stacked price lists and pack sizes behave, our guide to B2B pricing in SparkLayer is a good next read.
Step 3: Sam orders in minutes, not emails
Once logged in, Sam gets a self-serve experience built for repeat buying: quick ordering and a shopping cart, saved shopping lists, a my account area with full order history, and the option to duplicate any previous order in a single click. For busy accounts that reorder the same lines every few weeks, that last feature alone removes a surprising amount of admin.
That matters because a retailer buying from ten suppliers will favour the one that makes reordering easy. A smooth ordering experience is not just convenient, it is a reason for buyers to order more often.
Your own team is covered too. Sales reps can place orders on behalf of customers, which suits buyers who prefer a phone call, and the Quoting Engine supports an end-to-end quote-to-order journey on your existing site when a customer needs a bespoke price.
Step 4: The order lands in Brightpearl
This is where the integration earns its keep. When Sam checks out, the order is synchronised from Shopify into Brightpearl using your existing Brightpearl integration, with the B2B pricing you set up in Brightpearl showing on the order. From there it follows whatever workflows you already have in place, from stock allocation through to fulfilment.
Sam can follow progress too, as order tracking can be switched on for your B2B customers. Meanwhile your warehouse and finance teams have nothing new to learn and no duplicate order to type up. That is the whole point.
What changes for your team
Zoom out from Sam's order and the benefits are easy to see. Customer data and pricing live in one place, so there is a single source of truth rather than a spreadsheet, a price list PDF, and a Brightpearl record that quietly drift apart. Re-keying disappears, and with it a whole category of errors. Reps spend less time processing orders and more time talking to buyers. Growth gets easier to handle too: adding another hundred trade accounts means tagging records in Brightpearl, not hiring someone to process more emails.
Db, the travel gear brand, saw this first-hand, running SparkLayer with Brightpearl:
“There have been huge time-savings across the business as we’re now able to automate activities we were previously doing manually.”
Its B2B customers have responded well too, with a quicker ordering experience and more features. Read the full Db story.
And because SparkLayer works with the store and systems you already have, there is no replatforming project, no second back office, and no rebuild of your existing Brightpearl set-up.
Good to know before you start
A few practical points before you dive in:
- Plans and platforms. The Brightpearl integration is available on SparkLayer's Professional and Enterprise plans and works with Shopify and Shopify Plus stores. See the Enterprise page for larger setups.
- Setup. No coding is required. With SparkLayer installed on your Shopify store, enable the integration from the SparkLayer Dashboard under Integrations > Partner Integrations, enter your Brightpearl account ID, and authorise access. Then configure your B2B pricing and customer rules in Brightpearl.
- Where data is managed. Brightpearl is the master for customer data. Here's what syncs, and which way:
- Wholesale customersTags become customer groups, including sub-groups→
- Company details, credit limit, balance and sales repMatched by primary email→
- Price lists, with tiered price breaksNon-cost price lists only→
- AddressesOne way only→
- OrdersWith the B2B prices from Brightpearl←
Brightpearl is the master: changes made directly in Shopify don’t sync back.
Ready to try it?
If you already run Brightpearl and Shopify, you could be taking trade orders sooner than you think. Start with the integration guide, see SparkLayer on your own store, or compare plans to find the right fit.
Running a different back-office system? Brightpearl is just one of the platforms and systems SparkLayer connects to, so the same B2B layer can sit on top of whatever you run.
