A B2B ordering portal
so trade customers order themselves.

A B2B ordering portal is a private website where your trade customers log in, see their own prices and place orders without calling you. Restaurants ordering from a food supplier, contractors ordering from a builders’ merchant, shops reordering from a distributor and hotels topping up cleaning products all work this way. The order arrives complete, at the right price, ready to pick.

It is different from an online shop. A shop shows one price to everyone and takes card payments from strangers. A portal knows who is logged in: their price list, their credit terms, their usual products, their delivery days and their open invoices. That is why it saves so much time on both sides.

This guide explains when a portal pays for itself, what it should include, how it compares with ready-made options, and what the EU rules on payments and invoices mean for you. Portals are part of our business systems in Malta. If your work is service jobs rather than products, our guide to the client portal is the better fit.

• Orders arrive in five places: calls, emails, texts, chat apps and the driver’s notebook.
• Someone spends hours a day retyping orders into your accounts or stock system.
• Customers ask for prices you already sent them, or order at last year’s price.
• Mistakes show up at delivery: wrong size, wrong quantity, wrong address.
• Orders come in after hours and wait until someone reads them in the morning.
• Your best customers order the same 20 items every week, and still have to list them each time.
• Chasing invoices takes as long as taking orders.

If three or more of these sound familiar, a portal will likely pay for itself. The calculator below puts a number on it.

Ready to stop retyping orders? Apply now for an ordering portal ↗

There are three ways to get a portal. None is right for everyone. The choice depends on how unusual your pricing and processes are, and on what systems you already run.

If a ready-made platform fits your catalogue and pricing, use it. It is the cheaper route. A custom portal makes sense when you would otherwise bend your business to fit the software. Our guide on custom software versus off the shelf helps you decide, and custom software cost in Malta explains what drives the price.

Whichever route you choose, count the running cost over three years, not just the set-up. Ready-made platforms often charge per user, per order or per feature, which grows with your business. A custom portal has hosting and support costs you agree up front, and changes are quoted when you need them. Ask every option the same questions: who owns the customer data, can you export it at any time, what happens if you stop paying, and how long does a new price list take to go live.

A portal is also the easiest place to keep payment terms clear. Under the EU Late Payment Directive (2011/7/EU), payment terms between businesses should not exceed 60 calendar days unless both sides expressly agree otherwise and it is not grossly unfair to the supplier. If a business customer pays late, the supplier is entitled to interest of at least 8 percentage points above the reference rate and a fixed €40 for recovery costs.

Showing each customer their statement, due dates and overdue invoices when they log in to order is the polite way to get paid on time. Many suppliers also block new orders above a credit limit until an overdue invoice is cleared, automatically, without an awkward phone call.

These come from Council Directive (EU) 2025/516 and the European Commission’s summary of it. If your portal sends orders straight into your accounts, you are already most of the way to structured invoices. Our guide to quote and invoice automation covers the invoice side.

Example 1: a food and drink distributor. Say a distributor takes 150 trade orders a week from restaurants and bars, by phone and messages. Each takes about 8 minutes to take, check and key in, and staff time costs €16 an hour. That is 20 hours a week, or about €16,600 a year. Four in a hundred orders have a mistake that costs about €35 to fix with a second delivery, another €10,900 a year. If 60% of orders move to a portal, the distributor saves about 12 hours a week and roughly €16,500 a year.

Example 2: what it costs to build. Our custom systems start from €7,500. A first working version of a focused portal, with logins, customer prices, quick reorder and orders sent to your system, is ready in 2 to 4 weeks once the first payment is made, and bigger systems are live within 2 to 3 months at most. Against the €16,500 a year in Example 1, a €7,500 portal pays back in under six months, before counting extra orders from easier reordering.

Want to know what a portal would save your business? Apply now for an ordering portal ↗

The best portal fails if customers keep calling. Switching takes a little push and a lot of convenience. The suppliers who succeed usually do the same few things.

Expect your most regular customers to switch first. They gain the most from quick reorder. Occasional buyers may keep calling for a long time, and that is fine.

Measure the switch every month: the share of orders placed online, the hours your team spends keying orders, the number of order mistakes and the number of “where is my order?” calls. When online orders pass half of the total, most suppliers move the order desk team to work that customers value more, such as account management and solving delivery problems faster.