This document is a getting started guide for the free WooCommerce Wholesale Prices plugin for WooCommerce.
Firstly, welcome aboard! You are about to start on an exciting journey. Adding wholesale to your WooCommerce store is one of the best decisions you could make for your e-commerce business.
Here’s what this guide will cover:
- Overview – we describe what the plugin does
- Wholesale Customer Role – we’ll explain what the wholesale customer role is
- Setting Wholesale Prices – we show you how to configure wholesale prices for your products
- Testing – we show you how to test those prices with a wholesale test account
- Settings – an overview of the settings available in the free plugin
- Advanced Features – what is available in the Premium version and it can do for you in addition to the free plugin
Overview
The free version of WooCommerce Wholesale Prices is a fully functional and legitimate way to add wholesale features and will suit many businesses that only require basic wholesale functions. It’s a great way to start with wholesale on your WooCommerce store.
There is also a Premium add-on for the free plugin which adds additional features as well as other plugins in the suite that add features like wholesale order forms and user management.
You can read all about those here.
What the free WooCommerce Wholesale Prices plugin does:
- Adds a new user role for wholesale level customers
- Lets you set basic wholesale pricing at the product level
- Gives you some basic settings to customize common features
With these three things, you can implement wholesale in your WooCommerce store.
The above is an introductory video but below, we’ll show you the new Wholesale Customer role and what that all means. So don’t just watch the video and leave, read on so get the full picture.
Wholesale Customer Role
The first concept to understand is the new Wholesale Customer user role that the plugin adds.
Normally, customers in your store will have the “Customer” user role. You can see this if you go to the backend of your website, click on Users->All Users, then click one of your customers.
WooCommerce Wholesale Prices adds a new user role called “Wholesale Customer” so it can identify which customers who should have wholesale pricing.
You can give wholesale pricing access to any customer simply by changing their user role to the Wholesale Customer role.
Want to change the words “Wholesale Customer” to something else? Maybe something like “Trade Customer” or similar? You can do this under Wholesale -> Roles.
Next, look at how to set wholesale pricing on a product.
Setting Wholesale Prices
The free plugin allows you to set wholesale pricing via the Product edit screen. In the screenshot below, you might notice the wording “Wholesale Customer ($):” on the field.
This is because what we’re actually doing here is setting the wholesale price for that Wholesale Customer user role.
When you define a wholesale price, it is related to the user role you are setting it for.
In the free plugin, there is only one user role (the Wholesale Customer role) but this is an important concept to understand because you can add more wholesale role levels in WooCommerce Wholesale Prices Premium.
Click here to read a full guide on how to set wholesale pricing which covers all the options of the premium plugin as well.
Once a wholesale price has been set for the Wholesale Customer role you’ll need to test it is working, so let’s look at how to do that.
Testing
Since wholesale prices are linked to a specific user role, only users with that role can view the wholesale prices you’ve set.
To test your wholesale pricing on the front end, you’ll need to log in with a wholesale test account.
Here’s how:
1. Log in to your dashboard.
2. Go to Users > Add New.
3. Create a new user and assign them the Wholesale Customer role.
Now, open a Private Browsing or Incognito window for a fresh, logged-out browser session.
1. Visit your website and log in with the new test user account you created.
2. Go to a product with a wholesale pricing set, and you should see the wholesale price displayed.
Next, let’s take a quick look at some settings available in the free plugin.
Wholesale Prices Settings
The settings on the free plugin are pretty light because most of the functionality is covered by the product edit screen and the user role as described above.
There are several settings available for basic customizations.
You can find these settings by logging into your dashboard and going to Wholesale-> Settings, Wholesale Prices tab.
There are some sub-menus in the settings area:
The first screen you will land on is the General sub-menu which contains the following settings:
| Setting Name | What It Does |
| Allow Usage Tracking | Complete documentation on usage tracking |
| Disable Coupons For Wholesale Users | Stops your wholesale level customers using coupons |
The second sub-menu is the Price sub-menu which contains the following settings:
| Setting Name | What It Does |
| Wholesale Price Text | Lets you change the front end text shown to users for the wholesale price on product listings |
| Hide Retail Price | Hides the regular price from wholesale customers so the only price they see if the wholesale price is set |
| Hide Wholesale Prices on Admin Product Listing | Controls whether to show wholesale prices on the backend in the Products list view. |
| Hide Price and Add to Cart button | Puts the store into “catalog mode” so you can show products to guests but hide the price and add to cart buttons. |
| Price and Add to Cart Replacement Message | Lets you show wholesale pricing to non-wholesale or “guest” visitors to your store. This feature requires API keys to interact with the store as a logged out user. Wholesale pricing is shown in a popup. Integrates with the Wholesale Lead Capture plugin. |
| Show Wholesale Price to non-wholesale users | Show Wholesale Prices to non-wholesale users |
The third sub-menu is the Upgrade sub-menu which describes some of the features available in WooCommerce Wholesale Prices Premium.
And that brings me to the final part of this guide, getting more advanced with your wholesale operation…
Advanced Features
Setting basic wholesale prices is just the beginning. There is so much more to setting up a wholesale component to your store and if you’re serious about utilizing wholesale sales to grow your business then you should consider what we have to offer in the rest of the Wholesale Suite.
WooCommerce Wholesale Prices Premium
View Plugin Features
Premium is the add-on for the free plugin and immediately it opens up a lot of extra features that will give you maximum flexibility.
Additionally, some countries require certain specific rules to be followed when selling and advertising pricing to wholesale customers and Prices Premium has been designed to cater to everyone.
Top Feature Highlights:
- Unlimited number of additional wholesale roles
- Set prices via global % or category % in addition to the product-level pricing
- Tax exemption based on user role which is flexible enough to cater to even the most stringent tax policies
- Shipping mapping where to can force wholesale customers to use certain methods and you can restrict certain shipping options to only wholesale customers
- Payment gateway mapping where you can force wholesale customers to use certain gateways and likewise restrict certain gateways to only wholesale customers
- Adjust the visibility of products to be wholesale only, retail only, or a mix. This lets you adjust variation visibility as well
- Add minimum purchase rules so you can enforce your wholesale agreements on the order level and set sensible minimums on the product level
These are just a few of the hundreds of features inside the premium add-on.
WooCommerce Wholesale Order Form
The time it takes for a wholesale customer to place an order is one of the biggest pain points you can eliminate.
Wholesale customers are not like regular retail customers. They don’t want to sift through your normal shop pages adding products to a cart that way. They need a tabular form-based interface that makes it fast to add products to the cart in the quantities they desire.
This is where the Order Form plugin comes in.
Top Feature Highlights:
- Your whole catalog on one page – searchable and categorized
- No page reloads, full Ajax enabled so wholesalers can add to cart without leaving the page
- Slimline tabulated interface that is mobile & tablet-friendly
- Wildcard keyword & SKU searching
- Hierarchical category filter
- Permissions control so only those allowed can access the form
These are just a few high-level features that you’ll give your wholesale customers by using the Order Form plugin.
WooCommerce Wholesale Lead Capture
Managing wholesale-level customers can be a bit of a headache if you are doing it manually. The Wholesale Lead Capture plugin gives you a wholesale-specific registration form, a dedicated wholesale login page, sign-up email sequences, and your choice of manual or automated approvals.
It takes the pain out of manually recruiting & registering wholesale customers which will save you time and let you put wholesale recruitment on autopilot.
Top Feature Highlights:
- Registration form builder lets you capture whatever information you need during sign-up
- Pre-fill the checkout fields with the information that you capture during sign-up to smooth the first-order process for your new wholesale customer
- Built-in spam protection with honeypot technology and optionally Google Recaptcha
- Automated email sequences for admin and customer-facing approval and notification emails
- Complete user approvals system which can be based on manual approvals or 100% automated if you wish
The Lead Capture plugin will make recruiting your wholesale customers and managing them much less painful.
The Wholesale Suite Bundle
If you buy all three of our WooCommerce wholesale plugins together, in the Wholesale Suite Bundle, you’ll be giving your wholesale customers an amazing experience alongside your retail store.
These extensions are designed to grow your business:
- Easily add wholesale pricing to your products
- Streamline your wholesale ordering process
- Manage your wholesale-level customers
It’s the best collection of WooCommerce wholesale extensions on the market that you can trust your wholesale operation with.
Help & Support
We have a dedicated support team for Wholesale Suite who knows our products, WooCommerce, and the industry very well. You’re welcome to make use of their expertise at any time, worldwide.
If you are an existing customer please go to the support ticket request form and send us a message.
If you are a free plugin user, please send us a support request on the forum, we actively monitor the WordPress.org support forums for the free plugin and help our users there as best as we can.
