Automating Payment Collection for Shopify B2B Orders with Payment Terms

Overview

Many wholesale and B2B Shopify merchants allow customers to place orders with payment terms such as Net 30 or Due on Fulfillment. While this flexibility improves the buying experience for customers, it introduces significant operational complexity for merchants responsible for collecting those payments later.

DICLODE developed a Shopify app that automatically charges stored payment methods when orders are fulfilled, eliminating manual payment collection and reducing administrative overhead for wholesale merchants.

The app monitors order fulfillments, calculates the appropriate payment amount, and captures funds using the customer’s saved card from checkout. Merchants gain full visibility into payment activity directly inside the Shopify admin.

Since launch, the app has automated thousands of payment captures and helped merchants reclaim multiple hours of administrative work each week.

The Challenge

In B2B commerce, it is common for orders to be placed well before products are shipped.

Large wholesale orders may be placed weeks or even months before fulfillment, particularly when goods are manufactured or assembled to order.

This breaks the traditional ecommerce payment flow.

The Authorization Problem

Typical ecommerce payments follow a two-step process:

  1. Authorize the card at checkout
  2. Capture the payment when the order ships

However, payment authorizations typically expire within a few days.

When fulfillment occurs much later, merchants can no longer capture the authorized payment.

Operational Burden

Without automation, merchants must manually charge customers when orders ship.

This often requires:

  • reviewing fulfilled orders
  • identifying unpaid invoices
  • manually charging saved cards
  • reconciling payments with orders

For many wholesalers, this becomes a recurring operational task that consumes several hours of staff time each week.

In some cases, a dedicated employee must review orders continuously to ensure payments are not missed.

The Solution

DICLODE built a Shopify app that automates payment capture for orders placed with payment terms.

The app continuously monitors fulfillment activity and automatically charges the buyer’s stored card when products are shipped.

This restores a reliable payment workflow while preserving the flexibility that B2B buyers expect.

How the App Works

The platform integrates directly with Shopify’s Admin APIs and webhook system to monitor order activity.

When a fulfillment occurs:

  1. Shopify sends a fulfillment webhook
  2. The app calculates the portion of the order that was fulfilled
  3. The correct payment amount is determined
  4. The stored payment method is charged automatically
  5. The payment status is recorded and visible inside Shopify

This process ensures payments occur at the correct time without requiring manual intervention from merchants.

Embedded Shopify Experience

The app is fully embedded within the Shopify Admin interface.

Key features include:

Payment Activity Dashboard

Merchants can view a complete history of automated charges, including:

  • order details
  • captured payment amounts
  • payment status
  • failure notifications

This provides a centralized view of all automated billing activity.

Admin Action Extensions

Shopify Admin actions allow merchants to manually trigger payment capture directly from the order interface if needed.

This provides flexibility when handling exceptional cases.

Admin Block Extensions

Order pages display additional context about automated billing, including:

  • payment capture status
  • fulfillment-related billing information
  • quick access to payment actions

This allows merchants to understand payment status without leaving the order page.

Technical Architecture

The app was designed to operate reliably within Shopify’s event-driven ecosystem while ensuring payment actions are executed safely and only once.

Core Technologies

  • Node.js backend
  • Remix frontend
  • Shopify Polaris UI components
  • Shopify Admin GraphQL API
  • Shopify Webhooks

Infrastructure

The system runs on AWS infrastructure designed for reliability and scalability.

Key components include:

  • AWS Lambda for hosting the Remix application
  • CloudFront for request delivery
  • DynamoDB for configuration and activity storage
  • SQS queues for asynchronous processing
  • SNS for event notifications

This architecture allows the platform to handle fulfillment events and payment updates asynchronously while maintaining resilience under load.

Key Technical Challenge: Partial Fulfillment Billing

One of the most complex aspects of the system was handling partial order fulfillments.

In many wholesale scenarios, orders are shipped in multiple batches.

This required the app to:

  • determine which line items were fulfilled
  • calculate the appropriate billing amount
  • ensure previous fulfillments were not billed again

The system tracks fulfillment events carefully to ensure each shipment is billed accurately.

Ensuring Idempotent Payments

Another critical challenge was ensuring that payment captures occur exactly once.

Because fulfillment events and webhook retries can occur multiple times, the platform implements safeguards that prevent duplicate charges.

These idempotency protections ensure that even under retry conditions or infrastructure failures, customers are never charged more than intended.

Results

The app has significantly reduced the operational burden of managing B2B payment terms in Shopify.

Key outcomes include:

  • Thousands of payments automated
  • Up to 8 hours per week saved for merchant operations teams
  • reduced risk of missed or delayed payments
  • improved visibility into payment collection

Merchants can now allow customers to place orders with flexible payment terms while maintaining reliable payment collection when orders ship.

Why This Approach Works

By integrating deeply with Shopify’s fulfillment workflows and admin experience, the app automates one of the most common operational pain points in B2B ecommerce.

Key design principles included:

  • aligning payment capture with fulfillment events
  • embedding workflows directly within Shopify admin
  • designing idempotent payment processing
  • using asynchronous infrastructure for reliability

This approach allows merchants to preserve the flexibility of B2B payment terms while eliminating the manual work traditionally required to manage them.

Work With DICLODE

DICLODE specializes in building advanced ecommerce infrastructure and custom Shopify applications.

If your business needs to:

  • automate complex B2B workflows
  • extend Shopify’s native capabilities
  • integrate order fulfillment with payment automation
  • build scalable Shopify apps

DICLODE can help design and build the platform required to support it.