B2B accounts typically mean singular companies with multiple contacts. Account Hierarchy in the Clarity eCommerce Framework is the data model that connects companies ( Accounts ) to the people who buy on their behalf ( Users ), with shared address books, hundreds of role-based access controls, account-level credit, and Sales-Group lifecycle traceability. In CEF, an Account represents the company. A User is an individual contact with their own login. Multiple Users can be associated with a single Account, but each User belongs to exactly one Account. This account-as-anchor model lets you grant access, apply pricing, share addresses, manage credit, and trace orders at the entity that actually holds the contract, not at the individual person.
So why does this affect the eCommerce platform? This pattern matters because B2B procurement is fundamentally a team sport. A single customer relationship typically spans a buyer who shops, a manager who approves, a finance lead who pays, an AP clerk who reconciles, and a CFO who oversees. Generic consumer-grade carts assume one shopper, one cart, one card. They break the moment a procurement team tries to use them. Account Hierarchy fixes that by giving every member of the buying team their own login with their own permissions, all rolling up to the Account that has the commercial relationship with you.
The division of entities with specific role-based access assignments is key to making this all work. Account Hierarchy is a core component of the Clarity eCommerce Framework's B2B layer, working alongside Customer-Specific Pricing (which uses the Account to determine which tier or contract applies), the Customer Portal (which surfaces shared data to every authorized User), and the Sales-Group spine that threads quotes , orders , and invoices into one auditable transaction history.
Single-shopper consumer carts force B2B procurement teams into ugly workarounds: shared logins, side-channel emails, spreadsheet reconciliation, and the eternal “let me CC my manager.” The friction is real, quantifiable, and entirely avoidable with the right account model.
One buyer shops. A manager approves. The CFO pays. An AP clerk reconciles. Single-account carts force everyone to share one login or constantly forward emails, and both approaches kill the audit trail.
Field offices, retail locations, warehouses, project sites. Buyers need to choose from the right approved Ship-Tos, not retype each address. Without a shared address book, ship-to errors and duplicate addresses pile up fast.
When a customer pays a $50K deposit and draws against it through the year, that's not a card transaction. It's an account balance that needs to be available to every authorized User and checked automatically at checkout.
Finance leaders don't shop, they oversee. They need to see every quote in flight, every open invoice, every order shipping to every location, without having placed any of the orders themselves. That requires Sales-Group visibility across the whole account.
A buyer can place orders. A viewer can browse and audit. A manager can approve. A finance lead can pay invoices and apply account credit. Generic carts have one role: “shopper.” B2B reality is more nuanced.
If the storefront and ERP have different customer records, every order needs manual reconciliation. Prices don't match, credit limits aren't enforced, addresses go stale. A single source of truth across both systems is the only model that scales.
The cost of inaction is real. Mid-market AR teams routinely report 10–20 hours per week on tasks that exist only because the storefront doesn't respect B2B account structure: deduplicating addresses, chasing approvals, reconciling who placed what order, and patching pricing errors. Account Hierarchy doesn't solve every B2B problem, but it removes the workarounds the others depend on.
Six platform capabilities that turn the Accounts → Users model from a data structure into a working B2B procurement experience, covering permissions, addresses, credit, and full lifecycle traceability.
Master Account record for the company (Name, Key / ID, Description, Tax Exemption Number, Tax Entity Use Code). Child User records for each contact, each with their own credentials, profile, and history.
Address Book entries are shared across all Users under the Account and dynamically populate during Checkout and Invoice payment. Add an address once. Every authorized buyer sees it instantly.
The Roles module exposes hundreds of access points across the storefront and admin. Configure a Role per User (buyer, viewer, manager, finance, super-admin) with exactly the permissions that role requires and nothing extra.
Pre-paid contract balances and lines of credit apply at the Account level. Any authorized User on the Account can complete checkout using Account Credit. Manage limits in the Admin Portal or sync them from your ERP through Clarity Connect.
Sales Groups thread quote → order → sub-orders → invoice across the Account. A CFO who receives an invoice can immediately see what was bought, where it shipped, what stage each line is at, and which User placed the order. No phone calls.
Onboard your existing customer base in bulk via Import Customers / Users. After go-live, Clarity Connect keeps Accounts, Users, prices, credit limits, and addresses in real-time sync with your ERP customer master.
One source of truth across storefront and ERP. Account Hierarchy is the data backbone that customer-specific pricing, invoice payments, the customer portal, and Sales-Group visibility all depend on. When the Account model is right, the rest of the B2B experience falls into place. Clarity Connect keeps Accounts, Users, contracted prices, Account Balances, Credit Limits, and Address Book entries bi-directionally synced with your ERP's customer master: SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Sage, Acumatica, Epicor, Infor, SYSPRO, and 17+ more.
A walkthrough of the bulk-import workflow for onboarding existing B2B customer Accounts and their associated Users into a new Clarity storefront. Whether you're replatforming from a legacy cart or standing up a new B2B channel against an existing customer base, this is how Accounts and Users land in the system.
Seven steps from creating the first Account to bulk-onboarding your full customer base.
In the Admin Portal Accounts module, create the master Account record for the company. Capture Company Name, Key / ID, Description, Tax Exemption Number, and Tax Entity Use Code. The Account holds every commercial term that should flow to every User on the team.
Create User records for each contact at the company: First Name, Last Name, Display Name, Phone, Fax, Email. Multiple Users can be associated with a single Account, but each User belongs to exactly one Account.
The Roles module exposes hundreds of granular access points. Assign each User the Role that matches their job (buyer, viewer, manager, finance, super-admin) with the permissions that role requires and nothing it doesn't.
Add the Account's billing and shipping addresses. Entries are shared across all Users under the Account and dynamically populate the Payment Sections of both Checkout and the Invoice Details page. Add once, everyone sees it.
Tag the Account with the appropriate pricing tier or contract. The Multi-Tiered Pricing engine applies the right prices the moment any User on the Account logs in, including quantity-break tiers and account-specific overrides.
For pre-paid contract customers, set the Account Balance and Credit Limit so any authorized User can complete checkout using Account Credit. Manage limits in the Admin Portal or sync them from your ERP customer master through Clarity Connect.
Onboard your existing B2B customers via the Import Customers / Users workflow: one spreadsheet of Accounts, one of Users, role assignments inline. Thousands of customer relationships transferred from a legacy cart or ERP in a single import.
Getting Account Hierarchy right does more than clean up your data model. It reshapes how your B2B customers interact with you, how your AR team operates, and how predictable your sales cycle becomes.
Every member of the procurement team buys with their own login and their own permissions. No more “send the password to John,” no more email approvals copy-pasted into the cart, no more weekly delays waiting for one shared user to be free.
Every order is attributed to the specific User who placed it. Sales Groups tie quotes, orders, sub-orders, and invoices into one chain. Compliance and finance audits get clean answers without forensic spreadsheet work.
Because pricing tier and contract live on the Account, every User on that Account sees the right prices automatically. No more “buyer A got the right price but buyer B got list” phone calls.
A finance-Role User on the Account sees every open quote, every order in flight, every invoice due, and every dollar of pre-paid credit remaining, without ever having placed an order themselves.
Shared logins are a compliance and security disaster: no accountability, no audit, no easy way to deactivate a former employee. Per-User logins under the Account close that hole without slowing the team down.
Whether you're onboarding 50 distributors or 5,000 enterprise customers, the model holds: bulk import gets you live fast, ERP sync keeps records aligned, and role-based access keeps every customer's team operating cleanly.
The people who benefit span every B2B persona: buyers get a clean account-aware experience without re-keying their own context every visit, managers get approval visibility without becoming a bottleneck, finance teams get audit-ready order and invoice history, CFOs and controllers get the panoramic view they need without having to do the buying themselves, and your own sales and AR teams stop spending hours each week patching up problems that exist only because the account model wasn't right to start with.
Schedule a 30-minute walkthrough and we'll show Account Hierarchy running against a sandbox of your own customers and Users, with the right pricing tiers, the right Address Book entries, the right Roles, and a live feed from your ERP customer master through Clarity Connect. Pre-paid Account Credit, Sales-Group lifecycle, hundreds of role permissions: whatever your B2B procurement model needs is already built in.
