How to Invite a Wholesale Customer to the Portal

The wholesale portal is where your wholesale customers place orders from their assigned menus, manage recurring orders, and view and pay invoices. Wholesale customers can't sign themselves up — you invite them. This article walks you through inviting a customer, what they'll do to finish setting up, and how to manage invitations afterward.

Overview

Before You Start

You need one of the following roles: Cashier, Order Taker, Wholesale Order Taker, Shift Lead, FOH Manager, or Admin.
The customer must already have a wholesale account in BakeSmart. If they don't, create it first — see How to Create a Customer.
The contact you're inviting must have an email address on file. The invitation is sent to that address, so double-check it's correct before sending.

Retail customers do not need an invitation — they self-register on the online store. Invitations are only for the wholesale portal.

Steps

1. Open the wholesale account and add the contact

Go to the customer's wholesale account and open its Contacts section. Add the contact you want to invite (or open an existing one). At minimum, enter the person's first name, last name, and email address — the invitation is sent to that email, so make sure it's correct.

2. Set the contact's role, access level, and permissions

On the contact form, choose how much this person can do:

Account Owner — gives the contact full access to the entire account. Owners can do everything and manage other users, so the individual permission options don't need to be set for them.
Billing Contact — marks this person as a billing contact for the account.
Access Level — controls which of the account's orders this person can see:
Individual — only orders they personally created
Location — orders for their assigned delivery location
Organization — all orders for the business
Assigned Address — the delivery location tied to this contact (used with the Location access level).
Order Permissions — check the actions this person can take on orders:
View — see orders
Create — place new orders
Edit / Cancel — change or cancel existing orders
Invoice Permissions — check what this person can do with invoices:
View — see invoices
Pay — pay invoices online

Set these to match the person's role at the business, then Save the contact. You can come back and adjust any of these later.

3. Send the invitation

From the contact, choose the option to send an invitation. BakeSmart emails the customer a secure registration link.

You do not need to set up a temporary password — the link lets the customer create their own.

4. The customer completes registration

The customer:

Opens the email and clicks the registration link.
Sets their own password.
Completes registration and is taken into the wholesale portal.

Because you (a staff member) invited them, their email is treated as already verified — they do not have to complete a separate email-verification step the way retail customers do. Once they finish, they can log in to the wholesale portal anytime, with the access level and permissions you set.

Managing Invitations

Expiration: An invitation expires 7 days after it's sent. If it lapses before the customer accepts, simply send the invitation again to start a fresh 7-day window.
One-time use: Once an invitation has been accepted, it can't be reused. The customer just logs in from then on.
Revoking: If you sent an invitation by mistake or to the wrong address, you can revoke the pending invitation so the link no longer works. Then send a new one to the correct contact.
Password resets: After a customer has registered, they can reset their own password from the wholesale portal's login screen — you don't need to re-invite them for that.

Adding More Users to an Account

A wholesale business often has several people who need portal access. You can invite additional contacts the same way. In addition, once the primary contact is set up, they can invite, resend invitations to, and remove additional users on their own account directly from inside the portal — so you don't have to manage every user for them.

After They Join

What a portal user can do depends on the access level and permissions you set on their contact, plus the account's own settings. For example, a contact with View order permission and Individual access can see only the orders they created, while an Account Owner can do everything. In general, wholesale portal users can browse their assigned menus, place orders (with Create), change or cancel orders (with Edit / Cancel), set up recurring orders (if enabled for the account), view order history, and view or pay invoices (with View / Pay invoice permissions). For the full picture of portal capabilities and account settings, see Understanding Customer Accounts and Invitations.

Important Notes

Send to the right address. The invitation goes to the contact's email on file. If that's wrong, the customer won't receive it — correct the email, then send again.
No invitation needed for retail. Retail customers self-register on the store; only wholesale customers are invited.
Expired links can't be recovered. After 7 days you can't "extend" a link — send the invitation again to issue a new one.
Inviting is not the same as enabling ordering. Whether a wholesale customer can place orders is governed by the account's ordering settings, separate from portal access. If an invited customer can log in but can't order, check the account's ordering settings.

Keywords

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