B2B Catalogs limitations
Applies toShopify
Limits at a glance
| Limitation | What happens |
|---|---|
| Variants and retail shoppers | Variant rules don't hide anything from retail shoppers, and Shopify can't hide a single variant from them. |
| Variant count | Hiding and showing variants is only guaranteed on products with 250 variants or fewer. |
| Collection grids, search and filter counts | A hidden product can still take a place in a grid and count towards totals. |
| Products already in a cart | The product stays in the cart and the customer can check out. |
| Add-to-cart permalinks | Customers can still add a hidden product to their cart with a permalink. |
| Third-party apps | We can't guarantee compatibility with every app. |
| Invalid Liquid syntax | B2B Catalogs can't change theme files that contain errors in their code (Liquid). |
Variants and retail shoppers
Variant rules in the sparklayer.settings metafield only apply to signed-in B2B customers, by customer group. They don't hide anything from retail shoppers or signed-out visitors, who see every variant your theme shows. Shopify can't hide a single variant of a product from them either: b2b-only and b2c-only tags work on whole products.
To sell a variant to B2B customers only, such as a 12-pack case of a bottle you also sell singly, make it a separate product and tag it b2b-only. For a worked example of ranges per customer group, see Example: a product range for each customer group.
Collection grids, search and filter counts
B2B Catalogs hides products in your theme as each page loads, rather than removing them from Shopify's collection and search results. So:
- A collection page can show gaps or fewer products per page. A hidden product still takes its place in the grid, so a page of 24 can show fewer than 24.
- Product counts and filter counts can include hidden products. For example, "36 products" or a filter showing (12) can count products the customer can't see.
If counts matter, such as on a B2B-only store, keep B2B-only and retail products in separate collections.
Products with more than 250 variants
Catalogs per customer group only reliably hide and show variants on products with 250 variants or fewer. This is because of the way Shopify gives themes access to product variants.
Hidden products in a cart
Hiding a product doesn't remove it from carts. If a product is already in a customer's cart before you hide it from them, it stays there and they can check out with it.
Customers can also still add a hidden product to their cart with an add-to-cart permalink (a link that adds a product to the cart directly).
Third-party apps
There are a great many Shopify apps, so we can't guarantee B2B Catalogs works with every third-party app.
Invalid Liquid syntax
B2B Catalogs can't change theme files that contain invalid Liquid syntax. Liquid is the code Shopify themes are written in, so this usually means a mistake in a recent edit to your theme's code.
If you see the error invalid liquid syntax in file <file> when you enable or disable B2B Catalogs on a theme, fix the syntax in the file it names, then try again.
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