On 14 October the Benelux Shopware community gathered at the Bierfabriek in Amsterdam for Shoptoberfest. Between the Bavarian food and the networking, one talk stood out for anyone who sells to business customers. Moritz Naczenski, VP Product at Shopware, walked through three B2B capabilities that are coming to the platform: OCI punchout, a customer document portal and a sales representative role in the storefront.
None of the three is flashy, and that is exactly why they matter. They target the moments where B2B webshops still fall back on email, phone calls and spreadsheets: when a large customer's purchasing department will only order through its own procurement system, when accounting asks for the third time this month to resend an invoice, and when your account manager wants to place an order for a customer and has to do it in the back office.
Below we explain what each feature does, when it arrives, which plan you need, and what to do now so you are ready. In all three cases, success is decided by your data and integrations, not by switching the feature on.
Why these three belong together
B2B buyers have stopped accepting a webshop that only covers the order itself. Gartner research cited by BlueSnap found that 75% of B2B buyers prefer a buying experience without a sales rep involved. We described what that means in practice in what B2B buyers really expect.
Read together, the three features extend the shop to the whole account relationship. Punchout covers how large customers are allowed to buy. The document portal covers everything that happens after the order. And the sales representative role covers the moments when a customer still wants a person to help. Each one removes a reason for your customer, or your own team, to leave the shop and pick up the phone.
OCI punchout: getting into your customer's procurement system
Larger organisations often do not let their employees order from a supplier's webshop directly. Purchases have to start in an e-procurement system such as SAP Ariba, so budgets, approvals and purchase orders stay under control. If your shop cannot connect to that system, you are simply not on the list of suppliers those buyers can use.
Punchout solves exactly that. The buyer starts in their own procurement system, clicks through to your Shopware shop and sees their account-specific catalogue and negotiated prices. They build a cart, and instead of checking out, that cart is sent back to their system for internal approval. The purchase order then comes back to you. Shopware is building this natively for SAP Ariba and other OCI-compatible platforms, which turns your shop into a supplier enterprise accounts can actually buy from.
Native punchout is next in line at Shopware, expected within four to eight months, for the Evolve and Beyond plans. Until then, punchout in Shopware runs on third-party extensions, and every connection is a small project per customer, because each procurement system is configured differently.
Native support makes punchout cheaper to maintain, but it does not remove the groundwork. Before you offer it, check three things. Which of your customers actually ask for it, and on which platform? Are their specific catalogue and contract prices already correct in Shopware, or do they still live only in your ERP? And how does the purchase order that comes back get into your ERP, matched to the right customer and order? That last question is an integration task, and it is the one that usually takes the time.
The customer document portal: one place for every invoice and delivery note
Ask any internal sales team how much time goes into finding and resending documents. Invoices sit in email, delivery notes in the ERP, quote PDFs in the order history, and the framework agreement in somebody's inbox. The customer's accounting department wants one thing, their purchasing department wants another, and both call you.
The B2B Document Portal is Shopware's answer: a self-service area in the customer account where B2B customers and their employees can view, filter, upload and download invoices, delivery notes, credit notes, quote documents and shared files, one at a time or in bulk as a ZIP, and comment on them. As the merchant, you manage the folder structure and a permission matrix per business customer. That last part matters most in practice: accounting sees invoices, purchasing sees order documents, and nobody sees what they should not. Notifications run through the Flow Builder.
Shopware is building the document portal right now, with release expected within one to three months, again for Evolve and Beyond. The foundation is already in place: Shopware 6.7.15.0 introduced an experimental new document generation with extension points for custom document types.
There is one catch to plan for. In most B2B setups, the invoice is not created in Shopware but in the ERP. A document portal is only as useful as the documents that feed it. Before it arrives, map where each document type is created today, how it would reach Shopware, and how it gets linked to the right company and order. With a managed integration layer between Shopware and your ERP, that becomes one extra flow rather than a new project.
Sales representative in the storefront: your account managers in the same shop
The third feature closes a gap that many B2B Suite users know well. Shopware is adding a "Sales Representative" role to the storefront. Reps get their own dashboard after logging in, can act on behalf of the customers assigned to them, and can choose the sales channel in which they log in as that customer. It follows alongside punchout, for Evolve and Beyond.
Today, B2B Components handle much of the rep's work through quote management and Digital Sales Rooms, but a rep who simply wants to place an order for a customer often ends up in the administration. A native storefront role means your account managers see exactly what the customer sees: their prices, their catalogue, their order history. That makes it far easier to help a customer over the phone, or to show them how self-service works.
If this was your reason for staying on the B2B Suite, that reason is gone. We explained the timeline and the migration steps in the Shopware B2B Suite is being phased out. The preparation here is about assignments: which rep looks after which customer, and where is that maintained today? If the answer is your CRM or ERP, sync it into Shopware instead of maintaining the same list twice.
What this means for your 2027 planning
For most B2B companies, the fourth quarter is when next year's roadmap and budget get decided. That makes the timing of these features useful. Shopware 6.8 is planned for 2027, the B2B Suite will not be supported from that version, and these three capabilities arrive in the coming months.
Do not plan around a release date; plan around the preparation. That work is the same whichever month a feature lands, and you can start it today:
- Ask your largest customers whether they order through a procurement system, and which one.
- Map your documents: where invoices, delivery notes and credit notes are created, and how they would reach Shopware.
- Check your account data: are customer-specific catalogues, prices and rep assignments correct in Shopware, or only in your ERP?
Get those three right and each feature becomes a configuration step when it arrives, instead of a project.
Frequently asked questions
Learn more about Shopware B2B in 2027
Shoptoberfest made one thing clear: Shopware's B2B story is no longer about catching up. Punchout, a proper document portal and a storefront role for reps are exactly the features that let a Shopware shop serve enterprise accounts without workarounds. The companies that benefit first are the ones whose data and integrations are ready when they arrive.
As a Shopware Business Partner and official Alumio partner, Memo builds Shopware B2B webshops and the integrations behind them. Want to know which of these features fit your customers, and what your ERP integration needs to support them? Get in touch or book an introduction call, and we will map out your B2B roadmap for 2027 together.