Those of you selling wholesale online — how do you check customer documents without losing your mind?
We recently opened up wholesale on our online store, and I didn't realise how much paperwork checking comes with it. Before we can approve a new business customer, we have to look at whatever they send us — usually a resale certificate for tax, and for some…
We recently opened up wholesale on our online store, and I didn't realise how much paperwork checking comes with it. Before we can approve a new business customer, we have to look at whatever they send us — usually a resale certificate for tax, and for some products a professional license (like cosmetology or medical). Right now the process is: open the PDF or photo they emailed, find the certificate number, go to the state's website to confirm it's valid, then go back and approve their account and fix their tax settings. It takes a day or two per customer, and I'm worried a few of them just give up and buy elsewhere while waiting. For those of you doing wholesale — what does your process look like? Is someone on your team doing this by hand? Did you find any tool or service that actually checks the documents for you? Or is there a smarter workflow I'm missing? Would really appreciate hearing how others handle this.
Collected discussion
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This is really solid, thank you. The point about files, approvals, and tax status living in different places is exactly what's hurting us. Mapping the checklist first makes sense, and moving off random-email submissions to one form + queue is probably our immediate fix. The part I keep getting stuck on is the bit you mentioned at the end — even with clean intake, someone still has to go to each state's website and check the certificate or license by hand. That's the slowest, most error-prone step for us. In the teams you've seen, does that part just stay manual forever, or has anyone actually automated the verification itself?
Pretty sure this OP is doing research or advertising for the "solution" he's making.
Only pretty sure?
This is such a non issue that I’m assuming OPs alt will soon post a shitty SaaS that they’re selling. For those in the back; few retail customers try to sneak in and buy wholesale so the default is that they’re legit. A quick google search to see what industry they’re in and a street view to verify their storefront, warehouse or office. 5 minutes tops.
Yeah
Maybe it would be better to hire a part-time lawyer? Or someone who would be responsible for this. I'll say this right away: an AI solution will be expensive, and there could be errors.
Where are you based and where are you shipping to?
I’d treat this as an onboarding workflow problem before a staffing problem. Capture the required fields and documents in a structured application, automate whatever validation the relevant registries actually support, then route only exceptions to a human. Even if some states still require manual checks, getting humans out of the happy path can take approval from days to hours.
AI slop doing market research
We ran into a similar workflow discussion recently. If the volume is growing, I'd avoid keeping people in email + spreadsheets. A simple workflow can save a lot of time: • Customer uploads documents through a portal instead of email. • OCR extracts key fields (certificate number, expiry, business name, etc.). • The system validates whatever can be automated (or flags it for review if an API isn't available). • Everything stays attached to the customer profile, and approval becomes a single action instead of jumping between multiple tabs. Even if some state websites still require manual verification, reducing the data entry and document management overhead usually cuts the review time significantly.
That workflow doesn't really scale. Even if verification has to remain manual for some states, I'd try to automate everything around it. A simple customer portal where documents are uploaded, OCR extracts the important details, verification status is tracked, and everything stays linked to the customer profile can eliminate most of the back-and-forth. Your team only reviews exceptions instead of processing every application from scratch. We've found that reducing manual steps usually has a bigger impact than trying to automate 100% of the verification process.
Sell based on quantity.
openning the pdf, grabbing the cert number, check the state site, come back and set the tax. that whole thing can run as a small tool, you drop in the file, it reads the number, hits the state verification page and tells you valid or not, and can flip the tax setting and approve for you
Agreed that full state API verification is messy because every state handles tax lookups differently. But moving to a single review queue still cuts 80% of the friction. When all pending docs arrive pre-formatted with the license number right on top, manual verification takes under a minute per account.
If the volume is still manageable, I would map it into a strict checklist before buying software: required docs by customer type, where each one gets verified, what makes it approved vs rejected, and who owns each step. A lot of the pain is usually not the document itself, it is the back-and-forth and the fact that files, approvals, tax status, and notes live in different places. For beauty-adjacent businesses, I have seen teams cut a lot of this down by using one intake flow that collects the required document up front, standardizes the fields they need, and stores the file with the customer record so nobody is digging through email threads later. Then the manual part is only the actual license or resale-certificate check. If you stay manual, I would at least stop accepting documents by random email and move to one submission form plus one review queue. That alone usually speeds approvals up because the customer knows exactly what to send and your team is not reassembling the file from scratch every time. GlowForms is one option on the beauty/service side for that kind of structured intake and recordkeeping, but even if you use something else, I would solve the workflow first and automation second.