Selling B2B into Europe from the UK: the operational side nobody writes about

The strategic guides cover customs and compliance. This is about the other half: making an EU order as boring to process as a domestic one.

The goal is boring

In most UK wholesalers, an EU order triggers a small ceremony — someone checks the VAT treatment, someone converts the prices, someone types the address carefully. Ceremony means delay and error. The operational goal is for an order from Rotterdam to flow through the same pipe as one from Rotherham.

Get the recurring decisions out of people’s heads

Tax treatment: decide once, with your accountant, how your EU B2B sales should be treated — the rules depend on your registrations and how the goods move, and gov.uk guidance covers the detail. Then configure your order tools to apply that decision automatically.

Currency: decide the currency your EU operation trades in — pounds or euros — and set the order tool to it once, for the whole team. If you run a dedicated euro-denominated operation, the whole POS can simply be in euros. See running your POS in the currency you trade in.

Pricing: if EU accounts get their own price list, that is a tier — the same tier machinery you use domestically, not a separate spreadsheet.

Keep one order pipeline

The worst pattern is a parallel process for export orders — a different spreadsheet, a different person, a different backlog. Every order, domestic or EU, should land in Linnworks the same way and get picked from the same queue.

Trade Order POS now has a team-wide Locale setting — currency symbol, tax rate, tax label, default country — so a dedicated EU operation runs natively in its own market and submits orders straight into Linnworks. One locale per team, by design: the simple model, not a per-order matrix. Find out more →

Questions, or want a tool we don't have yet? Email hello@grafto.co.uk — a real person replies.