Definition
Checkout is part of the broader Salesforce platform offering that provides specific tools or services for building and running applications. It contributes to the extensibility and flexibility that make Salesforce adaptable to diverse business needs.
Real-World Example
a platform engineer at NovaScale uses Checkout to enhance the organization's Salesforce footprint with additional functionality. By leveraging Checkout, the team avoids building a custom solution from scratch, saving months of development time while gaining enterprise-grade features out of the box.
Why Checkout Matters
Checkout in Salesforce refers to the transactional process within Salesforce Commerce Cloud (B2B and B2C) where a buyer finalizes their purchase. It encompasses the series of steps from cart review through payment processing and order confirmation, including shipping address selection, shipping method choice, tax calculation, payment capture, and order creation. Checkout solves the critical business challenge of converting browsing intent into completed transactions with minimal friction. A poorly designed checkout flow is one of the leading causes of cart abandonment in ecommerce, so Salesforce provides both standard checkout flows and the flexibility to customize each step for specific business requirements.
As commerce operations scale — handling more products, more payment methods, more shipping zones, and more customer segments — the checkout process must accommodate increasing complexity without adding friction for the buyer. B2B checkout introduces additional layers like purchase order numbers, account-based pricing, negotiated contracts, and approval workflows that don't exist in B2C scenarios. Organizations that don't invest in checkout optimization often discover that their conversion rate drops as they add complexity, losing revenue they worked hard to attract. Proper checkout configuration includes tax integration, fraud detection, payment gateway setup, and post-purchase order routing. At enterprise scale, even a 1% improvement in checkout completion rate can translate to millions in additional revenue.
How Organizations Use Checkout
- Skyline Industrial Supply — Skyline's B2B Commerce store serves 800 business accounts with negotiated pricing. Their checkout flow includes a purchase order number field, account-specific tax exemption handling, and a credit limit check that validates the order against the buyer's remaining credit before processing. Orders over $50,000 trigger an approval workflow that notifies the account manager, who can approve or hold the order directly from Salesforce before it routes to fulfillment.
- Brightwave Consumer Electronics — Brightwave's B2C storefront processes 15,000 orders per month. Their checkout flow integrates with three payment gateways (credit card, PayPal, and buy-now-pay-later), calculates real-time shipping rates from FedEx and UPS APIs, and applies automatic tax calculation via an Avalara integration. They A/B tested a single-page checkout versus a multi-step flow and found the single-page version reduced cart abandonment by 12%.
- Atlas Pet Supplies — Atlas runs both a B2C consumer store and a B2B wholesale portal on Salesforce Commerce. The B2C checkout supports guest checkout without account creation, while the B2B checkout requires authenticated login and displays account-specific pricing tiers. When a B2B customer's order qualifies for free freight (over $2,500), the checkout automatically removes shipping charges and displays a 'Free Shipping Applied' badge, incentivizing larger orders.