Purchase order: what it is and why you need it
The purchase order feature helps you organize and control your company's purchases. It reduces the risk of errors when posting products, makes the delivery process transparent, and allows you to plan your inventory operations more effectively.
This is especially useful for businesses with a large number of products, regular deliveries, and high accounting requirements (retail, distribution, service, manufacturing).
A purchase order is the preliminary stage before posting. This feature allows you to:
record planned deliveries and track their execution;
plan inventory replenishment to the required stock level;
see which products have already been ordered and from which supplier;
automatically transfer data about products and batches (quantities, prices, etc.) to the posting document;
store the history of orders and communications with suppliers.
The purchase order function is most useful for companies with a large range of products, regular deliveries, and high accounting requirements. Planning and transparency of settlements with suppliers will also be important.
This primarily applies to retail and wholesale trade, distribution, service companies, manufacturing, construction, and logistics, where it is necessary to plan inventories and avoid supply disruptions.
This feature will also be useful in medical and veterinary centers, beauty salons, and laboratories, where it is important to control inventory and ensure a wide range of products are available on time.
Examples of using purchase order
An electrical store monitors inventory
The manager sees that there is critically low cable stock (150 m). On the inventory page, he clicks “+ Purchase order”, and the system automatically pulls up the last supplier and the recommended quantity. The manager then creates a document, exports it to PDF, and sends it to the supplier.
Pharmacy automatically replenishes inventory
At the end of each day, the system identifies medications with critically low inventory levels. The purchaser reviews the offers, creates an order for approval, and after confirmation, sends it to the supplier.
The engineer quickly adjusts order fulfillment
During repairs, the engineer sees that the supplier has moved the delivery date by 3 days. He postpones the fulfillment of this order and immediately takes on another task, maintaining the rhythm of work.
How to create a purchase order
Please note: to create a purchase order, you must have the “Can create purchase orders” permission enabled.
1. On the Inventory > Purchase orders page, select the location you need and click “+ Purchase Order”.
2. Fill in the required fields:
Date and time of document creation — leave the current value or select the desired date in the past.
Select or create a supplier. This field is required.
Please note: to view and specify suppliers, you must have the “Can view the suppliers” permission enabled.
Enter the delivery due date for the products in this order. This field is required, but can be edited if necessary.
Specify the warehouse to which the delivery is expected. Only warehouses with posting permission enabled are displayed for the selected location.
Add existing products or create new ones.
Specify the quantity and price for the added products. By default, the price is 0. To display the total cost of the purchase order to the supplier in the system and make it possible to pay based on it, enter the current data for each item.
Click Create.
The serial number of the created document is generated based on the document number template for this location. Currently, all documents created here have the status “Draft” and are located in the purchase orders table. In the future, you will be able to configure the statuses of supplier purchase orders in the same way as the statuses of other documents.
How to edit a purchase order
To be able to change data in a purchase order document, make sure that the “Can edit purchase orders” right is enabled for your user role.
To edit a document, open the required purchase order, make the necessary changes, and click “Save”. The following can be changed in the document:
status — can be changed both directly in the order and from the supplier order table without opening a specific document;
supplier;
delivery due date and warehouse;
list of products (with quantity and price);
add payments.
Adding a payment to a purchase order
To add a payment to a purchase order, select its type (payment to supplier or refund from supplier) and fill in the details: amount, payment method, and cash register. If necessary, you can add comments and tags, change the responsible employee or the cash flow item, if you use them.
Click Create — all created payments will be displayed in the “Payments” block.
Creating a posting document based on a purchase order
When you change the status of a purchase order to “Posted,” you can immediately create a posting document.
The following data is automatically transferred from the purchase order document to the posting document:
supplier;
list of products (with quantity and price);
expected delivery inventory.
If bin locations is enabled in your company, be sure to specify the cells for the posting. For products with an expiration date or serial number, specify the expiration date and/or serial numbers accordingly.
☝️ Important: if you added a payment to the purchase order and are creating a posting document from it, make sure that the “Pay from account” checkbox in the posting document is not selected to avoid double payment.
Fill in the rest of the required fields in the posting document and click Create.
You can open the created posting document by clicking on its number in the supplier purchase order feed.
Event feed
On the right side of the purchase order document dialog box, there is an event feed for this document, which works similarly to the event feed for orders, estimates, etc., and displays employee actions.
Events cannot be deleted from the feed, so you can see everything that has happened with the purchase order.
The following events are recorded here:
Date and time of document creation;
Change of document status;
Setting or changing a supplier;
Change in the amount of products;
Creating a posting from this purchase order document.
When you hover over an event, you can see the date, time, and name of the employee who performed this action.
In the event feed of the purchase order, you can perform the following actions:
1. Create a task, add a photo or file. To do this, click on the “+” icon at the bottom and select the desired action:
Take a photo — allows you to take a photo using your webcam
Attach a file — allows you to add an image or document from your PC
Create task — allows you to create a task that will be linked to this purchase order
Important: the file size can be up to 5 MB, format: JPG or PNG.
2. Add a public or private comment. To do this, simply start typing at the bottom of the event feed.
By default, comments are public, but if necessary, you can click on the eye icon to make the comment private.
Public comments are visible to all employees who have access to the purchase order to the supplier. Private comments can only be seen by the employee who wrote them, regardless of access rights. For convenience, private comments are highlighted in yellow.
💡 Pressing the Enter key will send the comment, while pressing Shift + Enter will move to the next line.
To delete a comment, click on the trash can icon next to it. The comment will not disappear, but will be crossed out, allowing you to keep the full history and view even outdated entries.
At the top, there is a switch that allows you to view “All events” or only “Comments”.
If necessary, you can hide and expand the event feed. To do this, click on the collapse line.
How to delete a purchase order
To be able to delete a purchase order, you must have the “Can delete purchase orders” permission enabled.
To delete a purchase order for a supplier, open the desired document and click on the delete button in the lower right corner. Deleting multiple documents at once is available via group actions in the supplier purchase orders table.
It is currently not possible to restore a deleted purchase order for a supplier yourself.