Purchase orders
Raising an order from low stock or by hand, emailing it to the supplier, what each status means, and closing off what never arrived.
A purchase order is the list of what you are buying from one supplier for one store. It lives in Inventory → Purchasing under Orders, and it is what you receive the delivery against when the boxes arrive — so stock, cost and the supplier's bill all trace back to the same order.
Raising an order
Press New purchase order, pick the supplier and the store the goods are being delivered to, then add products. Each line shows what that store has on hand and what is already on order, so you can see at a glance whether you actually need more.
- Unit cost fills in from the last price you paid that supplier for the product, or from the product's current cost if you have never bought it from them. You can type over it.
- GST on each line comes from the product's tax rate, not from what is typed, and the order follows the supplier's setting for whether its prices include GST.
- Shipping, an expected delivery date, a note to the supplier and an internal note (never printed or emailed) are optional.
If a cost you type is more than 50% away from the product's current cost — the usual sign of a slipped decimal point — you are asked to confirm it before the order is saved. A product with no cost recorded yet skips this check.
Every order gets a number when it is created: PO-0001, PO-0002 and so on. The PO- part can be changed in Inventory settings; numbers keep counting up either way.
Ordering from low stock
The Raise purchase order action on the Stock tab and on the Inventory dashboard's low-stock list opens a new order with those products already on it. The suggested quantity tops each product back up to its restock level for that store, less what is on hand, what is already on order, and what is in transit to the store in a transfer it has not accepted yet. A product with no restock level set is topped up to twice its low-stock threshold. If the products come from different suppliers you are asked first, then one draft is made per supplier. See Low-stock thresholds.
When the preferred supplier has a minimum order or a pack size recorded for the product — usually from an imported price list — the suggestion is raised to the minimum first, then rounded up to whole packs. Needing 7 of something sold in packs of 5 suggests 10.
More than one store
Each purchase order is received into one store — the store on the order. To split a delivery across shops, receive it at one store and send the rest on with a stock transfer; after a receipt, Transfer to another store on the order opens the Transfers tab with the received items filled in. Units sitting in a pending transfer count toward the receiving store's on-order figure (shown as “+N in transit” under On order), so the low-stock suggestion does not order them a second time. When another store holds plenty of a product the order needs, the order shows a hint that a transfer may be cheaper.
Importing an order from the supplier
If you ordered on the supplier's website and they gave you a CSV of the order, you can import it instead of typing it in. It becomes a draft order here with the supplier's order number on it. See Supplier price lists and order imports — Growth and Multi Store plans.
What each status means
| Status | What it means | What you can still do |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Being put together. Nothing has gone to the supplier. | Edit anything, send it, mark it ordered, cancel or delete it |
| Ordered | Placed with the supplier — emailed from here, or marked ordered after you ordered by phone or on their website. | Receive, add lines or raise quantities, send it again, close or cancel |
| Partially received | Some of the order has arrived; the rest is still outstanding. | Receive the rest, add to it, or close it to stop waiting |
| Received | Every line is accounted for. Set automatically — you never pick it. | Close it, record the bill |
| Closed | Finished. Anything not delivered was written off. | Record the bill; an admin can reopen it |
| Cancelled | Called off before anything arrived. | Nothing — it is kept for the record |
Once an order has gone to the supplier it can only grow: you can add products or raise a quantity, but not lower one. If the supplier cannot send everything, receive what came and Close the order — the shortfall is written off line by line, and the order stops counting as "on order". A closed order can be reopened by an admin, which puts the written-off quantities back.
An order can be cancelled only while nothing has been received against it. After the first delivery, close it instead. Only a draft can be deleted; every other order is kept for good.
Sending it to the supplier
Send emails the supplier a PDF of the order, with a CSV copy if you tick it. It goes to the supplier's email address unless you change it, and replies come back to your shop's email address, which is copied in unless you untick it. The first send moves a draft to Ordered; sending again later just emails it again. One order can be sent once a minute.
An order only moves to Ordered once the email has actually gone. If sending fails, or no mail server is set up, you are told and the order stays a draft — order the way you normally do and press Mark as ordered instead. See Outgoing mail server. A sandbox never emails suppliers at all.
The PDF and a CSV of any order can also be downloaded from the order itself, for suppliers who want a file uploaded to their portal instead.
On the order's page
Each line shows what was ordered, received, damaged and written off, and what is still to come. Below that are the deliveries received so far, any bills recorded against the order, and an activity list of who created, sent, received, closed or reopened it and when.
The strip at the top of the Purchasing tab counts orders past their expected date and bills due this week, so neither waits for someone to go looking.
Purchasing reports
The Reports view in the Purchasing tab has three tables, each exportable as CSV:
- Open orders — what is still to arrive and what it is worth, by supplier and store.
- Received, not billed — orders whose stock has arrived but has no approved bill yet, oldest first. These are the bills to chase.
- Aged payables — unpaid approved bills, grouped as current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over 90 days past their due date.
Who can do what
| Permission | Allows | Held by default |
|---|---|---|
purchasing.view | See suppliers, orders and bills | Staff, supervisor, admin |
purchasing.receive | Receive deliveries against an order | Staff, supervisor, admin |
purchasing.manage | Suppliers, raising, sending, closing and cancelling orders, bills and reports | Supervisor, admin |
Reopening a closed order and voiding a bill are admin-only on top of that. Someone limited to certain stores only sees orders for those stores. The defaults can be changed per role in Roles and permissions.
Suppliers, purchase orders, receiving and supplier bills are included on Free, Growth and Multi Store.