Purchase Orders

Open a Sales Order that has purchasable items on it and click on the Generate button on the toolbar and select Purchase Order.

You can then select from any Suppliers that are set up for the items on the order.

If there are no Suppliers shown here, you will need to link them to your Products.

You can then choose whether to create a new PO, or if there is an existing one for the Supplier already, you can choose to add to it.

Once you have made a selection, you can choose the items you want to purchase and create the PO.

If you do not see any items here, you may need to check your Sales & Purchase Settings to see what items you are able to purchase from an order. You may also need to check whether you have any purchasable items in your inventory.

You will then see a confirmation the PO has been created and can access this by clicking on the record link.

On the Sales Order, you will now see that there is a Purchase Order tab where you can see the related PO and click to access it.

On the Purchase Order, there will also now be a Sales Order tab.

Go to Inventory > Backorders or Inventory > Products and select the order/s or item/s you want to to purchase items for and then press Generate Purchase Order.

You can then select the Supplier that you’d like to buy from.

If there are no Suppliers shown here, you will need to link them to your Products.

You can then choose the items and quantities you want to buy and then create the PO.

If there is already an existing PO for the Supplier, you will be given the choice to either add to it, or create a new PO, as per the following example.

A confirmation will display that the PO has been created and you can quickly access it by clicking on the record link.

On the Purchase Order, you will see a tab for Sales Order that shows the linked sales.

On the relevant Sales Orders, there will be a Purchase Orders tab showing the linked order.

You can easily preview and email a Purchase Order directly to a supplier by using the record toolbar:

• The Preview button opens a PDF of the order in a new window.
• The Email button allows you to either draft a new email or send an email using a pre-defined template. A PDF version of the order will automatically be attached.

Email and Preview buttons on a Purchase Order record toolbar

• You can also view the web version of the order by clicking on the Preview As Supplier button, which will open the order in a new browser tab.

• You can then email the web version by clicking on the Copy URL button, which allows you to paste the URL into an email.

The order Status field will automatically update when certain events take place:

• New is automatically assigned as the Status when you create a record.
• The Convert To Supplier Bill button is clicked – the status will show as Invoiced.
• When the order items are marked as received, the Status will change to either Partially Received or Completely Received.

You can also manually change the Status to: Backorder, Sent, Cancelled, Completed or Request For Quote. To do this:

• Open the applicable order and click Edit.
• Go to the Status field and select a new option from the dropdown.
• Click on Save & Close.

Editing a Purchase Order record

Editing the Status of a Purchase Order record

On the Purchase Order form, you have the option to create a receipt for part or all of your order, depending on whether the items arrive separately or together. You can also see our specific help page on Inbound Shipments.

• Receive Shipment will allow you to specify which items on the order have arrived – you will automatically be taken to a shipping record that you can modify.
• Receive All will mark all items on the order as received – this will automatically generate a shipping record that shows all outstanding items as received.

Item receipt options on a Purchase Order

You can see items that have been received from both the Receipts tab on the order and from the Inbound Shipments module.

The Receipts tab on a Purchase Order

The Inbound Shipments module

The Shipment Status field will also update to reflect whether the order has been completely received or partially received.

Shipment Status on a Purchase Order

When you receipt items, your Stock is automatically increased by the received quantity. The Location the Stock will be increased at is determined by what you have set as the order destination in the Purchase For field.

The Location where Stock will be increased when items are received

You can convert a Purchase Order to a Supplier Bill using the button on the form toolbar.

Clicking this button takes you directly to a new Supplier Bill record, which you can edit if you only want to create a bill for some of the order items – you can delete items that have not been received – in this way you can have multiple Supplier Bills for a Purchase Order.

For example, if you have multiple bills from a Supplier:

• Press the Convert To Supplier Bill button.
• Edit the Supplier Bill by adjusting the item quantities or deleting items from the bill.
• Save and close the Supplier Bill.
• You can then return to the Purchase Order in future and create more Supplier Bills as not all items have been billed previously. You will then see links to multiple Supplier Bills in the top right corner of the Purchase Order.

The Status field will also update to reflect whether the order has been invoiced or not.

Status field showing the Purchase Order has been invoiced

If you have multiple Purchase Orders for the same supplier, you can merge them together.

Open a record and click on the Merge button on the toolbar.

You will then be prompted to confirm the merge.

A pop-up box will then appear, showing a list of other orders for the same supplier, allowing you to select single or multiple orders to merge with.

Click OK when you are done and the system will merge the orders for you.

Note that you can customise both the PDF and web version/s of your Purchase Order templates.