Go to Inventory > Purchase Orders and click "+ New PO".

Steps

  1. Select a vendor
  2. Add products with quantities and cost prices
  3. Set shipping details (ship-to location)
  4. Add notes

When the order arrives

  1. Open the PO and click "Receive"
  2. Enter the quantities actually received per item
  3. Confirm or change the Unit Cost Paid for each item. It pre-fills from the purchase order, but you can change it to the price you actually paid (for example, if you got a deal). The price you enter is what updates the product's average cost.
  4. Stock levels update automatically

If a shipment arrives in parts at different prices, receive each part separately at its own price. Each is recorded, and your average cost reflects what you actually paid.

**Seeing what a line was ordered for**

When a purchase order is drafted from the Off-Catalog Queue, each line remembers the job it came from. The purchase order screen and the printed copy both show it under the item, as "For" followed by the document number and the customer name. Lines you are ordering for stock simply do not show it. This is how you tell, when a box arrives, which parts belong to a customer waiting on them.

**What your vendor sees on the order**

Each line prints the brand, the part number, and a description, then quantity, unit cost and line total. The description is the product's name, unless the name is only a repeat of the part number, in which case the product's Description field is used instead. That means filling in Brand and Description when you set up a product is what makes your orders readable to a distributor. The purchase order on screen and the order builder show the same information, so what you see while building an order is what your vendor receives.

**Ordering something you do not stock**

Purchase order lines have to be real items in your inventory, so a part you do not carry cannot simply be typed onto an order. Set it up as a one-off item instead: it is kept out of your product searches but orders and receives normally. See Ordering a Part You Do Not Stock.

Purchase orders track what has been ordered vs. received, helping manage vendor relationships and restock timing.