How to Create a Purchase Order

You can get to this part of the system by clicking on the Inventory link in the blue Admin Toolbar and then clicking on the Purchasing button in the drop-down bar to see a list of all active Purchase Orders. You can create a new PO from there, or you can click the New Purchase Order link in the main Inventory module list.

After you click to begin creating a Purchase Order, if you have multiple locations, you'll be prompted to choose the Location the order will be going to. It isn't possible to have an order be delivered to multiple locations.

You will be prompted to choose the Vendor you are ordering from. A Purchase Order always goes to a single Vendor only: it is not possible to order from two Vendors at once on a single order.

Once you have chosen your Vendor, if there is an outstanding Special Order from one of your customers for something from that vendor, you can add one such order to the Purchase Order. That Special Order will be listed as a Purchase Order Draft, and will pop up for you as an existing draft for that Vendor that you can use as a starting point for your PO. Clicking on the PO # will open it and allow you to start your order.

If you have any items in stock associated with that Vendor that are at or below the Reorder Point for the product, you will be asked if you want to add items that are low in inventory to the PO. In our example below, there are a couple of items that were low in inventory and were added automatically to the order. If you don't want to order an item that appeared this way, you can click the X button on the far right of the line item to Delete it from the order.

You can manually adjust the Quantity field, if needed. For convenience, the system will show you ID numbers (UPC, Manufacturer ID, and SKU), Retail Price (if known), Quantity on Hand, if the item is Back Ordered or not (in another order), and if the system knows what your Cost for each item would be, that will display. You can adjust that number if you know what your per-unit cost will be or if you want to estimate what it will be. The system will do the math and show you the estimated Total for each line item, and above you will see the Total for the whole PO. You can enter your own Purchase Order Number if you want, and you can also enter your Freight cost if you know what your shipping charges will be.

Adding Items

You have several ways to add items to your PO in addition to any automatically added up to this point. Clicking the Existing Vendor Products button to see the first hundred items in the system currently that are associated with the Vendor for the order. You can search for other products carried by that Vendor. 

Pertinent information about the products is included, including how many are currently on hand. If you check the box for a product on the left, you will see an Add button at the bottom. Click that button and you will see the item added to your order.

If you missed any low inventory items from the Vendor in the order, you can add those items by clicking on the Add Low Inventory button (you will only see this if you didn't add all of the low inventory items for the vendor).

You can also add items associated with any vendor using the product Search field on the left; a useful feature if the vendor you're ordering from is offering a promotion on such items, or some other benefit. 

And finally, you have the ability to create new products entirely by clicking the blue + next to the search. You have full access to any products in the Catalog for your industry when you create new products this way. Be sure to leave the Inventory and Cost area untouched, since the Receiving Order will add that information for you when you receive the shipment.

At any point along the way you can click the Draft button to save the order and come back to it any time by going to Inventory > Purchasing. In the window that comes up, you will see all POs that are saved as Drafts.

You can also Print your Purchase Order whenever you're ready to send it to the vendor. To email your PO, print it as a Adobe Acrobat PDF file so you can attach it to an email. If you don't already have the ability to print to PDF, there are free third party utilities that will allow you to do this. While we don't directly support such utilities you are welcome to explore their use and see if they will work for you. One such utility is PDF 995, which has a utility that installs a PDF Printer into your system, and also has a utility to convert any document to a PDF.

Once you have completed assembling your PO and printed it to be sent, click the Mark as Sent button to finish the PO. PLEASE NOTE THAT AFTER YOU MARK AS SENT, YOU WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO ADD ITEMS TO THE ORDER.

Coming Up Next: Learn how to work with Purchase Orders to manage all of your open orders.

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