Skip to main content
A Purchase Order (PO) is a commitment to buy — “we intend to buy these items from this supplier.” Creating a PO doesn’t move any stock and doesn’t create any bill; it’s the starting point of the buying chain: PO → Goods Receipt → Purchase Invoice. Splitting these three apart means what you ordered, what actually arrived, and what you were billed for can all be tracked and compared independently — they don’t have to match exactly, and the system tells you when they don’t.
Purchase Orders list showing status and received percentage

​
Purchase Order Fields

​
Status lifecycle

A PO starts as Draft (freely editable), moves to Submitted once you submit it, and then automatically tracks Partially Received or Fully Received as Goods Receipts are created against it — you don’t set these statuses manually, they’re a rollup of how much of each line has actually arrived.
The list page shows a received-% progress bar per row, so you can see at a glance which orders are still outstanding.

​
Create a Purchase Order

1

Go to Retail → Purchase Orders

Under Retail — Purchasing.
2

Click New Purchase Order

Choose the Supplier, Location, and Posting Date.
3

Add line items

Product, quantity, UOM, and rate for each item you’re ordering.
4

Save as draft, then Submit

Once submitted, the PO is locked for editing and ready to be received against.
5

Create a Goods Receipt from it

Once goods arrive, use the “Create Goods Receipt” action on the submitted PO — it prefills the party, location, and remaining quantities.

​
Frequently Asked Questions

No. A PO is purely a commitment — stock only changes when a Goods Receipt is submitted against it.
Yes — a Goods Receipt’s quantity can be less than (or, with appropriate approval, more than) the PO line’s ordered quantity. The PO’s status becomes “Partially Received” until the remaining quantity is received in a later Goods Receipt, or you decide not to receive the rest.
Yes, while it hasn’t been fully received — cancelling requires a reason, and is blocked if a Goods Receipt already exists against it (cancel or handle the receipt first).

Goods Receipts

The next step — what actually arrived

Purchase Invoices

The supplier’s bill

Parties

Set up your suppliers

Overview

Back to the module overview