Purchase orders

Raise a purchase order, send it for approval, record what is delivered, and make the supplier's bill from it.

Purchase Orders follows an order to a supplier from approval to delivery and billing. An order starts as a draft. It gets its number when it is submitted for approval.

Who can do this

Owners, admins and members can create and edit drafts, submit them for approval, record deliveries and create a bill from an approved order.
Only owners and admins can approve, reject or close an order. See Approve purchase orders.
While an order is a draft or awaiting approval, the person who raised it can withdraw or cancel it, and owners and admins can withdraw or cancel anyone's. Once an order is approved, only owners and admins can cancel it.
Viewers can only look. In the demo workspace nothing can be changed.

Before you start

The supplier must be in Customers and suppliers with Supplier ticked.

Steps

Raise an order

Open Purchase Orders under Purchases in the Finance menu.
Click New purchase order.
Choose the Supplier, and set the Order date. Expected delivery (optional) cannot be before the order date.
If the order is in another currency, choose its Currency. See Foreign currency.
Enter Payment terms (days), or leave it empty to use the supplier's terms. Add a Delivery address (optional) if it is not your usual address.
Fill in the Lines, as on a bill.
Click Save draft, or Save and submit for approval.

Submit, withdraw or delete a draft

Submit for approval gives the order its number. An owner or admin then has to approve it before anything is bought. An admin cannot approve an order they raised or submitted; an owner can.
Withdraw takes an order that is awaiting approval back to a draft, so it can be changed and submitted again.
Delete removes a draft that has never been submitted. A draft that already has a number cannot be deleted; choose Cancel order instead. A cancelled order cannot be changed or reopened, and its number is not used again.

Record a delivery

On an approved order, open the row's menu and choose Record delivery.
Under Received so far, enter the total received so far for each line, not just this delivery. A line shows More than ordered if you enter more than was ordered.
Click Save delivery.

Create the bill

On an approved order, choose Create bill. If the order already has bills, you are asked whether to make another draft bill for the full order.
A draft bill is made with the order's supplier and lines, dated today. Check it and post it on Supplier bills.

Print an order

Choose Print on an approved or closed order. It prints with your letterhead, who prepared it and who approved it.

Common problems

"A purchase order needs at least one line with an amount."
"Only an owner or admin can do that to a purchase order." Approving, rejecting and closing are for owners and admins, and so are withdrawing or cancelling someone else's order.
"This purchase order has bills against it. Void those bills, or delete them if they are drafts, first."
"Enter the exchange rate before submitting the order." An order in another currency needs a rate before it is submitted.
"That cannot be done to this purchase order as it now stands. …" It changed since the page was loaded. Reload and check its status.