A purchase order (PO) is a document that can be used in a couple of ways during the purchase process. Simply put, a PO is a buyer's request to a seller (supplier) to order goods.
Depending on the country, a PO can also be a binding document for both the buyer and the supplier. With a PO, the buyer is stating that they will indeed purchase (at a certain price point), and the supplier is committing to provide the requested product/service with a specified price by the agreed deadline.
POs also give you a prognosis of your expenses before you have created the actual bills and spent any money. Bills document the expenses you make – when a supplier sends you an invoice based on the purchase order, you can enter it into your system as a bill to keep track of your actual purchases.
Enable Purchase Orders for your organization
To turn on this feature, head over to Settings - Purchase orders and enable them for your organization:
Once the toggle has been turned on, Purchase orders will appear as an option in the Financials menu:
Create a Purchase Order
To create a purchase order, open the budget where you want the purchase order to be, and select the Purchase orders tab.
Then, simply click on the "+Purchase order" button to create a new purchase order:
Select the Vendor (that is proving the service) and the currency in which the line items (expenses) will be listed:
On the following screen, select the service(s) that will be added to the purchase order:
💡 If there are no services to which you can add an expense, you will not be able to select any of the services and will need to create the appropriate service.
In other words, the Unit for the service has to be set up as Piece.
On the next screen, out of all the services that you have selected, a list of expenses will be shown. If there are no expenses for the budget for which you are raising a purchase order, you will need to create a new one.
To create an expense in the background, select the Service, enter the Expense description as well as the Quantity and Price of the expense(s):
When that is done, click on "Save changes" in the upper right.
The status of the Purchase order is now Draft and expenses created for the purchase order are also in Draft:
When you finalize the Purchase order, all expenses on it will also be finalized.
Unlink and delete expenses from Purchase orders
Open the purchase order you wish to edit and next to the Expense, or the line item, click on the three dots. There, you can either Unlink or Delete the expense:
By deleting the expense, that expense will also be deleted from the budget. And vice versa, if an expense is deleted from the budget, it will also be deleted from the purchase order.
If you decide to unlink the expense, it will remain visible on the budget but will no longer be linked to this particular purchase order.
Duplicate and delete a Purchase order
To duplicate or delete a PO, click on the three dots in the upper right and select one of the following options:
💡 By deleting a purchase order, all related items will be deleted as well. If you wish to keep them, unlink them from the purchase order.
Mark Purchase order as sent
Click on the following button to select the sent date for a Purchase order:
The status of the Purchase order will change to Sent, but the payment status is updated to Not received:
Note that the purchase order cannot be edited anymore (e.g. change the quantity or edit services). This is the same behavior as with invoices - once they are marked as sent, they cannot be edited.
Bills
Bills will indicate how many of the items ordered are marked as received (similar to payments regarding invoices).
To create a new Bill, select the Bills menu and click on +Bill:
Using the example above, after entering the Date, due date, Bill number and Description, add the quantity of the items in that purchase order and click on Create bill:
The Bill menu will now update with the created bill and the Purchase order payment status is now Partially received:
Purchase order numbering scheme
To set up the purchase order numbering scheme, go to Settings - General and enter the sequence of your choice:
FAQ
Can I create a purchase order for multiple budgets?
That is not possible - a purchase order is always linked to a single budget.
Can I create a purchase order without a budget?
Free-form purchase orders are not supported, a purchase order has to have a budget.
The data and values do not add up, who can I contact?
Feel free to reach out to us via the in-app chat so we can check what the issue might be since this feature is still in the BETA phase.
Can I create expenses first and then link them to a purchase order?
Of course! After selecting the vendor/currency and the services for the purchase order, you will not be presented with an empty purchase order.
Instead, the expenses will be listed that you can select and when pressing Next, they will be shown on the purchase order.
The items on my purchase order are greyed out and cannot be edited, why is that?
That is because the purchase order has been marked as sent. Sent purchase orders cannot be edited, but you can always mark them as Unsent after which you will be able to edit them.
