A purchase order in Stockroom takes about a minute to build: pick a supplier, add products from your catalog, and send it off as a PDF. This guide covers the full toolkit, including ordering for more than one location, adding items after ordering, payment tracking, and cost updates when you order.
1. Start a new purchase order
Visit Purchase orders and click Create purchase order. At the top of the new PO, set:
Supplier - who you're ordering from. Suppliers from your Shopify products are already here; see Getting Started with Stockroom if yours haven't appeared.
Currency - fills in automatically from the supplier, and falls back to your store's currency. You can type any 3-letter code.
Just below the header, pick a Destination for your products - the Shopify location this stock will arrive at. A destination is required before the PO can be marked as ordered. (Single-location stores don't see a picker - your one location is used automatically.)
Shipping somewhere that is not a Shopify location - a customer's address, a trade show? Click Edit ship-to beside the destination to type a one-off delivery address; it prints on the PDF in place of the location's address, received stock still lands at the chosen location, and Use location address switches back anytime. Shipping straight to your customer? Tick This ships to a customer (don't move stock) under the address and the order becomes a dropship purchase order - no Shopify inventory is pushed or received, and you mark it delivered instead of receiving it. See Dropship purchase orders: ship straight to your customer.
2. Add your products - five ways
Quick-add/scan by SKU or barcode. Type or use a barcode scanner into the Add products field and press Enter (or click Add). An exact SKU or barcode match is added instantly - perfect if you're working from a supplier catalog or scanning items. A scan always adds one unit - the line starts at a quantity of 1, and scanning the same code again bumps it to 2, then 3, so you can work straight down a stack. Need a bigger number? Scan it once and type the quantity over it. If there's no exact match, Stockroom adds the closest product search result.
Search by product name. Don't know the code? Type two or more letters of a product's name into that same Add products field and matching products appear just underneath, each with its SKU and the stock you currently hold at this destination. Click one - or use the arrow keys and press Enter - and it lands on the order. This is usually the quickest way when you're building an order at a desk rather than scanning a shelf.
Browse your catalog. Click Browse products to open the Shopify product picker and select multiple products at once. Every variant of a selected product is added as its own line, with SKU and current unit cost pre-filled. Selecting an already-added variant again bumps its quantity up by one instead of creating a duplicate line.
Custom lines. Click Add custom line for anything not in your Shopify catalog - samples, packaging, a one-off item. Just type the item name, quantity, and cost. Custom lines don't touch your Shopify inventory, since there's no product to update.
Add everything that needs reordering. Click Suggest, then Add suggested products, and Stockroom pulls in every product from this supplier at or below its reorder point, with quantities already suggested from your sales history - the same list the Reorder page shows for that supplier, minus anything an open draft already covers. Running it again only adds items not yet on the order - it never changes a quantity you have set. It is the fastest way to build "a PO for this brand with what we actually need."
Each line shows Product (with its SKU right underneath), the current Available stock at the line’s destination - plus a "+N incoming" note when more is already on order - Qty, Unit cost, Discount %, Retail / margin (your current retail price with the margin at this cost, so pricing errors jump out), and its Total, with a trash icon to remove it (or set Qty to 0 - the line shows "Removed on save"). Every product you add starts at a quantity of 1, however you added it - scanned, searched, or browsed - because Stockroom never guesses a number on your behalf. When you do want it to, that is what Suggest is for: it proposes quantities from your sales history, and you can edit every one afterwards. Suggest stays disabled until a supplier and destination are set, and tells you why. Suggestions also need sales history, so on a brand-new install give Stockroom's sales analysis a little while to finish before the numbers mean much.
Ordering for a longer stretch? Open Suggest and you'll find a cover dropdown set to Default cover - your Order cover (days) from Settings > Reorder suggestions. Switch it to 14-day, 30-day, 60-day, or 90-day cover and every suggested quantity recalculates to carry you through that timeframe at each item's sales pace - handy before a busy season or a long supplier gap. It applies to Fill suggested quantities and Add suggested products alike.
The newest line sits at the top. As you add items, the one you just added appears at the top of the list, so a long order never sends you scrolling to check it landed. Use the Newest first / Oldest first control just above the list to switch back to the order you added things in, and Stockroom remembers your choice on that device. Either way, your supplier's PDF always lists the items in the order you built them.
Products with a pack size or minimum order quantity set (see Set reorder points and stock levels) show the breakdown under Qty - "3 cases of 4" - with a caution when the quantity is not a whole number of packs or sits under the minimum. Stockroom never rounds your quantity for you, and the supplier PDF prints the pack breakdown on exact multiples.
3. Order for more than one location
One purchase order can send stock to several locations. Click Add another destination to add a second product section with its own location, and add that location's items there.
Each line belongs to the destination section it sits in.
The PDF groups items under a Deliver to heading per location.
When you receive, each line shows a For {location} badge so the right items go to the right place.
See Create purchase orders faster for more, including creating POs straight from a Shopify order, the Inventory page, or POS.
4. Costs, discounts, and charges
Unit cost pre-fills from your Shopify product cost, and you can override it per line - the PO is the source of truth for what you're actually paying this time.
Discount % applies per line, for supplier deals and volume pricing.
In the Cost summary, click Add shipping or Add adjustment to add order-level charges - freight, handling, a credit from the supplier. Rename the labels to match the invoice, and choose how each charge splits across items. Those charges feed your true landed cost when you receive - see Landed cost: what your stock really costs.
5. Dates and references
One collapsible Details card holds the rest:
Expected arrival (the date your team sees on the PO list) and Payment due.
Reference, Supplier invoice #, and Notes. Anything you put here is searchable from the PO list later. And when you fill in Supplier invoice #, it becomes the PO's number everywhere - the list, the PDF, emails, exports, labels, and QuickBooks - in place of the generated PO-100x, which stays searchable underneath. Handy when the supplier's numbering is the one your team knows.
6. Save your draft
Click Save. Only a supplier is required, so you can save a skeleton PO early and build it up as you go. Your new PO is created as a Draft, numbered automatically (PO-1001, PO-1002, and so on), and stays fully editable until you mark it as ordered.
Want different numbering? Settings > Purchase order numbering holds a Format, a starting number, and zero-padding. Put {number} where the counter goes, and add {YYYY}, {YY}, {MM} or {DD} to build the date into it:
PO-{number} gives PO-1001, the default.
PO-{YYYY}-{MM}-{number} gives PO-2026-07-1001.
{YY}{MM}{DD}-{number} gives 260731-1001.
The page shows the exact next number as you type, and dates follow your store's timezone. One thing to know before you date a number: the counter starts over each period, so July might end at 1005 and August start again at 1001.
7. Send it to your supplier
On the PO, click Email to supplier:
To is pre-filled with the supplier's email address (you can send to a different address too).
Subject and Message are pre-filled from your default, ready to edit for this send. Leave the message as-is for a clean default, or write your own.
Click Send with PDF attached. The purchase order PDF is always attached, and replies go to your reply-to (or store) address.
After sending, the PO shows Last sent with the date and time, so you always know whether a supplier has the latest version. Prefer another channel? Download PDF, or Print it directly, and send it however you like.
Set your own default: in Settings > Supplier email you can customize the subject and message (with variables like {{po_number}} and {{supplier_name}}), choose whether to include the order summary table, and set a reply-to address. You can also pick Letter or A4 paper. See Customize your supplier emails and PO PDFs.
8. Mark it as ordered
When the order is placed, click Mark as ordered. Incoming quantities are pushed to Shopify (visible on your product pages), and the PO is ready to Receive when stock arrives.
If your line costs differ from your products' current costs, Stockroom offers to update your Shopify costs to match as you mark it ordered - your choice, every time. See Keep your product costs current when you order.
A couple of guardrails: the PO needs a Destination and at least one line item first. And once ordered, existing line items are fixed - quantities and costs stay put so your receiving history stays accurate, while the Reference, Supplier invoice #, Notes, Expected arrival, and Payment due stay editable. Two escape hatches: Add items on any destination section adds new lines to an ordered or partially received PO (their incoming stock pushes to Shopify on save, and Stockroom nudges you to resend the PDF if the supplier already has it); and More actions → Revert to draft pulls the incoming stock back out of Shopify and reopens full editing. If the PO already has receives, the confirmation lets you know they'll be undone first, and handles that in the same step.
9. Track payment
Every PO carries a Paid / Unpaid status, separate from its ordering lifecycle - mark it from More actions on the PO, or in bulk from the list. Past the Payment due date, unpaid POs show an Overdue badge, and the list's filter dropdown covers both money and delivery: Unpaid, Paid, Payment overdue, and Late delivery (open orders past their expected date - the same orders the "N late" badge above the list counts). This is bookkeeping inside Stockroom only - it is never pushed to QuickBooks, where bill payment lives.
Good to know
Reordering from the same supplier? Click Duplicate on any PO to start a fresh draft with the same lines - or start a new PO and click Add suggested products to pull in only what currently needs ordering.
Done with an old PO? Archive it to move it out of your working tabs - archived POs live under the Archived tab and can be unarchived anytime.
Draft you no longer need? Drafts can be deleted permanently - Delete draft under More actions, or select only drafts on the list for a bulk delete. Ordered POs archive instead (or revert to draft first, then delete).
Notes show on the list - a note icon appears on any PO with notes; the full text is a hover away, and notes are searchable.
Finding a PO later: search by PO #, supplier, reference, SKU, or barcode.
Print labels for what you order or receive, right from the PO - see Print barcode and price labels.
Using QuickBooks? Connect MyWorks Sync and push every purchase order to your books - see Push purchase orders to QuickBooks.
For an overview of everything purchasing covers, see Purchase orders on stockroom.app.