Creating and Sending Purchase Orders

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.

Visit Purchase orders and click Create purchase order. At the top of the new PO, set:

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 drop-ship to a customer, 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.

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. If there's no exact match, Stockroom adds the closest product search result.

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.

Each line shows Product, SKU, the current Available and Incoming stock at the line's destination, Qty, Unit cost, Discount %, and its Total, with a trash icon to remove it (or set Qty to 0 - the line shows "Removed on save"). Once a supplier and destination are set, quantities pre-fill with suggested amounts from your sales history - edit them freely, or use Fill suggested quantities to refresh a whole section.

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.

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.

See Create purchase orders faster for more, including creating POs straight from a Shopify order, the Inventory page, or POS.

Two collapsible cards hold the rest:

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? Set your own Prefix, starting number, and zero-padding in Settings > Purchase order numbering.

On the PO, click Email to supplier:

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.

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 if nothing has been received yet, More actions → Revert to draft pulls the incoming stock back out of Shopify and reopens full editing.

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 Overdue delivery (open orders past their expected date - the same orders the "overdue" badge above the list counts). This is bookkeeping inside Stockroom only - it is never pushed to QuickBooks, where bill payment lives.