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 doc covers the full toolkit — including the details that save time once you're creating POs every week.
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 if yours haven't appeared.)
Destination — the Shopify location this stock will arrive at. Required before the PO can be marked as ordered.
Currency — fills in automatically from the supplier, and falls back to your store's currency. You can type any 3-letter code.
2. Add your products — three ways
Quick-add by SKU or barcode. Type 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, Qty, Unit cost, Discount %, and its Total — with a trash icon to remove it.
3. 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 (adjustments work in both directions). Rename the labels to whatever matches the invoice.
4. Dates and references
Two collapsible cards hold the rest:
Shipment & dates — Expected arrival (this is the date your team sees on the PO list) and Payment due.
Additional details — Reference, Supplier invoice #, and Notes. Anything you put here is searchable from the PO list later.
5. 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 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.
6. 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).
Message is optional — leave it empty and a clean default is used: a greeting to your supplier contact, the PO number, and an invitation to reply with any questions. If you write your own message, it replaces the intro — the PO summary (number, items, total, expected date) is always included.
Click Send with PDF attached. The purchase order PDF is always attached, the subject line reads "Purchase Order {number} from {your store}", and replies go straight to your store's email 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 and send it however you like.
7. 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.
A couple of guardrails: the PO needs a Destination and at least one line item first. And once ordered, line items are locked — you can still update the Reference, Supplier invoice #, Notes, Expected arrival, and Payment due, but products and quantities are fixed so your receiving history stays accurate.
Good to know
Reordering from the same supplier? Click Duplicate on any PO to start a fresh draft with the same lines.
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.
Finding a PO later: search by PO #, supplier, reference, SKU, or barcode — so "which order was that blue hoodie on?" is one search away.
Using QuickBooks? Connect MyWorks Sync and every purchase order and bill lands in your books automatically.