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 walks through creating one, from the first field to marking it as ordered. Sending, receiving, payments, comments and the items table each have their own article, linked where they come up.

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

The number this order will get shows under the title as soon as the page opens - handy if you need to quote it to your supplier while you're still building the order. It's assigned for real when the order is created.

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 straight to a customer under the address and the order prints that address and can fulfill the customer's Shopify order. Whether it also moves your stock is a separate choice - Stock handling in the Details card, which most stores leave alone. See Dropship purchase orders: ship straight to your customer.

Quick-add/scan by SKU or barcode. Type or scan into the Add products field and press Enter (or click Add). An exact SKU or barcode match is added instantly. A scan always adds one unit - the line starts at 1, and scanning the same code again makes it 2, then 3, so you can work straight down a stack. For a bigger number, scan it once and type the quantity over it. With no exact match, Stockroom adds the closest search result. If two products share a code, Stockroom asks which one you mean - unless exactly one of them belongs to this order's supplier (by a vendor rule, the supplier's own name, or something you have bought from them before), and that one goes on without asking. Typing or pasting a code works the same way: the supplier's own product lists first.

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 variant, its SKU and the stock you currently hold at this destination, so the sizes and colours of one product are easy to tell apart. 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 product picker and add several items at once - tick a row, or type a quantity straight into it, and Select all takes a supplier's whole range. The picker filters by vendor, type, tag, ABC grade, status and stock, shows what each item has sold, and can create a product that is not in Shopify yet. Full details: Browse your catalog from a purchase order.

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."

Nothing added when you expected something, or ordering to cover a longer stretch? Both are covered in Reorder suggestions and demand planning.

What each line shows, the extra columns, sort orders and pack sizes: see Columns, sort order and quantities on a purchase order. Notes and part numbers on a line, and ordering the same product twice: see Line notes, supplier SKUs and repeated lines on a purchase order.

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.

You can see what your other locations already hold. When your store has more than one location, a line reads something like 0 here · 24 all locations under the SKU - what this destination has, and what your whole store has. Hover over it, or tap it on a phone, to see where those 24 units are sitting, location by location. It answers a question one number cannot: if the stock you need is already at another location, moving it may be a better call than buying more.

What the dash means, which locations count toward the total, and how to move it into its own column: see Columns, sort order and quantities on a purchase order.

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

Unit cost pre-fills from your Shopify product cost and can be overridden per line, Discount % applies per line, and Add cost in the Cost summary takes shipping, adjustments and a whole-order discount. Shortcuts for setting the same figure on many lines, and how each charge feeds landed cost, are in Costs, discounts and charges on a purchase order.

The collapsible Details card holds Expected arrival, Payment due (filled in from the supplier's payment terms when you leave it empty), Customer order number, Supplier order number, Reference, PO number and Notes. Everything here is searchable from the list later. Field by field, including typing dates quickly and using your own PO numbers: Dates, references and PO numbering.

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 a different numbering format, or to start counting from a number of your own? Settings > Purchase order numbering - see Dates, references and PO numbering.

On the PO, click Email to supplier: the address, subject and message are pre-filled from your defaults, and the PDF is always attached. Click Send with PDF attached. Every send is recorded on the order, and the email gives your supplier a page where they can confirm the order, share a ship date and add tracking - see Send a purchase order and track it with your supplier. Prefer another channel? Download PDF, or Print it, and send it however you like.

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 store asks for a sign-off first, that button reads Send for approval instead, and someone has to approve the draft before it can be ordered. See Approvals and finance review on purchase orders.

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. Once ordered, existing lines 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, each with its quantity, unit cost and Discount % (the line cannot be edited afterwards, so that dialog is the moment to set them), 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 says they will be undone first and handles it in the same step.

The order date is the day you click Mark as ordered. It is what the PDF prints as Order date and the document date QuickBooks receives. A draft has no order date yet, so a draft's PDF prints the day you download or email it - not the day you started the draft. If the supplier confirms on a later day, or you are backfilling history, open the ordered PO and choose More actions → Edit order date (Edit paid date sits beside it). Both are record corrections: lines, costs, status and Shopify stock stay exactly as they are.

Payment is tracked separately from the ordering lifecycle - see Track payments on purchase orders.

Every saved order has a comment thread and an Attachments card for the supplier's paperwork - see Comments, mentions and attachments on a purchase order. To find an order later, the list searches PO numbers, suppliers, references, SKUs, barcodes and customer names, and filters by status, payment and delivery - see Search, filter and sort the purchase orders list.

For an overview of everything purchasing covers, see Purchase orders on stockroom.app.