You can start a purchase order from wherever you already are - a Shopify order, the Inventory page, a product page, or the POS till - and Stockroom does the supplier-matching for you. You can also order stock for several locations on a single PO.
Every path below creates drafts. Nothing is ordered until you review and mark it as ordered.
From a Shopify order
On any order's page in Shopify admin, open the More actions menu and choose Create PO. The dialog lists every item on the order, each one ticked, with the supplier it will go to. Leave it as it is and Stockroom creates one draft purchase order per supplier, matched by each product's vendor - or untick the items you do not need to buy first. Review, price, and send the drafts from Stockroom.
Three things in that list save the most time:
Only what I'm short of ticks just the items the sale left you unable to cover, and drops each quantity to the shortfall - 5 sold with 3 on the shelf orders 2. Items you already stock stay unticked.
The Supplier on any row can be changed, so one item can go to a different supplier than its vendor - a backup dropshipper, say - or two vendors can go onto a single purchase order.
Items already on a purchase order from this order start unticked and show its number, so running Create PO again orders the rest of the order instead of a duplicate of all of it.
Quantities are editable too, and you can order more than was sold if you want to top the shelf back up on the same purchase order. Items with no product behind them - a custom line, a gift-wrap fee - cannot go on a purchase order, and the dialog marks them so before you create anything.
Already building a draft for one of those suppliers? When a supplier on the order has open draft purchase orders, the dialog shows an Add to an open PO? row for that supplier, with a button for each draft - like the "Also in this shipment?" buttons when you receive. Click one to add the items to that draft (click it again to go back to a new purchase order). The items join that draft as their own lines, the purchase order's History records which order they came from, and they count as already ordered if you run Create PO on that order again. Only open drafts are offered - a purchase order that has been sent or marked as ordered is never changed - and purchase orders shipping to a customer's address always start new.
If you have edited the order in Shopify, Stockroom uses the quantities that are on it now. An item you removed is not put on the purchase order, and an item you cut from 5 to 2 is ordered as 2. Refunded items are left off for the same reason - the order no longer commits you to buying them.
If the order has a customer shipping address, the dialog also asks where the purchase orders should ship - your Store address or the Customer's shipping address. Choosing the customer puts their address on the purchase orders. By default those orders leave your stock alone and are marked delivered rather than received - but that half is now its own setting, so a store that receives dropship shipments into a location can have both. See Dropship purchase orders: ship straight to your customer.
Prefer no clicks at all? Turn on Automation in Settings and orders containing items from your dropship suppliers create their purchase orders on their own - see Create dropship purchase orders automatically.
Copy details from the order
A purchase order made from a Shopify order can carry details off that order. In Settings, open Automation and find Details from the order, then point each purchase order field at where it should come from.
Reference, Expected date, Notes and PO number are the fields you can fill.
They can come from an order metafield, the order name, or the order note. Metafields are chosen from a list of the ones your store actually has, so there is no key to type or mistype.
Preview runs your choices against a recent real order and shows exactly what each field would get, before you save.
This is how a job or work number kept on your orders reaches the purchase order your workshop or supplier actually reads. It applies both to purchase orders created automatically and to ones you create from the More actions menu above.
Worth knowing:
If an order does not carry the value, the field is left exactly as it would have been. An empty source never blanks anything.
Expected date only accepts a real date, written as 2026-09-04. Something like "ASAP" is not a date, so the field is left empty and a note appears in Needs your attention rather than a wrong date reaching your supplier.
PO number is off by default, because purchase order numbers have to be unique. If the value is already on another purchase order, Stockroom keeps its own number, puts the value in Reference so it is still on the document and still searchable, and tells you in Needs your attention.
From the Inventory page
In Stockroom, go to Inventory, tick the products you want to reorder, and click Create purchase order. Stockroom creates one draft per supplier with costs pre-filled. Products with no vendor set in Shopify are skipped and named, so you can fix them and try again.
From a product page
On a product's page in Stockroom, click Create purchase order to open Shopify's product picker already scoped to that product's vendor, with the product preselected. Handy for reordering a single item, or a few from the same brand.
In the PO editor: add a supplier's whole reorder list
Building the PO by hand? Once its supplier and destination are set, click Add suggested products - every product from that supplier at or below its reorder point lands on the PO with suggested quantities, and the cover dropdown sizes the order for a 14, 30, 60, or 90-day stretch. See Creating and Sending Purchase Orders.
On Shopify POS
Add the Create PO tile to your POS smart grid. Scan or search items and they land on a draft purchase order for their supplier at that location. Staff can review quantities and mark the PO as ordered right from the till - costs and supplier emails stay in Stockroom admin. See Use Stockroom on Shopify POS for the full flow.
Order for several locations on one PO
A purchase order can send stock to more than one location. In the editor, each destination has its own section with its own product table. Pick the first Destination, add its products, then click Add another destination to add a section for the next location.
Each line belongs to the destination section it sits in.
When you receive, each line shows a For {location} badge so the right items go to the right place.
The PDF groups lines under a Deliver to heading per location.
Single-location stores never see a destination picker - your one location is used automatically.
Tip: adding a product the destination already has gives you a second line for it, not a bigger quantity on the first - so the same item can go on the order twice with its own notes each time. Scanning a barcode is the exception: a scan counts up the line that is already there.