Send a purchase order and track it with your supplier

Once a purchase order is built, you send it as a PDF by email. The email carries a link your supplier can use to confirm the order and tell you when it ships. This article covers sending, what you see afterwards, and how shipments and tracking land on the order.

On the PO, click Email to supplier:

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.

Once a purchase order has been emailed, the button reads Email again to supplier and an Emailed pill with the send date appears next to the status at the top of the PO - so you can tell at a glance it went out. Sending again any time is fine: the supplier simply gets a fresh copy of the current order.

Every send is recorded in the History card at the bottom of the PO - who sent it, when, and to which addresses. Each email row has a View PDF button that opens the exact document that went out, so you always know whether a supplier has the latest version, and the email dialog shows Last sent. The same row shows an Opened badge with the time the supplier first opened the email.

Prefer another channel? Download PDF, or Print it directly, and send it however you like.

Every PO email carries an Open this order button, which takes the supplier to their own page for that order - no login, and they can come back to it any time. From there they can confirm they have received it, give you an expected ship date, mark it as shipped with a tracking number, and leave you a note.

Everything they report lands on the purchase order straight away: a green Supplier confirmed badge and a Supplier ships date at the top, rows in the History, and a ship notice that moves the PO to On the way and shows the tracking in Shipments, exactly as if you had marked it yourself. On the Purchase orders list, a green check appears beside the order's status once the supplier confirms (hover it for the date), and the Filter menu can narrow the list to Confirmed by supplier or Awaiting supplier confirmation.

Their page also offers See all purchase orders - a free Stockroom account where your supplier sees every order you (and their other buyers) send them in one place. From their account they can also confirm an order, share an expected ship date and tracking, and leave you notes - the same updates as the emailed order page, and they land on your purchase order the same way. They can also invite teammates into that account, so their whole order desk works from the same view. Whether they use it is entirely up to them, and it never shows them more than the orders you already emailed. Once someone at the supplier sets it up, that supplier's page in Stockroom shows who added it ("added by") with a Remove access button, so you can withdraw it at any time - after that, only a new purchase order you email them can set it up again.

Suppliers are asked for the tracking number only. Stockroom recognises most carriers (UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, Canada Post, Royal Mail, Australia Post and the national postal services) from the number itself, fills the carrier in for you, and turns the number into a link to that carrier's own tracking page. The same happens on any shipment you record yourself: leave Carrier blank and it fills itself in, or type it and yours is kept.

A courier Stockroom does not recognise is left exactly as you typed it, with no link - a wrong carrier would send you to a page saying your parcel does not exist. For those couriers, paste the parcel's tracking page into the Tracking link field beside the number (in the Mark as on the way / Add tracking dialog) and the number becomes a link to it. Your supplier gets the same field on their order page once a number they saved is not recognised.

If only part of the order is on the truck, the Mark as on the way dialog can say so: under What's in this shipment?, tick the items in the parcel and set how many of each are coming (up to what the order still expects). The Shipments section then lists what each parcel contains, so your team can see what is in transit versus what is still to ship - and when the delivery arrives, receiving can pre-fill those quantities for you. Leave everything unticked when the whole order shipped.

While the order is on the way, the purchase order list shows the shipment's expected arrival date and a Track link in the Expected column, so you can follow a parcel without opening the order.