Understanding Purchase Orders
A purchase order records what you’re buying from a supplier: the items, quantities, prices and delivery address. It’s the anchor of the buying flow, because inbound shipments, goods receipts and the supplier’s invoice all hang off it, so you always know what was ordered, what has arrived, and what has been billed.
How purchase orders get created
- Manually: create a new purchase order, choose the supplier, add lines.
- From a sales order: when fulfilling a sales order line from a purchase order, Fast2Task creates the PO (or adds to an existing one) and links it to the sale. See Fulfilling Sales Orders.
- From a work order: when sourcing materials for production, shortfalls can be turned into purchase orders directly. See Sourcing Materials.
However it’s created, the purchase order behaves the same from there.
The header
- Purchase order number: assigned automatically from your sequence
- Order date and due date: when you ordered and when you expect delivery
- Buyer: who in your team placed the order
- Currency and exchange rate for overseas suppliers
- Tax type and tax-inclusive setting
- Billing address: defaults to your company details
- Shipping address: where the goods should be delivered, from your locations
- Sent: whether the order has been sent to the supplier
Lines use the standard line editor; see Working with Document Lines. Purchase order lines also show the unit sell price and margin for the product, so you can sanity-check buy prices against what you sell for.
Draft and Finalize
A new purchase order is a draft, so you can edit lines freely. When it’s ready, click Finalize. Finalizing fixes the order so goods can be receipted against it reliably.
Sent the wrong thing? Revert to Draft unlocks the order for editing. If receipts have already been recorded and line links need repair afterwards, use Correct Receipt Links to reconnect receipts to the right lines.
Sending to the supplier
Generate the purchase order PDF to print or email to your supplier, and mark the order as sent so the team knows it’s gone.
The lifecycle
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| New | Created, not yet confirmed |
| Approved | Confirmed internally |
| Scheduled / In progress / On hold | Optional working states |
| Arrived | Goods have arrived, awaiting receipting |
| Receipted | Goods received into stock |
| Invoiced | Supplier invoice recorded |
| Cancelled | No longer proceeding |
The three stages on the page
- Shipments: track what the supplier has dispatched and when it’s due.
- Receipting: receive arrived goods into stock locations. See Receipting Goods.
- Invoicing: record the supplier’s invoice against the order. See Supplier Invoices and Landed Costs.