Purchase orders — overview
A purchase order (PO) is how you order stock from a supplier and track it all the way to your warehouse and your books. Every PO in SKU.io carries a supplier, a destination, and one or more line items, and it moves through a predictable lifecycle you can follow at a glance.
You manage purchase orders under Orders → Purchase Orders. The list opens on the Purchase Orders tab, with an Awaiting Invoices tab beside it for POs that still need a supplier invoice.
The purchase order lifecycle
A PO moves through a few stages of work — from a draft you can still edit, to an open order, through receiving and invoicing, to a close. The demo order PO-DOCS-0001 — supplier Acme Supplies, destination Main Warehouse, three lines — is a typical example.
- Draft. A new PO starts as Draft: fully editable, and not yet counted toward your incoming stock (stock that's on order but hasn't arrived yet) or against any backorders (customer orders you couldn't fill because you were out of stock). See Create a purchase order, Create POs from a forecast, and Import purchase orders.
- Open. Approving a PO moves it to Open. The ordered quantity now shows up as incoming stock on your inventory, and the PO is linked to any backorders it will help fill. From here you can email it to the supplier. See Approve and submit a PO.
- Received. As stock arrives you receive it against the PO. Received units become on-hand inventory (stock physically in your warehouse, available to sell) at the cost recorded on the PO. See Receive stock against a PO and How a PO becomes inventory.
- Invoiced. You record the supplier's invoices to reconcile them — that is, to check what you were billed against what you ordered and received, and resolve any differences. See Record a supplier invoice and Invoicing and the 3-way match.
- Closed. A PO closes when it's fully received, manually closed, or (for dropship) fully invoiced. You can reopen or short-close it as needed. See Close, reopen, and short-close.
When the last outstanding unit is received, SKU.io closes the PO for you — you don't have to close it by hand. You can always reopen it later if more stock is still coming.
Guides in this section
Create and fill
- Create a purchase order
- Create POs from a forecast / fill backorders
- Import purchase orders from a spreadsheet
Edit, approve, and submit
Receive and close
Invoicing and costs
- Record a supplier invoice and reconcile
- Add landed costs to a PO
- Vendor credits
- Vendor deposits
- Purchase order cash-flow schedule
Amazon, dropship, and the list
- Ship dropship POs and mark Amazon POs as shipped
- Browse, filter, bulk-act, and export the list
- Notes, tags, custom fields, and the activity log
Understand the model
Once you've created your first PO, these guides explain how the pieces fit together underneath.
- How purchase order status works — the five status dimensions and how they interact.
- How a PO becomes inventory — how received stock turns into sellable on-hand inventory and feeds your cost of goods sold (COGS).
- Invoicing and the 3-way match — matching orders, receipts, and invoices.
- How dropship and Amazon POs differ from a standard PO — where the stock goes, how they're received, and how their status is driven.
The five lifecycle stages above are the everyday view. Behind them, each PO actually tracks five independent status dimensions — order, submission, receipt, shipment, and invoice — that each advance on their own. So a single PO can be Open, Submitted, Partially received, and Partially invoiced at the same time. You don't need this to make your first PO; when you're ready, How purchase order status works explains why, and the status reference lists every value.
Reference
- Status reference — every status value and what it means.
- Fields reference — every PO and line field.
- List columns and filters — what each column and filter shows.
- Importable columns reference — every column the file importer reads.
- Exportable columns reference — every column the list export produces.
Work on a PO at the same time as your team
Purchase orders are collaborative, so SKU.io shows you in real time when a teammate is looking at or editing the same PO — and protects you from overwriting each other.
See who else is viewing. When more than one person has a PO open, small avatar badges appear in the order header. Hover an avatar to see the viewer's name; if several people are viewing, the extra ones roll up into a +N badge whose tooltip lists their names.
One editor at a time. Editing a PO takes an edit lock. While a teammate holds it, you see the order read-only with the banner "[Name] is editing this purchase order. The form is read-only until they finish." You have two choices:
| Choice | What it does |
|---|---|
| Request edit | Sends the current editor a notification that you want to edit. They see that you're requesting access and can save and release the lock. |
| Take over | Takes the lock immediately. Use this when the other person has stepped away. |
When you take over an edit lock, the previous editor is warned that their lock was taken, and any changes they hadn't saved are lost. Prefer Request edit unless you know they've stepped away.
If you open the same PO in a second tab, the banner instead reads "You're editing this purchase order in another tab" — saving there, or taking over in the current tab, lets you continue.
Stay current with the stale-record banner. If someone else saves a change to a PO you already have open, a banner appears: "This purchase order was updated by [Name] — your view may be out of date." Click Refresh to load the latest version, or dismiss the banner to keep your view.
If a teammate's change lands while you have unsaved edits, the banner turns into a warning: refreshing loads their version and drops your in-progress edits. Save first if you want to keep them.
Next steps
- New to purchase orders? Start with Create a purchase order.
- Ordering to cover demand? See Create POs from a forecast.
- Want the full status picture? Read How purchase order status works.
Video transcript
To start a purchase order, click Add Purchase Order, choose your supplier — here, Acme Supplies — and click Create Draft.
On the draft, add each product you're ordering — search by SKU or name, choose it, and it drops onto a new line. Add as many as the order needs. Then set the quantity for each line. The line total, and the running PO total, update as you type.
When the order's ready, click Approve. It moves to Open — and its units now show as incoming inventory: stock that's on the way, not yet on hand.
When the shipment arrives, click Receive. SKU pre-fills the pending quantities — confirm, and they're received into your warehouse as on-hand stock.
Record the supplier's invoice — enter the invoice number and click Create Invoice. SKU matches what you ordered, received, and were billed.
That's the full cycle — received, invoiced, and closed, with your inventory and costs updated automatically.