Approve and submit a purchase order

Every purchase order (PO) starts as a Draft. Approving it moves the order to Open — the active state where the stock you ordered counts as incoming inventory and the order can be received, shipped, and invoiced. Submitting then sends the order to your supplier. This guide covers approving, submitting, reverting to draft, and doing all three in bulk from the list.

A few terms used on this page

• Incoming inventory — stock you've ordered but haven't received yet. It's separate from on-hand inventory (units physically in your warehouse today). Approving a PO is what turns its ordered quantities into incoming inventory.
• Backorder — a customer order for a product you're temporarily out of. A PO can be earmarked to cover specific backorders so those customers get filled when the stock arrives.
• Dropship PO — an order the supplier ships directly to your customer, so the goods never pass through your warehouse.

Before you begin

• Approving and submitting both require the Approve purchase orders permission. Reverting an open PO to draft requires the Cancel purchase orders permission.
• The PO needs at least one product line or cost line. SKU.io rejects an empty PO with the message "Cannot approve a purchase order with no lines. Please add at least one product line or cost line before approving."
• To email the order, the supplier needs a purchase order email address — unless the PO's Submission Format is set to Manual. Add one on the supplier's page.
• New to the PO lifecycle? See How purchase order status works and the status reference.

How a PO starts

When you create a purchase order from the Add Purchase Order modal, SKU.io saves it as a Draft (the button reads Create Draft), with a submission status of Unsubmitted.

• Automatic numbering. If you leave the PO number blank, SKU.io generates the next number in sequence. If that number is already taken, it retries automatically with the next one.
• All-or-nothing save. If any line fails to save, the whole order is discarded rather than saved half-formed. Large orders with many lines are supported.

A draft is fully editable but doesn't reserve incoming inventory or cover backorders yet — that happens when you approve it. For the full creation walkthrough, see Create a purchase order and Edit a PO and its line items.

Approve a draft purchase order

1. Go to Orders → Purchase Orders.
2. Open the PO you want to approve — for example, PO-DOCS-0001 (supplier Acme Supplies, destination Main Warehouse).
3. Click Approve. For a PO whose destination is an Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) or AWD (Amazon Warehousing and Distribution) warehouse, this button reads Reserve Inventory instead.

What you'll see: the order status changes from Draft to Open. SKU.io stamps the approval date, locks in the currency exchange rate for the order, and starts counting the ordered quantities as incoming inventory for each product.

What happens on approval

Behavior	What it means
Incoming inventory starts	Each ordered quantity now shows as incoming inventory for that product, so demand planning and stock views account for it.
Exchange rate locks	For a foreign-currency PO, the exchange rate is fixed at approval so later reporting doesn't drift with the market.
Backorder coverage binds	A draft PO doesn't cover backorders. On approval, any planned coverage tied to the PO's lines is locked to those lines, so linked backorders are marked as covered. See Create POs from a forecast.

A few more things to know:

• Save edits first. The Approve button is disabled while unsaved line changes are still saving. Wait for edits to finish, then approve.
• Dropship auto-submit. If the PO is a dropship order and the supplier has automatic dropship submission enabled, approving it also submits it to the supplier in the same step. See Amazon and dropship POs.
• Amazon FBA destinations link the approved order to an Amazon inbound shipment. That flow is covered in Amazon and dropship POs.

Submit a purchase order to the supplier

1. Open an approved (Open) purchase order.
2. Click Submit.

What you'll see: SKU.io sets the submission status to Submitted and emails the order to the supplier with the document attached in the PO's Submission Format. A confirmation reads "The purchase order '<number>' submitted to supplier successfully."

Submission Format is the file layout the supplier receives:

Submission Format	What the supplier gets
PDF	A printable PDF of the order.
XLSX	An Excel spreadsheet.
CSV	A comma-separated file for import into their system.
PDF + CSV/XLSX	A combined PDF plus the data file.
Manual	No email is sent — see Manual format below.

Submit appears once a PO is Open. If you submit a draft through bulk actions (see Approve or submit many POs at once), SKU.io approves it first, then submits.

Edge cases when submitting

Situation	What happens
Missing supplier email	For any format except Manual, the supplier must have a purchase order email. Without one, Submit is disabled with a tooltip explaining that the supplier has no purchase order email configured. Add one on the supplier page, then try again.
Manual format	Clicking Submit marks the PO as Finalized without emailing anyone. Use this when you place the order with the supplier outside SKU.io.
Order consolidation	If the supplier doesn't receive orders individually, the submission is held: the status becomes Queued and the email is sent later as part of the consolidated batch, rather than immediately.
Empty PO	A PO with no product lines and no cost lines can't be submitted.
Dropship orders	Submitted automatically only when the supplier has automatic dropship submission enabled; otherwise submission is deferred. See Amazon and dropship POs.

Email the supplier about a PO

Submitting a PO emails it automatically, but you can also send the supplier a one-off message about an order whenever you need to — to chase a confirmation, answer a question, or resend the paperwork. This ad-hoc email is separate from the automatic submission email: it doesn't change the PO's Submission status, and you can send it as many times as you like.

1. Open the purchase order.
2. In the header, open the More menu (⋮) and click Email Supplier.
3. In the Email Supplier modal, choose a message from Select email template. You get a built-in default template plus any purchase order email templates your team has saved. Selecting one loads a live preview — the subject and body render with this PO's details merged in (the PO number, for example), so you see the message as the supplier will receive it.
4. Edit the Subject, Body, and CC as needed. The To address is the supplier's email and can't be changed here.
5. Under Attachments, review which documents to include. SKU.io pre-checks these to match the supplier's Submission Format — for example, a supplier set to Email PDF & CSV Attachments starts with the PDF and CSV boxes ticked. Add or clear any before sending.
6. Click Send Email.

What you'll see: a confirmation reads "Email sent successfully." The PO's Submission status is unchanged.

A few things to know:

• The supplier needs an email. Email Supplier only appears in the More menu when the supplier has an email address on file. Add one on the supplier's page if the option is missing.
• Permission. Emailing a supplier requires the Update purchase orders permission. Without it, the menu item is hidden.
• Send Email stays disabled until you've selected a template and the subject isn't empty.

This isn't the submission email

The template picker deliberately leaves out the automatic submit and update templates — it offers only free-form message templates. Sending here notifies the supplier but leaves the PO's Submission status untouched. To formally send the order to the supplier, use Submit instead (see Submit a purchase order to the supplier).

Revert an open purchase order to draft

Reverting unapproves a PO and returns it to an editable draft.

1. Open the Open PO.
2. Open the More menu and click Revert to Draft.

What you'll see: the order status returns to Draft and the approval date is cleared. Any planned or awaiting-receipt backorder coverage tied to the PO's lines is released, so those backorders become uncovered again.

Reverting releases backorder coverage

Backorders that this PO was covering become uncovered the moment you revert. If customers were waiting on this stock, they're no longer earmarked to be filled by this order until you approve it again.

You can't revert to draft when:

• The PO has any receipts — once stock has been received (even partially), reverting is blocked.
• The PO is Closed.

Revert to Draft is also hidden for Amazon-managed POs.

Approve or submit many POs at once

You can approve or submit a batch from the list.

1. Go to Orders → Purchase Orders.
2. Select the POs with their checkboxes, or switch the scope to All Filtered to act on every PO matching your current filters.
3. In the bulk actions bar, click Approve or Submit, then confirm in the dialog.

Bulk action	What it does
Approve	Approves the selected drafts, moving each to Open.
Submit	Sends the selected POs to their suppliers, auto-approving any that are still drafts first.

What you'll see: if only some orders can be processed, SKU.io completes the ones that succeed and reports which ones failed and why (for example, a missing supplier email). If none succeed, the whole action returns an error and nothing changes.

For more on working with the list, see Browse and manage the list.

Next steps

• Receive stock against a PO
• Record a supplier invoice
• Close, reopen, and short-close a PO
• How purchase order status works
• Purchase order status reference