A purchase order is a branch's request to buy stock from a supplier — the buying-side counterpart to a sales order. Creating one has no effect on stock at all: it starts pending, listing each product, quantity, and unit cost, with a total calculated and stored at that moment, so it can be reviewed or approved before anything is committed.
How it works
Receiving a purchase order is the one deliberate action that actually changes inventory — it increments stock for every line and writes a matching movement record, all in a single transaction, recording exactly who received it and when. A pending order can instead be cancelled before ever receiving stock. Once received or cancelled, a purchase order is final and cannot be edited further, keeping its history a reliable record of what was actually ordered and received.
- Choose the supplier and the receiving branch
- List each product, quantity, and unit cost, with the line and order totals calculated automatically
- Add notes for context or special instructions
- Track creation, receiving, and cancellation, each with the responsible staff member and timestamp
- Each order gets an automatically generated, sequential code