---
title: "Purchase Orders"
description: "A purchase order (PO) is a formal document authorizing the purchase of goods from a supplier at agreed-upon prices and terms."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.beelocity.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Purchase Orders

A purchase order (PO) is a formal document authorizing the purchase of goods from a supplier at agreed-upon prices and terms. It serves as a binding commitment between your organization and the supplier.

## Creating a Purchase Order

To create a new purchase order:

1. Navigate to **Procurement > Purchase Orders** in the sidebar.
2. Click **New**. This opens a new purchase order page.
3. Fill in the order details:
- **PO Number** — A unique identifier (e.g., PO-2026-001).
- **Supplier** — Select the supplier from your active business partners.
- **Warehouse** — The destination warehouse for received goods.
- **Order Date** — The date the order is placed.
- **Expected Delivery** — When you expect the goods to arrive.
- **Notes** — Any notes visible to the supplier.
- **Internal Notes** — Notes visible only to your team.
4. Click **Save**. The PO is stored in DRAFT status and you land on its page.

## Managing PO Lines

On a confirmed order, each open line offers a **Close short** action: the remaining quantity will not be received, while the other lines keep receiving. When the last open line is closed, the order completes if anything was received — otherwise it is cancelled.

Add the items you are ordering:

1. Open the PO (click its number in the list). The lines sit beside the order's details, on the same page.
2. Click **Add Line** for each item, then double-click a cell to edit it:
- **Description** — Item description.
- **Quantity** — How many to order.
- **Unit Price** — The price for one unit. It fills itself in from the supplier's own prices where there are any, and a line will not save without it — see [Where a Line's Price Comes From](#where-a-lines-price-comes-from).
- **Line Total** — Total cost for this line.
- **Supplier SKU** — The supplier's product code (optional).
3. Lines can be added, edited, or removed while the PO is in Draft status.

<a id="where-a-lines-price-comes-from"></a>
## Where a Line's Price Comes From

When you add a line, the **Unit Price** fills itself in from **what you last paid this supplier for that item**. If you have never bought it from them, the price you agreed with them is used instead. Anything you type yourself wins over both.

The box is left **empty** whenever the supplier has no price on file that fits this order:

- They have no price recorded for the item — or the only figure recorded is zero, which is not a price.
- Their price is in a different currency from the order. A price agreed in euros is not a price for an order written in DZD, so nothing is filled in rather than the figure being copied across as if the two were the same money.

An empty box on a product you know the supplier sells is not a fault. It is the order telling you it has nothing on file to copy: type the figure you agreed — 1,250.00 DA, say — and carry on. To stop it happening next time, record the price on the supplier's own list of the items you buy from them, on [the supplier's page](../business-partners/managing-partners.html).

**A line will not save without a price.** You are told which line and which box before anything is sent, so an unfinished line never reaches the order. Typing **0** on purpose is still fine — a free sample or a warranty replacement is a real line and saves at zero. What is refused is the line nobody priced at all.

## Purchase Order Lifecycle

| Status               | Meaning                                 | What you can do                                        |
| -------------------- | --------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Draft**            | Being prepared                          | Edit details and lines, submit for approval, or cancel |
| **Pending approval** | Waiting for authorization               | Approvers review and approve or reject                 |
| **Approved**         | Authorized by all approvers             | Send to supplier or cancel                             |
| **Sent**             | Transmitted to supplier                 | Confirm supplier acknowledgment or cancel              |
| **Confirmed**        | Supplier acknowledged the order         | Create goods receipts as deliveries arrive, or cancel  |
| **Partial**          | Some items received, others outstanding | Continue receiving goods, complete, or close           |
| **Completed**        | All items fully received                | Close the order                                        |
| **Cancelled**        | Order voided                            | No further actions                                     |
| **Closed**           | Administratively closed                 | No further actions                                     |
| **Revised**   | Superseded by a newer revision — kept immutable for the audit trail; the replacement draft carries the order forward. |

## Approval Workflow

Purchase orders go through a multi-level approval process. Approvers are picked automatically by the workflow configured for your organization, based on rules such as PO total amount or supplier — you do not select them manually at submit time.

1. While the PO is in **Draft**, click **Submit for approval** in the page header. The PO moves to **Pending approval** and the first approver in the chain is notified. If your organization has no approval workflow covering the order, submitting approves it immediately — approval is opt-in, and your administrator can add a catch-all Purchase Order workflow to make it mandatory.
2. Each approver acts on the PO from their [Inbox](../approvals/inbox.html). They can:
- **Approve** — Authorize the order at their level. When all levels approve, the PO moves to **Approved**.
- **Reject** — Deny the order with a required reason. The PO returns to Draft for revision; the rejection and reason are kept on the record permanently.
- **Delegate** — Forward this single decision to another user.
3. You can track progress without leaving the PO list: open the PO detail to see the full approval history (who decided what, when, with what comments) and which step is currently active.

## Sending and Confirming

Once approved:

1. Click **Sent**, the next step on the road at the bottom of the order's page, and confirm, to record that the order has gone to the supplier — typically after emailing or otherwise transmitting it. The road runs **Draft → Pending approval → Approved → Sent → Confirmed → Completed → Closed**: the steps already passed are ticked, the one the order is at is filled, and the next one is a button when it is a move you make yourself. Rest on a step to see when it was reached and by whom — an approval shows the approver, a delivery the person who received it. Clicking the step you are at opens the map instead: every status with an arrow for each move; the ones you can move to from here are clickable. Pending approval, Approved, Partial and Completed are never yours to pick: the approval engine and the deliveries set them for you, and the map marks such a status **Automatic**. So a draft has no button on the road at all — sending is the first move anybody makes by hand.
2. When the supplier acknowledges the order, click **Confirmed**, the next step, and confirm.

## Receiving Against the Order

Once the order is confirmed, **Create Receipt** in the header's overflow menu opens a new [goods receipt](./goods-receipts.html) with the order already filled in, and the **Deliveries** tab lists every receipt booked against it. Each completed receipt moves the order itself — to Partial while something is still outstanding, to Completed once everything has arrived — and the road keeps the name of whoever received it.

## Revising a Sent Order

Content changes after an order has been sent don't happen in place — the sent document is what the supplier saw. Instead, open the order and pick **Revise** from the More actions menu (available on Sent and Confirmed orders while nothing has been received):

1. Beelocity creates a fresh **Draft** copy at the next revision number, with a new order number and all lines carried over — edit it freely and send it when ready.
2. The original becomes **Revised** and stays immutable, with a link between the two orders for the audit trail.
3. Once receiving has begun, revising is refused — correct with the line-level **Close short** action or a goods-receipt reversal instead.

## Cancelling and Closing

- **Cancel** — Click the step the order is at to open the map, then pick **Cancelled**, at any stage before completion. Cancels all open and partial lines.
- **Close** — Pick **Closed** the same way when the PO is Completed or Partial. Use this to write off any remaining undelivered balance and administratively close the order.

## Finding an Order

The **Purchase Orders** list searches by number, and its filter button narrows it by **Status**,
**Supplier**, an **Order Date** or **Expected Delivery** range, a **Total** band, and — though
neither is a column of the grid — by **Warehouse** or **Active** — "everything sent to one
supplier still open" is two picks (see [Working with lists](../getting-started/working-with-lists.html#narrowing-the-list)).

## PO Summary

Click a purchase order's number in the list to open its page. The order's details and totals read as a receipt, with the lines beside them tracking received and invoiced quantities line by line, and the road along the bottom. Three tabs sit above it: **Approvals** for the full decision history, **Deliveries** for the receipts recorded against the order, and **Bills** for the supplier invoices raised from it.

Source: https://docs.beelocity.com/en/procurement/purchase-orders/index.mdx