How to create and receive purchase orders

A purchase order (PO) is the document you send to a supplier to buy goods: which products, how many, at what price, and where they should be delivered. Purchase Orders is where you create those orders, watch them move through their life (draft, approved, confirmed by the supplier, then received), and book the goods into your warehouse when they arrive. Every order keeps its own running totals, its supplier and warehouse, and a full history, so you always know what is on order and what has already turned up. This guide covers the things you do most: finding orders, creating one, reading it, getting it approved, confirming it with your supplier, and receiving the goods.

Before you start

A purchase order links several other parts of Qualis together, so a few things need to exist first. Most are already set up in a working system:

• Suppliers, so you have a vendor to order from.
• Products that are marked as purchasable, so you have something to put on the order.
• Warehouses (and their Storage Locations), so there is somewhere for the goods to be delivered and received.

To receive goods later, the destination warehouse also needs the right storage locations (a vendor location, a receiving area, and a stock location). If any are missing, Qualis tells you exactly what to add when you try to receive.

Open the Buy app from the Apps page, then Purchase Orders in the left sidebar.

Find and browse your purchase orders

Start here to see every order and to narrow down to the ones you care about.

1. Open Purchase Orders from the sidebar. You land on the orders still in progress (the Open quick filter), newest first. Each row shows the PO Number, Supplier, a colored Status badge, the Order Date, the Expected Delivery date, and the Total Amount in the order's currency. The supplier name is a link, so you can jump straight to it.

2. Use the quick filter pills above the table to focus the list in one click:

   • My Orders: only the orders you created.
   • Drafts: orders still being prepared.
   • To Receive: approved or supplier-confirmed orders still waiting for goods to arrive.
   • Created This Week: recently raised orders.

3. To find a specific order, type in the Search by PO number or origin reference box on the right. The list filters as you type, so there is no need to press Enter. When a filter is active, a banner shows it as a chip with an X to remove it, plus a Clear all button. Your filters are saved in the page address, so you can bookmark or share a filtered view.

4. Each column also has its own filter in the row just under the headers, including searchable pickers for Supplier (and for Warehouse and Currency once you show those columns with the Columns button), and a date range for Order Date. Prefer cards to rows? Click Grid view above the table to see each order as a tidy card; click Table view to switch back.

Create a purchase order

This is the main task: raising a new order to a supplier. The form is split into three tabs along the top.

1. Click New Purchase Order (top right). A blue banner reminds you that the PO Number is generated for you when you save (in the format PO-00001), so there is nothing to type there.

2. On the Supplier & Order Information tab, fill in the order's basics. Fields marked with a red asterisk are required:

   • Supplier: the vendor who will fulfill the order. Start typing to search, then pick from the list.
   • Order Date: the day the order is issued. It defaults to today.
   • Expected Delivery Date: when you expect the goods to arrive (optional). Use the calendar picker.
   • Destination Warehouse: where the goods will be received.
   • Origin Type: leave this on Manual for an order you are raising yourself. (Raised for a customer order is used when an order is generated automatically from a sales order.)

3. Switch to the Line Items tab and click Add Line Item for each product you want to order. For every line, pick the Product, then enter the Qty (quantity), the Unit Price before tax, and the UoM (unit of measure, for example pieces or kilograms). You can add an optional note. Qualis shows a running Line subtotal for each line as you type.

4. Scroll down on the same tab to Pricing & Totals. Choose the document Currency (it defaults to your base currency), then optionally set a Tax Rate (%) and a Shipping Cost. Qualis adds everything up live: the Subtotal, the tax, the shipping, and the final Total Amount. The Additional Information tab holds optional extras like payment terms, a shipping address, and contact details.

5. Click Create Purchase Order (top right). Qualis saves the order, gives it its PO number, and takes you straight to its detail page.

A new order always starts as a Draft. While it is a draft you can edit or delete it freely. Once it moves past draft, editing and deleting are locked to protect the order's history.

Open and read a purchase order

Click any order in the list to open its detail page. The order's information is grouped into tabs: Overview, Line Items, Receiving, and Other.

• The status timeline across the top shows where the order is in its life: Draft, Approved, Confirmed by Supplier, Partially Received, and Received. The current step is highlighted and completed steps are ticked.
• The Overview tab gives the headline facts: Status, Order Date, Expected Delivery, Origin Type, and the Total Amount.
• The Line Items tab lists each product with its quantity, unit price, how much has been received so far, and the line total.
• Pricing Summary, also on the Overview tab, repeats the subtotal, tax, shipping, total, and payment terms.
• The sidebar on the right shows the Supplier, the Destination Warehouse, the Supplier Acknowledgment (once the order is confirmed), and the created and last-updated dates. The supplier and warehouse are links to their own pages.
• The top bar holds the order's next step, such as Submit for Approval on a draft, and Edit. The ⋮ (More actions) menu next to them holds Version History (which records every change for the audit trail), Delete Purchase Order, and, when the order's status allows them, Revert to Draft and Cancel Order.

Get an order approved

Before an order can be sent to the supplier, it usually needs approval. From a draft order's detail page:

1. Click Submit for Approval in the top bar. If the order does not need approval, this button instead reads Mark as Approved, and clicking it approves the order in a single step. When an approval workflow does apply, a window opens showing which workflow it is, the first approval step, and exactly who will be asked to approve.

2. Click Submit for approval. The approvers are notified, and the order's detail page shows an Approval Status banner with the progress so far. The order stays a draft until the approvers sign off.

Once the approvers sign off, the order's status changes to Approved, so you can move on to confirming it with your supplier.

Confirm the order with your supplier

When the supplier accepts the order and sends back their acknowledgment, you record it here. This moves the order to Confirmed by Supplier, which is the signal that goods are now on their way. From an approved order:

1. Click Confirm Order in the top bar. A Supplier Acknowledgment window opens. Enter the supplier's Acknowledgment Number (their reference for the order) and the Acknowledgment Date, then click Confirm Order in that window.

2. The order moves to Confirmed by Supplier. The acknowledgment details now appear in the sidebar, and the top bar now offers Receive Products, ready for when the goods arrive.

Receive the goods

When the delivery turns up, you book it in line by line. Qualis updates your stock automatically and tracks how much of each line is still outstanding. You can receive goods on an order that is Confirmed by Supplier or already Partially Received.

1. Click Receive Products in the top bar to open the Receiving tab, find the product that arrived and click Receive on its row. The Receive Items window opens, showing how much was Ordered, already Received, and still Remaining.

2. Enter the Quantity to Receive, then pick the Receiving Location (where the goods are being put away). If the product is tracked by lot or serial number, you also choose an existing Lot / Serial Number or create a new one. Click Confirm Receipt.

3. Qualis records the receipt and updates the line. If some of the order is still outstanding, the order moves to Partially Received and each line shows what has come in and what is still due. When every line is fully received, the order moves to Received.

If your organization uses quality inspections, receiving an inventory-tracked product automatically creates a Quality Inspection for the delivery, so your team can check the items before they are used. If the destination warehouse is missing a storage location it needs to receive, a red banner explains exactly which one to add, and the Receive buttons stay disabled until it is in place.

Cancel an order

If an order falls through, open it, choose Cancel Order from the ⋮ menu in the top bar, then confirm in the window that appears. You can cancel an order while it is a Draft, Approved, or Confirmed by Supplier. A cancelled order cannot be reopened, but it can still be deleted. If you only need to correct an approved or confirmed order, choose Revert to Draft from the same menu instead: the order goes back to draft and must be approved again. An order that already has received goods cannot be cancelled.

Good to know

A few terms you will meet on this screen:

• Status: where an order is in its life, from Draft through Approved, Confirmed by Supplier, Partially Received, and Received, or Cancelled if it is called off.
• Supplier acknowledgment: the supplier's confirmation that they accept your order, recorded as a reference number and a date when you confirm the order.
• Lot / Serial number: a label that tracks a specific batch (lot) or a single item (serial) of a product. Products set up this way ask for one when you receive them.
• UoM: unit of measure, such as pieces, kilograms, or boxes, that tells Qualis how a quantity is counted.
• Document currency: the currency the order's prices and totals are in. Its value is also recorded in your base currency at the order's exchange rate.
• MTO (Make-to-Order): an order's origin type when it was generated automatically from a sales order, rather than created by hand.