Purchase orders: committing spend before the invoice

Record what you have ordered, send it to the supplier and see each invoice land against it.

A bill records what you owe once the invoice arrives. A purchase order is the step before: what you have committed to spend. Recording orders lets you see what is still to come, catch an invoice that arrives over what was agreed, and notice an order nobody closed.

Orders are optional, and off by default. Plenty of trades buy by phone call and delivery note, and that is fine: "A bill never needs an order." With orders on, an order is something a bill can be matched to — never something a bill has to wait for.

Orders need Manage bills & expenses. Purchase orders are on the Crew plan and above. A workspace already using them keeps them, and existing orders stay readable on any plan.

Switching orders on

Open Commercial › Bills, choose Bill settings (the tune icon) and go to Numbering and approvals:

Use purchase orders — switches the feature on. The Purchase orders tab appears under Bills; until then it does not exist.
Orders need approving — optional. An order then waits for someone other than whoever raised it before it can go to the supplier. This is separate from the bills approval switch: checking a commitment before it is made is a different question from checking the invoice after.

Raising an order

On Bills › Purchase orders, choose New order. "What is being ordered, and what it is for. Nothing is paid and nothing is owed until the invoice arrives."

Supplier — required.
Invoice expected — when you expect their invoice.
Reference — your own, such as the job or site it is for.
The tax amount, in your workspace's tax name.
What is being ordered — lines with a description, quantity and rate. Add a line for more. The Order total adds up as you go.
Note for the supplier — printed on the order.

Choose Save draft. Orders are numbered PO-00001 onwards. A draft can be edited; once placed it cannot — cancel it and raise another.

The order form has no job field yet, so an order raised here is not tied to a job, and a job's Committed figure does not include it.

Placing it

Open the draft:

With Orders need approving on, choose Send for approval. Someone else opens it and chooses Place order. Send for approval only works when approvals are switched on.
With approvals off, choose Place order yourself.

A placed order shows as Placed and counts as money committed.

Sending it to the supplier

Send to supplier — emails the order as a PDF on your letterhead, "with a covering note saying it is an order and asking them to invoice against it." Check the address and choose Send.
Mark as sent — for an order read down the phone or sent from your own email, so the record says so either way.

The order then reads Sent 12 Sep 2026 to …, or Not yet sent to the supplier. Send again re-sends it.

When the invoice arrives

File the supplier's bill as usual. On the bill form, Against an order appears when that supplier has a placed order in the same currency, listing each as PO-00012 · £1,480.00 left. Choose the order, or leave it at None.

The New bill form with Against an order open, listing the supplier's open orders and what is left on each

The order keeps its own figures from the bills matched to it:

partly invoiced, it becomes Part invoiced;
invoiced in full, it becomes Closed automatically;
invoiced for more than it was worth, the bill is still filed and payable — a refused invoice is an invoice that sits in a drawer — and the order shows Over the order by: "The bills are filed and payable. Worth asking the supplier why the price moved."

A placed order: ordered, invoiced and over the order by, with the bills invoiced against it

Close finishes an order that will get no more invoices; Cancel order withdraws one that is no longer wanted. A closed or cancelled order is not reopened by a later bill.

The order book

The Purchase orders tab shows Open, Waiting, Drafts, Finished or All, with each order's supplier, expected date, amount ordered, amount invoiced and status. A row that went over reads over by …. View: at the head of the toolbar saves the tab, search and sort as a view — see Saved views.

Above it, the strip:

Ordered and Invoiced so far.
Still to come — what open orders are still expected to cost.
Gone quiet — orders more than 30 days past their expected date with nothing invoiced. These are almost always finished work nobody closed, so they stop counting as committed. The order says so: Close it, or chase the invoice.
Waiting for approval.

The Purchase orders register with the strip and one order over

Being told

The dashboard has Ordered, not billed and Orders over cards. Alert rules can react to A purchase order is raised, A purchase order is sent, An order has been invoiced for more than it was worth and An order is past its date with nothing invoiced.