Purchase Orders make it easy to order inventory, receive it into stock shipment by shipment, and take the next steps once your inventory arrives.
Creating a Purchase Order
Receiving a Purchase Order
See What's On Order
What’s Next?
Creating a Purchase Order
Step 1: Open Purchase Orders
Navigate to Inventory > Purchase Orders and click New purchase.
Step 2: Select Your Vendor
Choose the vendor you're placing the order with.
Step 3: Complete the Purchase Order Details
If needed, fill in any additional information provided by your vendor, including:
- Ship to location. If you have more than one store, this field is Ship to locations: pick every store the order is going to, and you'll set a quantity per store when you add products.
- Order date
- Ship date
- Cancel date
- Payment terms
You can change the order number, dates and payment terms later with Edit details, as long as the order is still open.
Step 4: Add Products
Search for the products you'd like to order and enter the quantity for each item.
- Search results stay open under the search field, so you can add several sizes of one product, or several products in a row, without searching again. Each item you add is marked Added.
- Turn on the Vendor only switch inside the search field to limit results to this order's vendor.
- Click the pencil next to a unit cost to open Edit prices. You can set the cost and retail price, see the margin, and choose whether to update the product itself with the new prices.
- Click the pencil in the Discount column to open Edit line discount and take a dollar amount or a percentage off that line, or off every size and color of that product.
- Need a product that isn't in Material yet? Click New product to add it without leaving the order.
Step 5: Finish the Purchase Order
Before creating the Purchase Order, you can also add:
- Notes
- An order discount: click the pencil next to Discount in the Billing card to enter a dollar amount or a percentage.
- Shipping: click the pencil next to Shipping in the Billing card.
When you're ready, click Create purchase. The order opens, ready to receive.
Export a Purchase Order
Need to send the order to your vendor?
Open the Purchase Order and export it as a PDF.
Receiving a Purchase Order
A purchase order is received one shipment at a time. Each shipment is recorded on its own, with its invoice number, delivery date, shipping cost and who received it, so a vendor that ships in three boxes over three weeks gives you three shipments on one order.
Step 1: Open the Purchase Order
Open the Purchase Order you'd like to receive and click Receive items. The receiving screen opens.
Step 2: Describe the shipment
At the top of the receiving screen, fill in what you know about this delivery:
- Location: if you have more than one store, choose the store the boxes arrived at. A shipment is received into one store at a time.
- Vendor invoice #: the invoice number from the vendor's paperwork. Leave it blank and Material numbers the shipment after the order (PO1234-1, PO1234-2, and so on).
- Notes: anything worth remembering, like damaged boxes or short-shipped items.
Everything you enter on this screen saves as you go. If you close the tab or switch devices, open the order and click Resume receiving to pick up where you left off.
Step 3: Enter what arrived
Set the quantity received for each item using the plus and minus buttons, or click Receive all remaining to fill in everything still outstanding. Items you haven't received yet stay at 0 and remain open on the order.
Prefer to scan? Click Start scanning to open Scan Mode. Scan each box with a barcode scanner or your device's camera; every scan adds one unit. Use Set quantity to enter a total for an item, Undo to take a scan back, and click Done when you've finished scanning. If you scan a barcode that isn't on the order, Material offers to assign it to one of the order's items. A green banner tells you the moment everything on the shipment has arrived.
You can receive more than you ordered; Material flags the extra units so you know.
Shipping and discount: the receiving screen shows the order's estimated shipping and discount for the units you're receiving. Click the pencil next to either one to enter the actual amount from the vendor's invoice for this shipment. Leave them alone and the order's estimate is used.
Step 4: Confirm and receive
Click Receive (the button shows how many units you're receiving). Review the shipment's subtotal, discount, shipping and total, then click Confirm receive. The units are added to stock and the shipment is recorded on the order.
Shipments
Every shipment you receive is listed on the purchase order. Click View shipments to see them, or open the Shipments tab on the Purchases page to see shipments across every order; you can search it by purchase order number or invoice number.
Open a shipment to see what arrived, what it cost, and how far along the order is. If you didn't have the vendor's invoice number when you received, you can add it from the shipment later.
The order's History shows the whole story: who created the order, each shipment with where it landed and what it contained, and who closed it.
See What's On Order
Once a purchase order is placed, Material keeps track of what hasn't arrived yet. You can see it in three places:
- On your product list. Products with units still coming show a blue badge such as 12 on order next to their quantity. Click the badge to open the product. Use the On order filter to see only the products you're waiting on.
- On a product's page. The On order section lists each open purchase order for that product, with its ship date and the units still to arrive.
- In the On Order report. From the Purchase Orders page, click On order report for the full picture across your store. Learn more in How to See What You Have On Order.
A product stops showing as on order once its units are received, or when you close the purchase order.
What's Next?
After receiving a shipment, there are several things you can do.
🏷️ Print Labels
Click Actions > Print Labels to print labels for the products you just received. To print labels for one shipment only, open that shipment and click Print labels; the quantities default to what arrived in it.
For more label printing options—including printing labels from multiple Purchase Orders at once—see our Printing Labels article.
🤖 Find Marketing Opportunities with Matty
Click Find marketing opportunities to have Matty recommend customers for your new arrivals and draft personalized text messages. Open a shipment first and Matty looks at just that delivery.
Learn more in our Using Matty article.
✅ Close the Purchase Order
Once you've finished receiving inventory and completed any follow-up tasks, close the Purchase Order with Close order. A closed order is read-only; if another box turns up, you can reopen it from the order page and receive again.
Need Help?
If you have questions about creating or receiving Purchase Orders, the Material Retail Team is happy to help.