Shopify Purchase Orders: Complete Guide

If you've been running purchase orders out of a shared spreadsheet or a string of emails, there's a decent chance you don't know Shopify already has a purchase order tool built into the admin. It doesn't come up unless you go looking for it under Products → Purchase orders. It's real, and it covers more than most merchants assume. It also stops short of a few things a growing operation eventually needs. This guide covers the whole thing: what's native, how to create and send one, and what a dedicated app adds once the native version runs out of road.

Does Shopify have native purchase orders?

Yes. Shopify's admin has a native purchase order object, reachable from Products → Purchase orders. It supports a supplier record, a destination location, line items with quantity and cost, and it exports as a PDF you can send to your supplier. That's a genuinely useful starting point, not a stripped-down placeholder.

It's also narrower than the generic procurement lifecycle a lot of PO software describes. On the object itself, a Shopify purchase order only ever carries two statuses: Draft, while you're building or reviewing it, and Ordered, once you've submitted it to the supplier. Nothing on the PO itself ever reads "Partially Received," "Received," or "Closed." Receiving, partial receipt, completion, and closure all happen on a separate, linked inventory transfer that you create once the PO is marked Ordered. Two objects, not one six-stage pipeline: the PO records the commercial agreement, the transfer records the actual movement of goods.

A few things Shopify's native tool doesn't do, as far as its own documentation shows: it doesn't email the PO to your supplier for you (you export a PDF and send it yourself), it doesn't run three-way matching against a supplier invoice, and it has no formal multi-step approval workflow before a PO can be marked Ordered. It also has no automatic reorder-point-triggered PO creation; Shopify's admin has no native reorder-point concept at all. The one app that once brought reorder points into the Shopify ecosystem, Stocky, has fully shut down.

Creating a purchase order, step by step

1. Go to Products → Purchase orders and select Create purchase order.
2. Choose a supplier. Pick an existing supplier record or create one — name, contact, and default currency.
3. Set the destination location. The specific warehouse or store the stock should arrive at.
4. Add products. Search and add line by line, or bring in a longer order faster with a CSV import or a barcode scan. Each line takes a quantity, the supplier's SKU if it differs from yours, unit cost, and tax percentage.
5. Fill in the rest. A reference number, notes to the supplier, payment terms, and tags if you use them to filter later.
6. Save as Draft and review it. Everything is still editable at this stage.
7. Mark it Ordered once you're ready to send it — this signals the order has gone to your supplier.

What a PO needs

Shopify's own PO fields track the standard procurement field set closely: supplier, destination location, per-line product/quantity/cost/tax, reference number, notes, payment terms, currency, and tags. For the full reasoning behind each field, not just what Shopify's form asks for but why it matters when a supplier disputes an order, see what a purchase order should include, which covers the complete anatomy without repeating it here.

Sending it to your supplier

Once a PO is marked Ordered, open it and use More actions → Export PDF. Shopify generates a formatted PDF you can save, print, or attach to an email — but it doesn't send that email for you. You're still the one opening your inbox, attaching the file, and hitting send, for every supplier, every time.

Sending the email yourself is usually the first thing to go once a dedicated app enters the picture. StockCue generates the same kind of PO PDF from a reorder recommendation and emails it to the supplier directly, on the Starter plan and up. The difference isn't the document; it's not having to be the one exporting, attaching, and sending it fifteen times a week.

Tracking status

Because Shopify only tracks Draft and Ordered on the PO itself, "where is my order" really means checking the linked transfer once one exists — its status reads In progress until everything's received, Transferred once it is. The full tracking routine, including why an open PO doesn't count as available stock, is covered in how to track purchase orders in Shopify.

Common problems

Three situations come up often enough to deserve their own answer rather than a paragraph each here:

• A shipment arrives short of what you ordered: see managing partially received purchase orders.
• A supplier misses the date you expected: see managing late purchase orders.
• You're not sure whether a shortage should be a new PO or a transfer between your own locations — see purchase orders vs. inventory transfers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Shopify have a native purchase order feature?

Yes. It's in Products → Purchase orders, and covers supplier records, line items, and PDF export. It's narrower than generic procurement software in one specific way: the PO object itself only tracks Draft and Ordered — receiving and closure happen on a separately linked inventory transfer, not on the PO.

How do you create a purchase order for a Shopify store?

Go to Products → Purchase orders → Create purchase order, choose a supplier and destination location, add line items with quantity and cost, fill in reference and payment terms, save as Draft to review, then mark it Ordered when you're ready to send it.

What should be on a Shopify purchase order?

Supplier, destination location, per-line product with quantity, supplier SKU, cost and tax, a reference number, notes, payment terms, currency, and tags.

How do purchase orders affect Shopify's Incoming inventory number?

Marking a PO Ordered doesn't, by itself, create Incoming inventory. That only happens once you create the linked inventory transfer for that PO — items in transit on that transfer sit in the Incoming state at the destination location until they're received, at which point they move into Available.