The paper before the bill
Purchase orders are here — order from a vendor before their bill exists, send it for confirmation, and convert it to a bill when the goods arrive.
Bills record money you already owe. Purchase orders are the step before that — the order you place, written down and sent, ready to become the bill when the goods arrive. Off by default; turn it on under Settings → Features (it lives under Bills).
Order before you owe
The buy-side twin of estimates. Pick the vendor, add the lines at your cost prices, set an optional expected by date, and send — by email with the PDF attached, by WhatsApp, or as a copyable link. Open orders remind you when a delivery is near, and say so plainly when it's late.
The vendor answers, you record it
Vendors get a clean, read-only page with your branding — no login, nothing to figure out. They confirm the way they always do (a call, a message), and you mark the order confirmed, declined, or cancelled. Confirmed orders stay editable, because quantities shift until the truck arrives.
One click to the bill
When the goods land, Convert to bill turns a confirmed order into a draft bill — same lines, same totals, each document pointing at the other forever. Deleting the draft hands the order back to confirmed, ready to go again.
A few rules we kept, so the books stay honest:
- A purchase order moves no money and no stock — the bill it becomes does all of that.
- An order can't be deleted while its bill is alive — the paper trail survives.
- Numbering is automatic (PO-0001…) with your own prefix under Settings → Documents.
- Paper-Ai speaks the whole module — "order 20 bags of cement from A-Plus" drafts one, and "what's happening with PO-3" answers with its live status.