How to set up a purchase order system
- Purchase order total
- $827.21
- Line total before discount
- $740
- Discount agreed
- $37
Nothing in these worksheets is a figure we found somewhere. Every number comes from the inputs you enter and the method stated on the page: the discount comes off the line total before tax, tax is charged on the goods and not on shipping, and the budget check is your own remaining balance less your own estimate. The defaults are a worked example, not a recommendation and not a benchmark.
Setting up a purchase order system in a business that has never had one is mostly a sequencing problem. Businesses usually start by choosing software, which is the last step rather than the first, and the software then encodes a process nobody has agreed. The order that works is: decide who may commit spend and up to what, agree a numbering scheme, write the two documents, run it on paper or a spreadsheet for a month, and only then buy something to hold it. By that point you know what you actually need.
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Decide the authority before the tooling
Who may commit the business, up to what value, and who is the second approver above that. This is a twenty-minute conversation and everything else depends on it. Software that arrives before this decision will make the decision for you, badly.
Pick a numbering scheme and never reuse a number
Sequential is fine and simple is better than clever. On the worked example the next number is 1042. The only rules that matter are that numbers are never reused and that the number appears on the document the supplier receives, so it comes back on the invoice.
Run it manually for a month before buying anything
A month of real requisitions and real orders will tell you what your threshold should be, which fields nobody fills in, and whether the bottleneck is approval or lead time. Buying software first means paying to learn the same things more slowly.
Will it do what you need for How to set up a purchase order system?
Tell us how your business orders things today and what keeps going wrong with it, and we will tell you plainly whether Requly fixes it.
How to set up a purchase order system: common questions
How do I set up a purchase order system from scratch?
Decide who may commit spend and up to what, agree a numbering scheme, write a requisition form and a purchase order, run it manually for a month, then choose software to hold what you have proved you need.
What should a purchase order number look like?
Sequential, never reused, and printed on the document the supplier gets. Prefixes by year or department are optional and mostly cosmetic; what matters is uniqueness and that it comes back on the invoice.
How long does this take to introduce?
The decisions take an afternoon. The habit takes a month, and the thing that makes it stick is that invoices without a purchase order number get queried rather than paid.
Requly Pro
Keeping the orders
The worksheet prices one order on one day. Pro remembers it: the requisition it came from, the number it was issued under, who approved it, what has been received against it and which invoice it was matched to.
- Download the order as a file you can send to a supplier
- Send the order out without the Requly watermark on it
- Come back to this order with the figures still in it
- Put your own logo on the orders your suppliers receive
- Take every requisition and order out at once, as a file
- Send the purchase order to the supplier without leaving the record
- Not used by Requly: nothing here takes a payment from your suppliers
- Match orders against the bills your books already carry
$49per month, whole team
Start Requly Pro PricingRequly Pro is $49 a month and renews on the same date each month at the same $49 until you cancel. There is no introductory rate, no minimum term and no automatic step up in price. If the price ever changes you keep the price you signed at.