Drafting purchase orders without a dedicated purchasing system

The problem

Many businesses order by phone, text or a quick email with no purchase order. Nobody can say what is on order, what price was agreed or what arrived, especially when a purchasing tool is retired or was never set up.

What SI does

From an approved list, SI builds a purchase order per supplier with item codes, quantities, agreed prices and delivery address, numbered and saved to a shared folder. It drafts the email to each supplier, keeps an open-orders sheet, and updates it when confirmations or shipping notices arrive.

Examples

The same job looks different in different businesses. These are illustrations, not client results.

• Electrical contractor

  Materials for two upcoming jobs are combined into one purchase order per supply house, each line tagged to the job.

• Specialty food shop

  Orders to five small producers go out as consistent purchase orders, and the open-orders sheet shows which ones have confirmed.

• Print shop

  Paper and ink orders are drafted from the reorder list with the distributor's item codes.

What it takes to set up

A purchase order template, supplier list with contacts and item codes, and a shared folder or sheet. Setup is often a few days.

Try it yourself

Paste this into your SI tool of choice and swap the [bracketed] parts for your own details. It asks SI to stop and show you before it does anything.

From this approved reorder list [file], create one purchase order per supplier using [template], with PO number, item codes, quantities, agreed prices from [price sheet] and delivery address [address]. Draft the email to each supplier and add each PO to [open-orders sheet]. Pause and show me before sending, submitting, posting or changing anything.