Purchase orders

A purchase order (PO) records an agreement with a supplier — which products you’re buying, at what cost, on what payment terms — so incoming stock and its costs are documented before anything arrives. When the goods ship, you receive them through a linked inventory transfer, which is what actually adds the stock to a location.

Manage purchase orders under Products → Purchase orders.

Note

Purchase orders are a record, not a payment tool. Sellerlane never charges your supplier or moves money — you pay suppliers outside Sellerlane, and the PO tracks what was agreed.

Create a purchase order

1. Go to Products → Purchase orders and select Create purchase order.

2. Choose a Supplier, or create one inline — a supplier has a company name, address, contact details (name, email, phone), and a default currency. Supplier details are shared across all their POs, and edits to a supplier update everywhere it’s referenced.

3. Choose the Destination — the location the stock will arrive at. You can leave this empty on a draft, but it’s required before you mark the PO as ordered.

4. Pick the Payment terms: None, Cash on delivery, Payment on receipt, Payment in advance, or Net 7 / 15 / 30 / 45 / 60.

5. Confirm the Supplier currency. All line costs, adjustments, and the cost summary are shown in this currency — Sellerlane doesn’t convert them to your store currency.

6. Optionally add a Reference, a Note to supplier, and Tags.

7. Add line items (below) and save. The PO is created as a Draft with a sequential number like PO1.

Note

PO numbers are assigned sequentially per store and can’t be changed.

Line items

Each line item on a PO is a product variant with:

• Quantity — how many units you’re ordering
• Supplier SKU — the supplier’s own code for the item
• Cost — the per-unit cost, in the supplier currency
• Tax % — the tax rate applied to the line

To save typing, Sellerlane auto-fills supplier SKU, cost, and tax for each line: first from your most recent purchase order for that supplier and product, and if there isn’t one, from the product’s cost field. You can overwrite any auto-filled value.

Import line items from CSV

On larger orders you can bulk-add lines by uploading a CSV instead of picking products one by one:

• Rows are matched to your product variants by SKU and/or barcode.
• Quantity, cost, and tax columns are optional — anything missing falls back to the usual auto-fill.
• If the file contains duplicate rows for the same product, those rows are reported back as errors rather than imported twice; the valid rows still import.

Cost adjustments and the cost summary

Beyond line costs, you can record extra charges or reductions against the PO. Each adjustment has a type, an amount, and an optional description. The types are:

• Shipping
• Customs duties
• Discount
• Foreign transaction fee
• Freight fee
• Insurance
• Rush fee
• Surcharge
• Other

The cost summary on the PO adds the line totals, taxes, and adjustments into a total — all in the supplier currency.

The purchase order lifecycle

A PO has two statuses: Draft and Ordered.

1. Draft — edit freely: lines, supplier, destination, terms, adjustments. Drafts are the only POs that can be deleted.

2. Mark as ordered — do this once you’ve placed the order with the supplier. The destination is required at this point, and the step can’t be reversed — an ordered PO stays ordered.

3. Receive via a transfer — select Create transfer on the ordered PO. Sellerlane creates a transfer with the lines pre-filled, the supplier as the external origin (blank origin), and the PO’s destination as the transfer destination. Receiving — accept/reject counts, over-receiving, partial receipts — all happens on the transfer, and the received counts show back on the PO. See Inventory transfers.

4. Archive — once an ordered PO is dealt with, archive it to move it out of your active list (and unarchive it later if needed). Ordered POs can’t be deleted, only archived.

Caution

A purchase order can have one live linked transfer at a time. If the linked transfer is canceled, the slot frees up and you can create a new one. After the transfer is created it is independent — later edits to the PO don’t change the transfer, and vice versa.

Export as PDF

Use Export as PDF on a purchase order to open a print-ready copy — handy for emailing to the supplier or filing. Printing to PDF happens through your browser’s print dialog.

Suppliers

Suppliers live in their own list and are shared across purchase orders:

• Edits propagate — updating a supplier’s address or contact details updates it on every PO that references them.
• Deleting is blocked while any purchase order still references the supplier.

Next steps

Inventory transfers

Receive purchase orders and move stock between locations. See Inventory transfers.

Locations and inventory

Track stock per location and audit the inventory history. See Locations & inventory.