Create, receive or cancel purchase orders
About creating purchase orders
With Square for Retail Plus, you can easily create and manage purchase orders to stay on top of your products, track suppliers and receive inventory.
Before you begin
You can create purchase orders from your Square Retail POS app on iOS devices or your Square Dashboard.
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A maximum of 500 unique items can be added to a single purchase order.
Purchase orders do not currently support ordering or receiving decimal quantities – only whole numbers.
Create purchase orders
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Inventory management > Purchase orders.
- Click Create.
- Enter purchase order details, such as supplier name, delivery location, date expectancy and item information. To search for an existing supplier, start typing in the supplier field and select from the results. If the supplier doesn’t exist, select Create supplier to add a new one.
- To add items, use the search bar to find items from your library, or select the barcode scanner icon to scan items.
- If needed, select Add tax and include the tax type or amount > Done.
- Add your supplier’s email address and an optional note. To see the purchase order before hitting send, click Preview Email.
- If you’d like a copy of the purchase order, select Send me a copy, Save as PDF or Save as CSV.
- Click Send or Done.
You can also create a purchase order from your item library or Sell-through view. From either page, select the actions menu and choose Create purchase order or Choose existing PO to add items to an existing order.
From the Square Point of Sale app with retail mode enabled or from the Square Retail Point of Sale app:
- Open your Point of Sale app, then tap Inventory.
- Tap Purchase orders > Create purchase order.
- Select an existing supplier or tap Create supplier. Tap Continue.
- Using the search bar or a compatible barcode scanner, select the items to apply to the purchase order and tap Continue. You can see only items that are associated with the current supplier by switching a toggle during search that says the ‘Supplier name only’ filter.
- Add quantities, a supplier code and a unit cost. To adjust, tap the relevant field. Tap Continue.
- Review purchase order details.
- Add an expected date, any relevant taxes and an optional note.
- Tap Create or Save to complete the draft at a later time.
Once the purchase order is created, you have the option to send a copy to yourself or the supplier. You can also add an optional note.
Receive a purchase order
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Inventory management > Purchase orders.
- Select the purchase order you have received.
- Click Receive All or Receive None. To partially receive inventory, click Receive in the product row.
- Enter the amount to partially receive.
- Click Save.
From the Square Point of Sale app with retail mode enabled or from the Square Retail Point of Sale app:
- Open your Point of Sale app, then tap Inventory. If you’re using Square Retail Point of Sale app on Square Register, tap the list icon on the left-hand side of the screen.
- Tap Purchase Orders > tap the appropriate purchase order.
- Tap Receive items > tick off the appropriate items to be received.
- Tap Modify, then tap Receive in Full to receive the full quantity of received items you need to modify, or tap Partial Receive to receive a partial quantity > tap Save.
- Tap Next to view the Purchase Order Summary.
- Tap Receive to complete the reception.
Cancel a purchase order
In order to cancel a purchase order, you need to access your existing purchase orders. These can be purchase orders you’ve received, created or previously imported.
To cancel a purchase order from your Square Dashboard:
Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Inventory management > Purchase orders.
Click (•••) next to the purchase order you’d like to cancel.
Click Cancel Order.
View item history
You can view the history of individual items within a purchase order to track changes over time.
Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Inventory management > Purchase orders
Select the purchase order you want to review.
Select an item to view its history. The item history shows the date, state, quantity, items marked as won’t fulfil and items received for each update.