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Create, receive or cancel purchase orders

Who is this article for?
  • Sellers with general items and inventory permissions. Set permissions in the Square Dashboard.
  • Square for Retail Plus, and Premium subscribers.
  • 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 vendors and receive inventory. 

    Before you begin

    • You can create purchase orders from your Square Retail POS app on iOS devices or your Square Dashboard.

    • 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.

    The ability to create or edit purchase orders in-app is not available for Square Terminal at this time.

    Create purchase orders

    Square Dashboard

    1. Sign in to your Square Dashboard and click Items & orders > Items > Inventory management > Purchase orders.
    2. Click Create.
    3. Enter purchase order details, such as vendor name, delivery location, date expectancy and item information.
    4. Click Create or Save as Draft.
    5. Add your vendor’s email address and an optional note. To see the purchase order before hitting send, click Preview Email.
    6. If you’d like a copy of the purchase order, select Send me a copy, Save as PDF or Save as CSV.
    7. Click Send or Done.

    Retail POS app on iOS devices

    You can create, edit and manage purchase orders with Square Retail POS app on iOS devices and Square Register. To do so:

    1. Open the Retail POS app, then tap Inventory.
    2. Tap Purchase orders > Create purchase order.
    3. Select an existing vendor or tap Create vendor. Tap Continue.
    4. 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 vendor by switching a toggle during search that says the ‘Vendor Name only’ filter.
    5. Add quantities, a vendor code and a unit cost. To adjust, tap the relevant field. Tap Continue.
    6. Review purchase order details.
    7. Add an expected date, any relevant taxes and an optional note.
    8. 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 vendor. You can also add an optional note.

    Once you’ve created a purchase order for an existing vendor, the item variation will be associated with that vendor and the cost to purchase from that vendor. Items associated with a vendor will be visible under the Vendors tab in the Item Library

    Receive a purchase order

    Square Dashboard

    1. Sign in to your Square Dashboard, then go to Items & orders > Items > Inventory management > Purchase orders.
    2. Select the purchase order you have received.
    3. Click Receive All or Receive None. To partially receive inventory, click Receive in the product row.
    4. Enter the amount to partially receive.
    5. Click Save.

    Retail POS app

    1. Open the Retail POS app, then tap Inventory. If you’re using Square Retail POS app on Square Register, tap the list icon on the left-hand side of the screen.
    2. Tap Purchase Orders > tap the appropriate purchase order.
    3. Tap Receive items > check off the appropriate items to be received.
    4. Tap Next to view the Purchase Order Summary.
    5. Tap Done 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 received, created or previously imported. 

    To cancel a purchase order from your Square Dashboard:

    1. Sign in to your Square Dashboard and click Items & orders > Items > Inventory management.

    2. Select the Purchase Orders tab and click (•••) next to the purchase order you’d like to cancel.

    3. Click Cancel Order.

    After a purchase order has been cancelled, it will be moved into the Archived Orders section.

    It is not possible to cancel purchase orders from the Square Retail POS app at this time.

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