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Create or cancel purchase orders

Who’s this article for?
This article is for business owners and their team members with inventory permissions who want to create or generate purchase orders to track vendors and inventory. This is a feature available with Square for Retail Plus. Learn more about Square Staff and custom permissions.

About creating purchase orders

With a Square for Retail Plus subscription, you can create purchase orders (POs) to stock up on products, track vendors, and receive inventory. For more details, refer to the comparison of the Square Point of Sale app with the Retail Free and Plus features.

Before you begin

A maximum of 500 unique items can be added to a single Purchase Order.

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.

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.

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