Manage purchase orders

Purchasing is where a formal order to a vendor gets created, tracked, and received. It's the counterpart to a field purchase — this is the office issuing a planned order, not a technician expensing a same-day store run.

Create a purchase order

Choose New purchase order and fill in the vendor, and — if this order is for a specific job — the work order or project it's for. Add line items: each one can carry its own job link too, so a single PO can supply several jobs at once, with each line's cost still attributing to the right job for costing.

Status

A PO moves through Draft → Ordered → (Partial) → Received, or Canceled at any point before it's received. If your shop has a purchase approval threshold set, an order over that dollar amount routes to Pending Approval instead of going straight to Ordered, and needs an approval before it can proceed.

Receive an order

Receiving records what actually arrived against each line item — Thermal tracks received quantity separately from ordered quantity, so a partial delivery is reflected correctly (Partial status) rather than forcing you to wait for the whole order. Receiving is also what updates inventory quantity and cost — see Manage inventory and parts.

To correct a mistake on an issued PO, void it and issue a new one — line items on a PO aren't deleted individually once the order exists.

Field purchases, reconciliation, and sync status

Three related screens live under Purchasing but cover different jobs, each with its own guide:

Field purchases — receipts a technician submitted from the field, waiting for office allocation and approval. See Review and allocate field purchases. Note: a field purchase's cost allocates to a job for costing, but doesn't update on-hand inventory the way receiving a PO does.
Reconciliation — a shop-wide check that ordered, received, and billed amounts line up, plus truck-stock drift and unmatched vendor bills. See Review materials reconciliation.
Sync status — whether purchasing and vendor-bill records are syncing to your accounting system. See Review accounting sync status.

Reference

Who can manage purchasing — Owners and Office users only. Dispatchers and Technicians don't have access to this screen (a technician submits a field purchase from the field app instead). See Roles & permissions.
Purchase order statuses — the exact status enum is in Status & domain values.