Approve and submit a purchase order

Every purchase order (PO) starts as a Draft. Approving it moves the order to Open — the active state where the stock you ordered counts as incoming inventory and the order can be received, shipped, and invoiced. Submitting then sends the order to your supplier. This guide covers approving, submitting, reverting to draft, and doing all three in bulk from the list.

A few terms used on this page

• Incoming inventory — stock you've ordered but haven't received yet. It's separate from on-hand inventory (units physically in your warehouse today). Approving a PO is what turns its ordered quantities into incoming inventory.
• Backorder — a customer order for a product you're temporarily out of. A PO can be earmarked to cover specific backorders so those customers get filled when the stock arrives.
• Dropship PO — an order the supplier ships directly to your customer, so the goods never pass through your warehouse.

Before you begin

• Without an approval policy, approving and submitting both require the Approve purchase orders permission. Reverting an open PO to draft requires the Cancel purchase orders permission.
• If your account has a purchase order approval policy turned on, the policy decides who can approve, and submitting an approved PO needs the Purchase Orders → Edit permission. Approve alone isn't enough. See When your account uses an approval policy.
• The PO needs at least one product line or cost line. SKU.io rejects an empty PO with the message "Cannot approve a purchase order with no lines. Please add at least one product line or cost line before approving."
• To email the order, the supplier needs a purchase order email address — unless the PO's Submission Format is set to Manual. Add one on the supplier's page.
• New to the PO lifecycle? See How purchase order status works and the status reference.

How a PO starts

When you create a purchase order from the Add Purchase Order modal, SKU.io saves it as a Draft (the button reads Create Draft), with a submission status of Unsubmitted.

• Automatic numbering. If you leave the PO number blank, SKU.io generates the next number in sequence. If that number is already taken, it retries automatically with the next one.
• All-or-nothing save. If any line fails to save, the whole order is discarded rather than saved half-formed. Large orders with many lines are supported.

A draft is fully editable but doesn't reserve incoming inventory or cover backorders yet — that happens when you approve it. For the full creation walkthrough, see Create a purchase order and Edit a PO and its line items.

Approve a draft purchase order

1. Go to Orders → Purchase Orders.
2. Open the PO you want to approve — for example, PO-DOCS-0001 (supplier Acme Supplies, destination Main Warehouse).
3. Click Approve. For a PO whose destination is an Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) or AWD (Amazon Warehousing and Distribution) warehouse, this button reads Reserve Inventory instead.

What you'll see: the order status changes from Draft to Open. SKU.io stamps the approval date, locks in the currency exchange rate for the order, and starts counting the ordered quantities as incoming inventory for each product.

What happens on approval

Behavior	What it means
Incoming inventory starts	Each ordered quantity now shows as incoming inventory for that product, so demand planning and stock views account for it.
Exchange rate locks	For a foreign-currency PO, the exchange rate is fixed at approval so later reporting doesn't drift with the market.
Backorder coverage binds	A draft PO doesn't cover backorders. On approval, any planned coverage tied to the PO's lines is locked to those lines, so linked backorders are marked as covered. See Create POs from a forecast.

A few more things to know:

• Save edits first. The Approve button is disabled while unsaved line changes are still saving. Wait for edits to finish, then approve.
• Dropship auto-submit. If the PO is a dropship order and the supplier has automatic dropship submission enabled, approving it also submits it to the supplier in the same step. See Amazon and dropship POs.
• Amazon FBA destinations link the approved order to an Amazon inbound shipment. That flow is covered in Amazon and dropship POs.

Request approval when you can't approve

If your role can edit purchase orders but can't approve them, a draft PO shows Request Approval instead of Approve.

1. Open the draft PO and click Request Approval.
2. Optionally add a Note to approvers, then click Request Approval.

What you'll see: the PO stays a draft with an Awaiting Approval chip, and everyone who can approve purchase orders is notified. The first of them to act approves it or rejects it with a reason. A rejected PO shows Approval Rejected, and you can change it and request approval again. While it waits, you can take the request back with Withdraw Request.

When your account uses an approval policy

If an administrator has turned on a purchase order approval policy, the policy's amount tiers decide who approves each PO, and the buttons change to match. For the full picture, see How approvals work.

• Approve shows only when you can approve the PO's amount yourself, in one click. Everyone else sees Request Approval, which sends the PO to the approvers the policy names. Hover it to see who it goes to. The PO stays a draft with an Awaiting Approval chip until the request is approved, then opens. See Request approval for a purchase order.
• Approving depends on the policy, not a permission. Being listed on the policy is what lets you approve. Request Approval needs the Purchase Orders → Edit permission, and so does Submit on an approved PO. The Approve permission alone isn't enough to submit, because under a policy approving comes from the policy.
• Revert to Draft withdraws a waiting request. If an approval or re-approval request is still waiting when you revert, SKU.io withdraws it, and the draft starts a new approval when you approve or request again.
• Changes after approval may need re-approval. If an approved PO changes in a way the policy cares about, such as a higher total, it shows Re-approval needed. Until the change is approved, Submit (re-sending to the supplier) and new deposits are blocked, though you can still receive stock. If you undo the changes, the PO is unblocked. See How re-approval works.

Submit a purchase order to the supplier

1. Open an approved (Open) purchase order.
2. Click Submit.

What you'll see: SKU.io sets the submission status to Submitted and emails the order to the supplier with the document attached in the PO's Submission Format. A confirmation reads "The purchase order '<number>' submitted to supplier successfully."

Submission Format is the file layout the supplier receives:

Submission Format	What the supplier gets
PDF	A printable PDF of the order.
XLSX	An Excel spreadsheet.
CSV	A comma-separated file for import into their system.
PDF + CSV/XLSX	A combined PDF plus the data file.
Manual	No email is sent — see Manual format below.

Submit appears once a PO is Open. If you submit a draft through bulk actions (see Approve or submit many POs at once), SKU.io approves it first, then submits.

Edge cases when submitting

Situation	What happens
Missing supplier email	For any format except Manual, the supplier must have a purchase order email. Without one, Submit is disabled with a tooltip explaining that the supplier has no purchase order email configured. Add one on the supplier page, then try again.
Manual format	Clicking Submit marks the PO as Finalized without emailing anyone. Use this when you place the order with the supplier outside SKU.io.
Order consolidation	If the supplier doesn't receive orders individually, the submission is held: the status becomes Queued and the email is sent later as part of the consolidated batch, rather than immediately.
Empty PO	A PO with no product lines and no cost lines can't be submitted.
Dropship orders	Submitted automatically only when the supplier has automatic dropship submission enabled; otherwise submission is deferred. See Amazon and dropship POs.

Email the supplier about a PO

Submitting a PO emails it automatically, but you can also send the supplier a one-off message about an order whenever you need to — to chase a confirmation, answer a question, or resend the paperwork. This ad-hoc email is separate from the automatic submission email: it doesn't change the PO's Submission status, and you can send it as many times as you like.

1. Open the purchase order.
2. In the header, open the More menu (⋮) and click Email Supplier.
3. In the Email Supplier modal, choose a message from Select email template. You get a built-in default template plus any purchase order email templates your team has saved. Selecting one loads a live preview — the subject and body render with this PO's details merged in (the PO number, for example), so you see the message as the supplier will receive it.
4. Edit the Subject, Body, and CC as needed. The To address is the supplier's email and can't be changed here.
5. Under Attachments, review which documents to include. SKU.io pre-checks these to match the supplier's Submission Format — for example, a supplier set to Email PDF & CSV Attachments starts with the PDF and CSV boxes ticked. Add or clear any before sending.
6. Click Send Email.

What you'll see: a confirmation reads "Email sent successfully." The PO's Submission status is unchanged.

A few things to know:

• The supplier needs an email. Email Supplier only appears in the More menu when the supplier has an email address on file. Add one on the supplier's page if the option is missing.
• Permission. Emailing a supplier requires the Update purchase orders permission. Without it, the menu item is hidden.
• Send Email stays disabled until you've selected a template and the subject isn't empty.

This isn't the submission email

The template picker deliberately leaves out the automatic submit and update templates — it offers only free-form message templates. Sending here notifies the supplier but leaves the PO's Submission status untouched. To formally send the order to the supplier, use Submit instead (see Submit a purchase order to the supplier).

Revert an open purchase order to draft

Reverting unapproves a PO and returns it to an editable draft.

1. Open the Open PO.
2. Open the More menu and click Revert to Draft.

What you'll see: the order status returns to Draft and the approval date is cleared. Any planned or awaiting-receipt backorder coverage tied to the PO's lines is released, so those backorders become uncovered again.

Reverting releases backorder coverage

Backorders that this PO was covering become uncovered the moment you revert. If customers were waiting on this stock, they're no longer earmarked to be filled by this order until you approve it again.

You can't revert to draft when:

• The PO has any receipts — once stock has been received (even partially), reverting is blocked.
• The PO is Closed.

Revert to Draft is also hidden for Amazon-managed POs.

Approve or submit many POs at once

You can approve or submit a batch from the list.

1. Go to Orders → Purchase Orders.
2. Select the POs with their checkboxes, or switch the scope to All Filtered to act on every PO matching your current filters.
3. In the bulk actions bar, click Approve or Submit, then confirm in the dialog.

Bulk action	What it does
Approve	Approves the selected drafts, moving each to Open.
Submit	Sends the selected open POs to their suppliers. A PO that's still a draft is skipped with the message "The purchase order must be open."

What you'll see: if only some orders can be processed, SKU.io completes the ones that succeed and reports which ones failed and why (for example, a missing supplier email). If none succeed, the whole action returns an error and nothing changes.

Under a purchase order approval policy, bulk Approve approves only the drafts whose amount you can approve yourself. It skips the others with a reason that names who they need, such as "Over your approval limit — this PO (12,431.70 USD) requires: …". The result dialog lists each skipped PO with its reason, and offers Send N purchase orders for approval (with the number), which sends them all for approval in your name. See Approve from the Purchase Orders list. Bulk Submit also skips any PO waiting for re-approval.

For more on working with the list, see Browse and manage the list.

Next steps

• Request approval for a purchase order — when an approval policy is on

• Receive stock against a PO

• Record a supplier invoice

• Close, reopen, and short-close a PO

• How purchase order status works

• Purchase order status reference