Purchase Order template reference
The Purchase Order template is the layout of the PDF you send a supplier when you buy stock, filled in from a single purchase order: the supplier, the destination warehouse, the products and agreed costs, and the commercial terms.
It's used in two places on a purchase order — Download PDF in the Actions menu, and Email Supplier, which attaches the same PDF. A store copy therefore changes the emailed version as well as the downloaded one. The file is named after the purchase order number.
Editing the template changes every purchase order from then on. It doesn't touch a PDF already downloaded or emailed.
Three address blocks, not two
A purchase order carries three parties, and it's worth being clear which is which.
You, the buyer
Top left: your store's logo, store name, and full store address as a ready-made block. On a purchase order this is the only address block that also carries your phone and email — which makes it the natural place for the contact a supplier should reply to.
The supplier
From the supplier record: company name for the "Vendor" heading, supplier email, phone, account number, and a formatted address block available with or without the name line.
Use the company name rather than the contact name — it falls back to the supplier's name when no company name is set, so it's the safer of the two.
Ship To
On a purchase order the Ship To address is the destination warehouse you chose on the order. The field group is labelled Ship-To Address (destination warehouse) to keep that straight.
Short codes for state and country are separate fields, which is what you want for a compact one-line address.
Line items and the supplier's own part number
Each line carries quantity, your SKU, the supplier SKU, the description, the price (the agreed unit cost) and the line total, plus the barcode where the product has one.
Prices here are what you pay the supplier, not what you sell for.
Suppliers usually want to see their own part number, so supplier SKU sits alongside your internal SKU, filled from the supplier product mapping. It's empty when that product has never been linked to that supplier.
The built-in template prints the supplier's number when one exists and quietly falls back to your SKU when it doesn't.
If you want both numbers visible, add a second column rather than swapping supplier SKU in for your own — a supplier who never mapped their catalogue would otherwise get a column of blanks.
Totals, freight and other charges
Totals are pre-calculated:
| Figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| Subtotal | The product lines before tax, discount and freight. |
| Discount | The order-level discount. |
| Tax | The order-level tax. |
| Freight | The freight charged on the order. |
| Total | The grand total payable, already including tax, freight and other charges, less the discount. |
| Total Units | The unit count — suppliers often use it as a pack-count sanity check. |
Charges that aren't products — freight, customs brokerage, duties, handling — live in their own repeating section giving description, quantity, amount, line total and the charge type name.
Listing them shows the supplier a breakdown; it doesn't add to the bill. Adding them onto the Total yourself would double-count.
Wrap the block in the Has Financial Lines switch so the heading disappears on orders with no extra charges.
Dates
The order date comes in two forms — a plain year-month-day value and a readable "Jan 12, 2024" version.
For delivery expectations there's an estimated arrival at your warehouse and an estimated departure from the supplier.
The order's own history is available too: approved, submitted, supplier confirmed, finalized, fully shipped and fully received. All dates use your account's time zone and date format.
Currency, terms and Incoterms
Purchase orders carry the commercial agreement, and these fields exist only on this document type:
- the three-letter currency code — worth showing whenever you buy in more than one currency, since amounts carry no currency symbol of their own
- the payment term name and its plain-English description, which is useful when your term names are internal codes
- the Incoterm, with its description and display form
- ship via / shipping method, tracking number, and supplier notes
What the stock template contains
The template you start with — and the one Reset to default restores:
- your logo, store name and address
- a Purchase Order title with the PO number and long-form date
- the Vendor block beside the Ship To block
- a Currency and Ship Via line
- the Supplier Pickup Authorization card, on pickup orders only
- the items table: Qty / Item / Item Description / Price / Total
- a totals box: Total Units, Subtotal, Discount, Tax, Total
Everything else a purchase order can supply — payment terms, Incoterm, expected arrival and departure dates, tracking number, supplier notes, logistics milestones, the freight and charges breakdown — is not in the starting layout and has to be added.
Purchase orders print on US Letter, and a page number reading "Page 1 of 3" is added automatically at the bottom right, so a page-number line of your own would duplicate it.
Things the template can't show
Several common asks simply aren't available:
| Not available | |
|---|---|
| Product image on the line | Manufacturer part number or brand on the line |
| Per-line discount | Per-line tax |
| Received-so-far or outstanding quantity | A separate bill-to or remit-to address |
| A supplier contact person beyond the supplier's own name, email and phone | A signature or approver name |
Your store address is the only company address on the document.
The template also can't calculate. It cannot add, subtract, compare, test whether a number is zero, or attach a currency symbol — use the supplied totals and the yes/no switches instead.
The starter suggestions include a bill-to block and a due date. Neither has live data behind it on a purchase order, so what you get is a heading with nothing under it.
The preview is not the printed document
The editor's preview renders your layout with sample data through a different engine than the real PDF, so some things don't carry over:
- the repeating masthead
- the Letter page size
- the page-number footer
All three exist only in the real document. The sample data also fills item fields that a real purchase order leaves blank.
The Sample order picker has no effect here — it only loads real data for packing slips — so a purchase order layout can only be proofed against sample data inside the editor.
It's the only way to see the masthead, the page size and the footer as the supplier will.
Next steps
- Common customizations by document type — logistics dates, the pickup card and the repeating masthead.
- Page setup & CSS support — paper size, margins and page breaks.
- Print, email & share these documents — downloading a PO and emailing it to the supplier.