Shopify purchase orders: how to create, send and receive them (2026)

In this guide: Before you start · Create a PO · Receive stock · What's missing

Before you start

Shopify needs three things set up first:

• Suppliers. You can add them while creating your first PO.
• Locations to receive inventory into.
• Inventory tracking turned on for the products you'll order.

How to create a purchase order in Shopify

1. Go to Products > Purchase orders in your Shopify admin and click Create purchase order.
2. Pick a supplier, or click Create new supplier and add their details.
3. Choose a destination location and add products. If you've ordered a product from this supplier before, Shopify fills in the supplier SKU, cost and tax from your last PO. Otherwise cost defaults to the variant's cost per item. You can also import lines from a CSV.
4. Add payment terms and currency if needed. These are set per PO, not saved on the supplier.
5. Save as a draft, then download the PO as a PDF and send it to your supplier.
6. Mark it as Ordered once your supplier confirms.

A PO has just two statuses: Draft and Ordered. Everything after that (shipping, partial receipts, completion) is tracked on a linked inventory transfer.

How to receive inventory from a purchase order

1. Open the Ordered PO and click Create transfer. The supplier, items and quantities carry over.
2. Select the destination location and save.
3. Receive items as they arrive. Accept, reject or cancel each line, in bulk or by quantity. You can scan barcodes. Accepted units become available to sell.
4. Add shipping costs and fees to the shipment if you track landed cost.

Each PO supports one linked transfer at a time. The purchase orders list shows Linked transfer and Received columns, so you can see progress without opening each one.

What Shopify purchase orders don't do

Shopify records the order. It doesn't plan it. There's no answer to:

• Which products need reordering now? Low stock isn't the same as "order today". A product with 40 days of stock and a 45-day lead time is already late.
• How many should I order? That depends on sales per day, the lead time, seasonality and how long you want the order to last.
• By what date? Every supplier has a different lead time.

You can work these out by hand with the reorder point calculator and the safety stock calculator. Or let SteadyShelf do it for every SKU: it forecasts from your Shopify sales, gives each product an order-by date based on its supplier's lead time, drafts the PO, emails it to the supplier when you approve, and receives the stock into Shopify. $29/month, 30-day free trial.

Comparing apps? See the Stocky alternatives compared.

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