Overview
Once a purchase order exists, you manage it through approval, statuses, and payment. This article covers approving and denying purchase orders, what each status means, marking a purchase order paid, and how paid purchase orders become a job cost that flows into your profit margin.
Video Walkthrough
Watch the step-by-step walkthrough of this process.
Where to Find Purchase Orders
There are two ways to get to your purchase orders:
• On a job — open the job, go to the Billing tab, and scroll down to the Purchase Orders table.
• From the main menu — scroll down and select Purchase Orders to see every purchase order across your jobs.
Approving or Denying a Purchase Order
How approvals work is up to your company’s process — you decide who approves and at what thresholds (for example, anything over $500 must be approved by the Project Manager).
Open a purchase order and use the Approve and Deny buttons in the top right. Approving sets the status to Approved, which is an internal signal that the purchase order is good to process. Denying sets the status to Denied.
Tip: Each purchase order shows its budget against its total as a variance in both dollars and percent. For example, a $75 budget against a $100 total shows a variance of -$25, or -33% — a quick way to see whether a purchase order is within budget before approving |
Purchase Order Statuses
A purchase order moves through these statuses:
• Submitted
• Pending
• Approved — triggered by the Approve button.
• Denied — set automatically when a purchase order is rejected.
• Okay to Pay
• Paid — triggered once the purchase order is closed and paid in full.
Marking a Purchase Order Paid
Marking a purchase order paid is how you reconcile it against your actual expense and turn it into a job cost. You can do this line by line, or close out the whole purchase order at once.
Bill Paid (Line by Line)
Each line has a Bill Paid toggle. As soon as you mark a line as bill paid, that amount becomes a job cost and shows in the line’s bill paid total. Unmarking it returns the total to zero.
Close (Whole Purchase Order)
To pay the full purchase order at once, use the Close toggle. Closing marks every line as bill paid and moves the purchase order status to Paid. Closing simply means the purchase order becomes a cost — it does not remove it.
Note: Only amounts marked as bill paid show up as a job cost. Those costs appear on the job’s profit table and factor into your gross profit margin percentage |
Using the Purchase Orders List
The main Purchase Orders page (from the main menu) is where you manage purchase orders across jobs. From here you can:
• Filter by Project Manager, Purchaser, or Vendor.
• Hide or unhide closed and denied purchase orders.
• Search by PO number — useful for accounts payable reference.
This page is also the best place to review what needs approval. A Project Manager can filter to themselves and work through the purchase orders awaiting their approval.
Tip: Creating purchase orders from the job (rather than the main list) automatically links them to that job, so it’s the recommended way to create them |
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