How to move a purchase order through its stages

A stage is where an order sits in your buying workflow, shown on every order in What are suppliers and purchase orders? (Buying › Purchase orders). The default stages are Draft, Awaiting approval, Approved, Order placed, Acknowledged, Closed and Cancelled.

Your workspace may use its own names. An admin renames and reorders them in Settings › Stages › Purchase orders, and every screen follows. See How to set up the stages a record moves through.

Before you start

Moving a stage needs Edit purchase orders and the buying calendar and Change stock, receiving and store settings in Settings › Permissions. Both start at lead. For anyone without them, the Stage row is a plain label.

How do you move an order?

Two ways, and they do the same thing.

• On the Board: on Buying › Purchase orders, switch the view menu from List to Board, then drag the order's card to another column.
• On the order: open it and pick a stage from the Stage row in the Properties panel. If the panel is hidden, press the panel icon (Show properties) beside Receive shipment.

The move is recorded in the order's activity using your workspace's own stage names. A new order from New PO, on the List or the Board, starts in Draft (or whatever your first stage is called).

What are the Board's columns?

One column per stage, in your workspace's order, apart from Cancelled. Cards sit in order of expected arrival, and each shows the PO number, vendor, amount and how much has been received.

An order whose stage was renamed away or removed lands in a No stage column, so it never disappears. Move those orders to a real stage and the column empties.

Why is a stage greyed out?

Because the order cannot go there from where it is. Hover the stage and it tells you why:

• Only reachable from a named stage means the steps go in order. An admin sets which stage can follow which under Can be entered from in Settings › Stages › Purchase orders.
• Needs approval first means the order requires approval and nobody has signed it off, or it changed after it was approved. See How to route a purchase order for approval.
• Set automatically once someone approves means the approved stage is applied for you when an approval is granted.
• Use "Close short" to close this order means the finished stage follows the goods, covered below.
• Use "Cancel order" in the ⋯ menu to cancel this order means the cancelled stage comes from Cancel order. See How to send a revision and export an order.

On an order that does not require approval, Approved can be picked by hand like any other stage.

Which stage changes happen on their own?

Several, so the Board keeps up with what actually happened:

• Submit for approval moves the order to Awaiting approval.
• An approval being granted moves it to Approved.
• The first delivery you receive moves an order that is not yet placed to Order placed.
• Receiving everything moves it to Closed. The order stays open for a late box or a correction.
• Close short moves it to Closed and records that you have stopped chasing the rest.

Receiving and closing short are covered in How to receive a delivery and How to send a revision and export an order.

What changes once an order is placed?

The products on it are fixed. In a stage set to mean In progress or Done (by default Order placed, Acknowledged and Closed), the Ordered quantities lock, and Add product, Import lines and removing a line go away.

Change quantities through Revised from then on, per How to add products and choose your columns. If the lines look frozen on an order still being written, check what its stage is set to mean in Settings › Stages › Purchase orders.

Does a stage ever stop a delivery?

No. Receive shipment works whatever stage the order is in, because the goods on the dock are a fact and the stage is your paperwork. For an order closed with Close short, press Reopen in its ⋯ menu first.

What a stage does hold back is the move itself. An order that requires approval cannot move into a placed stage until somebody has signed it off.

What happens if two people move the same order?

The second person is told that somebody else already moved it, and asked to refresh and try again. Nothing is overwritten.

How do you rename an order?

Click the order's name at the top of the order page, type the new one, and press Enter. Escape puts the old name back.

What are the badges on a card?

Warnings worked out from the order itself, rather than set by anybody:

• Late: past its expected arrival and not fully received.
• No supplier reply: placed, past its revise-by date, and the supplier has not confirmed.
• Waiting on sign-off: in Awaiting approval for more than three days.
• No owner: past Draft and nobody owns it yet.
• Closed short or Short: finished with goods still missing.

Scan for badges rather than reading columns. See How to find late orders and plan revisions for working through them.