How to add products and choose your columns

The product table is where a purchase order becomes real. This page covers adding lines, recording what the supplier confirms, and the column picker, which is the most useful control on the screen and the least obvious.

Before you start

Editing quantities and costs, and adding or removing lines, needs the purchase order update permission. Read-only viewers see plain numbers.

How do you add products?

Add product, then search your Shopify catalogue by name or SKU. Tick several at once and add them together.

A product already on the order is greyed out in the picker, so you cannot add the same line twice.

Type the ordered quantity, revised quantity and unit cost straight into the table. Changes save when you leave the field.

Clicking a SKU opens that item in Shopify's own inventory screen, which is where to check something the table is not telling you.

What is the difference between ordered and revised?

Ordered is what you asked for. Revised is what the supplier confirmed.

A revised quantity shows a small badge saying how far it moved: green for more, red for fewer. The table footer totals both.

The distinction that catches people is a blank revised quantity. Blank means nobody has confirmed this line yet, which is not the same as confirming zero.

That matters when you send the revision back, because a blank line would go out as zero and read to a supplier as "cancel this". Sending is blocked until every line has a confirmed quantity, per How to send a revision and export an order.

What is the column picker?

The icon in the table's Product heading. It switches any of sixteen columns on or off, each with a one-line explanation of what it is.

You can pin your current layout as your default and reset back to it. The Product column is always shown.

The layout is saved per browser, so it does not follow you to another computer, although it does sync across tabs on the same one.

Which columns are worth switching on?

It depends what you are doing, which is the reason the picker exists.

Writing the order: ordered quantity, unit cost, and on-hand, so you can see what you already have while you decide.

Recording a confirmation: ordered and revised side by side, so the movement is visible.

Checking a delivery: After receipt, which is on-hand plus what you are about to receive, and Discrepancy, which is received minus expected. Negative is short, positive is over, and it stays blank until something actually arrives.

Judging whether the order is any good: retail price and margin.

What is landed cost?

Unit cost plus that line's share of freight and duty, spread across everything received.

It is the honest cost of the goods, and it is usually the number that decides whether a product is worth reordering. It stays dimmed with an explanation until freight or duty has been recorded on a delivery, per How to receive a delivery.

Note that margin is calculated on unit cost rather than landed cost, so on an order with significant freight the true margin is thinner than the column shows.

What does the damaged column mean?

Units that arrived broken. They are recorded, never added to your sellable stock, and still counted as owed by the supplier.

That third part is the useful one. Damaged stock stays on the supplier's account rather than quietly disappearing into a received total.

Why is the retail price in an odd currency?

Because retail price and margin are shown in the order's currency, which is only the same as Shopify's price when you buy and sell in one currency.

On an order placed in a supplier's currency, read those two columns as indicative rather than exact.

Is there a faster way than typing every line?

Yes, when the supplier has sent a file. A confirmation spreadsheet can be imported straight onto the order, matching its columns to product, quantity, SKU and unit cost.

See How to import purchase orders and supplier confirmations.