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Creating a Purchase order (PO)
Creating a Purchase order (PO)

How to create a Purchase order and best practices

Dayvid Lorbiecke avatar
Written by Dayvid Lorbiecke
Updated over a week ago

Purchase order (PO) functionality allows for purchasing materials and products from suppliers, increasing the stock inventory levels. If you want to purchase manufacturing service of products from a contractor and track required ingredients, then create an Outsourced Purchase order instead.

In Katana, you can add all the required items from a supplier to a PO with only a few clicks. If other materials are missing from this same supplier, a notification will appear on the PO card as a reminder The required amount for each material is based on the Missing/Excess quantity displayed on the Stock screen.

If you created multiple Locations with the Buy functionality enabled, you can choose which Location the items will be received.

Creating a new Purchase order

A PO can be created either through the global "+" sign, from a quick-add button on a Manufacturing order (MO), or on the Stock screen.

  1. Click on the global "+" sign and select + Purchase order.

On a MO or in the Stock screen, click on the + Buy button at the end of the line for a specific item to create a PO for the required item. This is a quick way to create a PO for materials that are required by a MO, for products purchased for resale, or to re-establish optimal stock levels. In the quick-add window, you can choose to "Add other missing items from the same supplier to the purchase order".

Each PO has a delivery status that can be manually changed. Statuses trigger changes in the inventory and help to monitor and manage purchasing activities.

General Purchase order info

*Supplier
Name of the supplier for the material or product being purchased. This field can be edited manually at any time.

*Purchase order #
Unique identifier for the PO. This is auto-generated but can be edited manually if needed. Example: PO-1, PO-2.

Expected arrival
Date when the items are expected to arrive (in full) at your warehouse. Can be manually edited for each PO.

*Created date
Date the PO was created. The default value is set to today but can be edited.

*Currency
Currency of the order. The default value is set to the supplier currency (Standard, Professional, and Professional Plus plans - read about multicurrency).

Ship to
(only visible if you have added multiple Locations and enabled the Buy function for more than one)
Select which Location the items on the PO will be received.

* = Required

Line items

At least 1 item has to be added to each PO. You can add both materials and products to Purchase orders. Only products with the "I buy this product" functionality enabled on the product card can be added to a PO.

*Item
Name of the item you want to purchase. You can select an existing item or create a new one by typing in a material name and selecting Create new: [material name]. Only materials can be created via this flow on the PO.


​Note: the field value is a combination of Variant code, Item name, and Variant option values (e.g. "[M-1] MyMaterial / White").

*Quantity
Amount of purchased item. The Unit of Measure for the item can be set and edited on the item card. A maximum of 5 decimal places is allowed.

*Price per unit
Default Purchase Price (excluding tax) set on the item card. This can be manually edited on each PO.

Tax
Applicable Tax rate (e.g. VAT, GST) for the line item. Select a tax rate from the drop-down menu. You can manage default Tax rate, edit, create and delete Tax rates from Settings β†’ Tax rates.

Total price
Quantity x Price per Unit. A calculated field that can be edited.

* = Required

The PO card does not include the address info of your company or the shipping address of a specific Location, but address info is displayed if the PO is printed.

Additional costs

If you're buying additional services such as shipping from your supplier, you can add those costs to the PO and distribute them between the purchased items. Read more.

To add additional costs:

  1. Click on the Additional costs button beneath the Items table.

  2. Edit the additional cost row(s).

Columns

*Cost

The name of the cost you're purchasing.

*Distribution method

The method of how cost distribution between items will happen.

Total price

The total price paid (in the order currency) for the purchased cost.

Tax

Applicable Tax rate (e.g. VAT, GST) for the cost line. Tax is not distributed between items. Tax rates are chosen from the dropdown menu. You can manage the default Tax rate as well as edit, create, and delete Tax rates from Settings screen β†’ Tax rates.

Adding other missing items

It's easy in Katana to create a single PO for all items required from a selected supplier.

When you add a Supplier to a PO, Katana will check the stock status for all materials and products purchased from this supplier (based on the Default Supplier value defined on the item card).

If there are items with negative Missing/Excess values in "Stock" that are not yet included in the PO, Katana will display a notification at the bottom of the page.

Click Add them... to open a list of all missing items from this supplier and you can choose to add them to the PO individually or add all with a single click.

New items will be added and quantities for existing items will be updated on the PO to reflect the missing quantities in your stock.

Additional info

You can add comments to a PO such as specific instructions to purchasing personnel, purchasing details, reference numbers, references to the location of relevant files, etc.

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