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Creating purchase orders

Purchase orders are used in Retail POS to order or reorder stock for your store. They allow you to maintain a record of ordered products across vendors, ensuring your inventory numbers stay accurate.

Key fields in the Check In Summary and Costs sections

Purchase orders allow you to see their subtotal and the quantity and cost of all ordered items in comparison to checked-in items. Purchase orders include the following key fields in their Check In Summary and Costs sections:

  • Received Total: The sum of the cost of checked-in items before the discount, shipping charges and/or credits are applied. As you check in items and save the purchase order, this field is updated. When you click Print > Order, this field is included in the document.
  • Ordered Total: The sum of the cost of all ordered items before the discount, shipping charges and/or credits are applied. When you click Print > Order, this field is included in the document.
  • Subtotal: The sum of the cost of all ordered items before the discount, shipping charges, and/or credits are applied.
  • Ordered Total (under Costs): The sum of the cost of all ordered items including shipping charges, other adjustments, and/or discounts are applied.

Check In Summary and Costs sections.

Creating a purchase order

  1. From the main menu, click Inventory > New Order.

    Inventory page with New Order button emphasized.

  2. For multi-store accounts, in the Location drop-down, select the shop you're creating the purchase order for. The shipping address for the shop you select will appear on the purchase order.

    New Purchase Order page with options to select Location, Vendor, and to enter additional information.

  3. Under Details, in the Vendor drop-down list, select the vendor. If the vendor isn't listed, you can create them by entering the name of the vendor and clicking +Add.
  4. Click Save Changes.
  5. This will take you to the main page for this purchase order. Fill in any other desired information.

    Any text in the General Notes field will also appear in the Purchase Orders list (found under Inventory > Purchase Orders).

    Main screen for the new purchase order, with sections for Status, Details, Vendor information, General Notes, Check In Summary, Costs, Add Items, and Reorder Items.

Populating a purchase order

To order your items, you will need to add your desired items to the purchase order. To import many items at once, you can batch import items into a purchase order. You can also manually search for items, add by reorder points, or add special order items.

Manually search for items

  1. Navigate to the Add Items box on your purchase order page.

    Main purchase order page, with Add Items section emphasized.

  2. Type in a keyword to search for relevant items across all of your shops.

    To search across all available catalogs, click the Search All Catalogs tickbox. To search only within items associated with your selected vendor, make sure this tickbox is not checked.

    Click Add Item.

    Clicking Add Item with a blank search field displays all items across all shops.

  3. If only one item matches your search, this item will be automatically added to your purchase order.

    If multiple items match your search, you can click Select for a single item you wish to add. To select multiple items, click the tickboxes for each item and then click +Add Selected.

    Page showing multiple item options based on the entered keyword.

Adding by reorder points

If you’ve previously set item reorder points and reorder levels for the currently selected shop (see Adding items), you can add the items that have reached their reorder points for the selected vendor. To do this:

  1. Navigate to the Reorder Items box on your purchase order page.

    Main purchase order page, with Reorder Items section emphasized.

  2. To select only items from within a certain category, click +All under Category.

    A pop-up will appear. Click Select on your desired category.

    Pop-up window showing different categories for selection.

  3. To select only items from a certain brand, click into the Brands drop-down and choose the desired brand.
  4. Click +Auto Add All. A pop-up will appear to confirm this choice; click OK.

To qualify for adding to your purchase order using this method, items must:

  • Have reached their reorder points in the currently selected shop.
  • Have a Vendor ID from the purchase order vendor OR the item must have its default vendor set to the purchase order vendor.
  • Have a quantity in stock and on backorder that is less than or equal to the reorder point for the item.

Adding special order items

If a special order item already exists for the currently selected shop, you can add this to your purchase order by doing the following:

  1. Click Special Orders.

    Main purchase order page, with Special Orders tab emphasized.

  2. Click +Add To PO. The status for the special order item automatically changes to Ordered.

    To select multiple special orders, check the tickboxes next to each and then click +Add Selected To PO.

    Special Orders page, with one entry under Special Orders To Add.

  3. The selected special order(s) will now appear under Special Orders On Purchase.

    Special Orders page, with one entry under Special Orders On Purchase.

  4. Return to your purchase order's main screen by clicking Order on the left side.

Adjusting item quantities

  1. On your purchase order's main screen, navigate to the Items section at the bottom of your screen.

    Items section of the main Purchase order screen.

  2. Click into the ORDER QTY. box for the item you wish to adjust the quantity of and type in the desired quantity.

    • The QTY. ON HAND column shows how many of the items you currently have in your store.
    • The QTY. ON ORDER column shows how many items are already ordered or back ordered on existing purchase orders for the same shop location. To be included in this column, the existing purchase orders' statuses need to be set to Ordered or Check-In.

    If you use QuickBooks, the Shipping and Other amounts under Costs are exported to QuickBooks. The Discount % amount is applied to the item unit cost and is factored into the total cost of the purchase order.

Adjusting costs

The cost in the UNIT COST column is based on the cost of the item from the specified vendor, adjusted to include shipping and/or discounts, and then divided by the number of units in ORDER QTY. for each item.

  1. You can adjust the costs by clicking into the RETAIL PRICE box for the item and typing in a new retail price.

    The default price in this field is the item's cost from the selected vendor. You can optionally adjust the item's cost per vendor, which will affect the default price for this purchase order as well as future transactions involving this item.

  2. Using the Shipping Cost drop-down list, select your preferred shipping cost option.

    Shipping cost drop-down list, showing options Don't apply to items, Split based on vendor cost, and Split evenly based on item quantity.

    There are three options for how to handle shipping costs for your purchase order:

    • Don't apply to items

      Choosing this option means that the items' unit cost is unaffected. This has previously been the default option.

      Costs section with Don't apply to items selected.

    • Split based on vendor cost

      Choosing this option means that the shipping costs are applied based on the current unit cost of each item.

      Costs section with Split based on vendor cost selected and cost totals updated accordingly.

    • Split evenly based on item quantity

      Choosing this option means that the shipping costs are applied based on the quantity of items ordered from each vendor.

      Costs section with Split evenly based on item quantity selected.

  3. Using the Discount drop-down list, select your preferred discount option.

    To add a discount and still be able to edit the unit cost, you must select Don't apply to items for both the Shipping and Discount fields.

  4. Enter the amount of the discount you wish to apply.
    • Choose to apply a discount in dollars by selecting the $ option and typing in the dollar amount.
    • Choose to apply a discount by percent by selecting the % option and typing in the percentage.
  5. Once you have selected your shipping and discount preferences, click on the Apply changes button to confirm your choices.

    Costs section of the purchase order page with the Apply changes button emphasized.

    Whichever options you choose for Shipping and Discount will be saved for the next purchase order you create.

  6. To change your order's status, click the Ordered button or select Ordered from the drop-down list under Status and then click Save Changes.

Changing purchase order status

  1. From the main menu, click Inventory > Purchase Orders.
  2. Find the purchase order in the list and click it.

    • To filter the list by vendor, click into the All Vendors drop-down, select the desired vendor, and click Search.
    • To filter the list by shop, click Advanced, click into the Location drop-down, select your shop, and click Search.

    List of all Purchase Orders, with All Vendors, Advanced, and Location highlighted.

  3. Click the Ordered button at the top of the page, or select Ordered from the drop-down list under Status and then click Save Changes.

Updating purchased order status on received items

  1. From the main menu, click Inventory > Purchase Orders.
  2. Find the purchase order in the list and click it.

    • To filter the list by vendor, click into the All Vendors drop-down, select the desired vendor, and click Search.
    • To filter the list by shop, click Advanced, click into the Location drop-down, select your shop, and click Search.
  3. Click the Check In button or select Check-In from the drop-down list under Status and then click Save Changes.

    Main Purchase Order screen, with Save Changes, Check In, and Status drop-down emphasized.

Checking in received items

You will need to check in your items using one of the following methods:

Scanning

  1. Before scanning, you can enter the total units you wish to check in using the Quantity field.

    With the cursor in the Item Search field, scan the item's barcode.

    The barcode must be stored in the item's details to use this method.

    Main Purchase Orders screen, with Mark Items Received section emphasized.

Vendor ID

  1. Type in the number of items received into the 1 field.
  2. With the cursor in the Item Search field, type in the Vendor ID.
  3. Click Receive.

    If multiple items exist with the same Vendor ID, you will receive an error message and the operation will not complete.

Item description

  1. Type in the number of items received into the 1 field.
  2. Enter the item description in the Item Search field.
  3. Click Received.

Manual check-in

In the Items section, type the quantity you have received in the # Received field.

Receive all items

  1. To mark all items as received, click the Receive All Items button.

    Main Purchase Orders screen, with Receive All Items button emphasized.

  2. A pop-up will appear asking if you are sure you want to receive all items. Click OK.

Adding received items to inventory

  1. Click Add Received To Inventory.

    Main Purchase Orders screen, with Add Received To Inventory button emphasized.

  2. A pop-up will appear asking you to double-check the information. If the information looks correct, click Add items.

    If this does not look correct, click Cancel and make further adjustments, then repeat the above steps.

If there are outstanding items or quantities remaining on the purchase order, repeat the steps under Receiving purchased items when the additional shipments arrive. Refer to our Managing partial purchase order shipments article for more information on partial purchase order shipments.

Completing your purchase order

After you have added items to inventory, click the Finished button or select Finished from the drop-down list under Status and then click Save Changes.

Main Purchase Orders screen, showing the Finished button and Check-In drop-down list under Status.

If you use QuickBooks for accounting, depending on your QuickBooks Export Setup settings (located in the Lightspeed Retail REPORTS screen under Accounting), a purchase order may need to be marked as Finished for it to export to QuickBooks.

Printing labels for your received items

To print received items and create labels, click Print. In the Print drop-down, select between printing all received labels, your last received labels, or the order. Make sure to set up your label printer.

Dropdown showing options to print All labels, All received labels, Last received labels, or Other.

After making your selection, your printer will connect to Lightspeed Hub to facilitate the print.

What's next?

About Lightspeed Hub

Install Lightspeed Hub to guide you through the hardware setup process.

Learn more

Printing labels

Learn how to print labels from your purchase order.

Learn more

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