How to Create a Purchase Order in Shopify and Receive It

A purchase order in Shopify is built in three moves: a draft in Products > Purchase orders, the Mark as ordered step, and receiving on the inventory transfer linked to the order. This guide walks those moves in the order you meet them, from the setup Shopify asks for before your first order to archiving the order once every unit is accounted for.

Two steps in that run deserve the most care: Mark as ordered, which has no undo, and the receiving actions on the transfer, which decide what becomes stock you can sell. Shopify Help Center pages, Shopify's blog and changelog, and our development store's admin were read on November 3, 2026.

What You Need Before Your First Purchase Order

A purchase order is one step in the restocking cycle. If you're still turning on tracking, counting stock or setting up low-stock alerts, our Shopify inventory management guide routes you to the right page for that step.

From your Shopify admin, go to Products > Purchase orders. Before you create your first order, Shopify's purchase order setup steps list three tasks:

1. Set up suppliers. You can also create a supplier inside the order form, covered below.
2. Create and configure locations, including the one the stock will be received at.
3. Activate inventory tracking for the products you'll order.

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Each order then holds five things: a supplier, a destination location, products, payment terms and a cost summary. That makes it the commercial half of a restock, and Shopify keeps the physical half on a separate record:

That split also means a transfer can receive supplier stock without any purchase order at all. If you're unsure you need the order on record, our answer on which path a supplier restock should take weighs the two.

Plans are not a gate we could find. Shopify's Help Center pages on purchase orders, transfers, suppliers and purchase order reports, plus its inventory management and pricing pages, read on November 3, 2026, name no plan that purchase orders are restricted to.

Staff access isn't spelled out in the Help Center either, although Shopify's developer documentation says a user needs permission to view purchase orders to read them through the API. The Help Center's staff permission pages, also read on November 3, 2026, name no permission specific to purchase orders; the closest is Manage transfers, which, in Shopify's store permissions list, allows users to create and update inventory transfers. That covers the record that receives the goods, not the order itself.

How Do You Create a Purchase Order in Shopify?

The form is one page, and you can save it as a draft to work on later. The three parts below follow the form from top to bottom; the last one covers letting Sidekick fill it in for you.

Supplier, Destination, Currency and Terms

1. In Products > Purchase orders, click Create purchase order.
2. Select the supplier. If it's new, click Create new supplier, enter the supplier details, then click Save.
3. Optional: select a destination location. You can save a draft without one and add it later, before you mark the order as ordered.
4. Check the currency and set the payment terms.

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A supplier you create here becomes a record of its own, with contact information, an address and recent purchase order line items. Edit that record later and the change reaches every existing purchase order that names the supplier.

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Each field on the form does one job, and several of them carry a limit worth knowing before you save:

None of these fields moves money. Payments to suppliers are made outside your Shopify admin, with a payment method you organize with the supplier, as Shopify's supplier payments section explains; the payment terms on the order record the deal.

Adding Products by Search, Scanner or CSV

You can only add products that already exist in your Shopify store, so a new product has to be created before it goes on an order. Search for products in the order's product section, or, with a barcode scanner, scan each product you want to add.

For each product you enter up to three things: the quantity, an optional supplier SKU, and an optional cost and tax percentage.

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If you've ordered the product from the selected supplier before, Shopify fills the Supplier SKU, Cost and Tax from your previous purchase orders with that supplier. That memory is kept per supplier, so one product can carry a different SKU for each source; our answer on where supplier SKUs go covers the rest.

With no earlier purchase order for that product, Cost defaults to the Cost per item set on the variant. A missing or outdated Cost per item therefore shows up on the line of any product with no earlier purchase order, and our answer on where to enter Cost per item shows where to set it.

For a long order, import the lines from a CSV instead. Shopify's CSV import instructions set these rules:

• You can bulk import products to a new or existing purchase order.
• Each variant is identified by SKU, by barcode, or by both.
• Cost and tax values per line are optional; you can also enter them on the order after the import.
• A variant that's already on the order doesn't import, and its row is displayed as an error.
• The file brings in product lines only.

Shopify's own pages disagree on the first rule. The Stocky transition guide, read on November 3, 2026, says the native CSV upload "only adds product line items to a new draft purchase order", while the purchase order page, read the same day, says you can import "to a new or existing purchase order."

While the two disagree, check the order itself. In our development store the Import option was there on a draft that had already been saved, so before you rebuild an order you started earlier, look for Import on that draft.

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Can Sidekick Draft the Purchase Order for You?

Sidekick, the assistant built into the Shopify admin, can do the first draft. Shopify's Stocky transition guide says you can use it to draft purchase orders for reordering from suppliers based on demand forecasting suggestions, and the same page adds that Sidekick "can also create purchase orders for you automatically."

In practice that means a filled-in order that still waits for you. Shopify's June 2026 post on its inventory updates describes asking Sidekick to create the purchase order once a recommendation looks right, "pre-filled with the products, quantities, and cost prices", and sums up the division of labour: "Sidekick handles the math, you review the result and save." Sidekick can also find a supplier by name and open its details.

Shopify describes its Spring ’26 Edition clip below as covering purchasing guidance from Sidekick, generating the purchase order, and approving it in the chat. Treat it as an illustration, not the source of the steps above, which come from the Help Center and Shopify's blog.

What Changes When You Mark a Purchase Order as Ordered?

Before you confirm, send the order. Shopify doesn't email purchase orders from the admin, so save the draft, open More actions and click Export PDF, then send the file to your supplier yourself. Shopify describes the PDF export as a copy to submit to your supplier or keep for your records.

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The Help Center describes a second click to confirm this step, but in our test one click on Mark as ordered changed the status to Ordered, with no second click or dialog.

So check the destination, quantities and costs before the first click, because that click may be the final one; step four of the run sheet lists the checks. The Help Center states the consequence in one line:

What changes after that click is narrower than "can't be reversed" suggests. You can still edit almost everything on the order, including products, costs and supplier details; Shopify's edit instructions say any details can be changed at any time, including after the order is marked as ordered. What you lose is the way back to draft, and the table shows what else changes:

Create the Linked Transfer That Receives the Stock

The order records the deal; a linked inventory transfer carries the goods to your destination and is where you receive them. The three parts below cover making that link, its one-at-a-time rule, and the statuses the transfer moves through.

Creating or Linking the Transfer

1. Open the purchase order you marked as ordered.
2. Click Create transfer.

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3. Check the transfer Shopify opens: it's pre-populated with the same supplier, line items and quantities as the purchase order.
4. If Shopify asks for a destination, select it, then click Save.

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If you already started a transfer for the delivery, link it instead. Shopify's linking rules differ by side: from the purchase order, the transfer must have the same supplier as its origin; from the transfer, the purchase order must have the same origin and at least one matching item.

After you create or link it, the transfer operates independently of the purchase order, so you can add items to it that were never on the order.

Linking is a choice, not a requirement, and Shopify's wording on transfers leaves room to skip the purchase order altogether:

One Linked Transfer at a Time

The limit is stated plainly on the page that covers receiving:

Shopify's blog says something different. Its June 17, 2026 post on inventory updates, read on November 3, 2026, says: "You can create multiple transfers per purchase order, so each shipment is tracked separately." The Help Center page, read the same day, allows one linked transfer at a time.

Until the two agree, work to the Help Center's rule, which meets the same need in another shape: when your supplier ships items in multiple shipments, you receive each shipment individually on the one linked transfer, as the receiving section below shows.

If you linked the wrong transfer, unlinking doesn't delete the inventory transfer or the purchase order; both records stay where they are.

Transfer Statuses and Incoming Stock

Shopify's transfer status list runs in this order:

While the goods are on their way, they show at the destination in the Incoming state, which isn't available to sell until it's received at the location. When you receive it, Shopify changes the state to Available automatically; an inventory app may place received stock in a different state.

Canceling a whole transfer is a separate decision with its own conditions; our answer on what happens when you cancel a Shopify inventory transfer covers it.

How Do You Receive a Purchase Order in Full or in Part?

Receiving doesn't happen where you built the order. Shopify's Help Center is explicit about where it does:

Accept, Reject or Cancel Each Item

Shopify's Help Center says a new transfer is saved as a draft that you need to process, lists Move to in transit among the actions, and says that action means the inventory can be received at the destination. In our development store on November 3, 2026, the button read Mark as in transit and moved the draft to In progress.

To reach the receiving screen, go to Products > Transfers, click the transfer linked to your purchase order, then click Receive items; you can also open that transfer by clicking it in the purchase order list's Linked transfer column.

On the transfer, each item takes one of three actions, and each sends the units somewhere different:

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One more choice appears for a product that isn't stocked at the destination yet: when you save, you choose whether to make it available there, with Stock and fulfill or Not now.

Partial Deliveries and Split Shipments

Partial deliveries need no workaround. If some quantities are still outstanding, the transfer remains In progress until you account for the rest, and its status changes to Transferred once every quantity is accepted, rejected or canceled.

A supplier that ships in several parts is a different case from a short delivery: you receive each shipment individually as it arrives. Our answer on the difference between a second shipment and a partial receipt helps you tell which one you're looking at.

Counted wrong? You can edit the accepted, rejected or canceled quantities in a received shipment to make corrections.

Where Shipping, Duties and Fees Land

Costs that arrive with the goods can go on the transfer: add them as cost adjustments on the shipment they belong to. Shopify's cost adjustment steps have you select an adjustment type, such as Shipping amount or Customs duties, and enter the amount.

The transfer's Cost summary adds up every shipment's adjustments, so you can compare the cost agreed on the purchase order with what receiving the goods actually cost.

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Whether a cost adjustment changes the variant's cost is the question merchants ask next, and our answer on whether a cost adjustment changes Cost per item follows the money.

After Receiving: Archive, Delete, Export and Report

The purchase order list tracks progress for you: it has a Linked transfer column and a Received column, so you can follow receiving without opening each order.

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When an order is finished, or you simply want it off the list, archive it. The rest of the after-care sits in the same place:

Shopify added purchase order data to Shopify Analytics on October 6, 2026, and the Purchase Orders page also shows purchase orders, on-order purchase orders, total items ordered, acceptance rate and shipments due soon. The purchase order reports page makes its default reports conditional on purchase order analytics being available to your store.

For a spreadsheet rather than a PDF, our answer on getting purchase order data into a spreadsheet walks through the report export.

If a developer asks: purchase orders can be read through the GraphQL Admin API from version 2026-10, a change Shopify announced on September 17, 2026. That release is read-only, so an app or script can't create or edit purchase orders through it.

Where Native Purchase Orders Stop, and When an App Helps

Shopify's Stocky transition guide, written for merchants leaving the app that stopped being available on August 31, 2026, lists where the native tools stop. On sending orders it is blunt:

The same guide names these edges:

Two Shopify App Store listings, read on November 3, 2026, name emailing purchase orders to suppliers as a feature. We haven't tested either app; the cards repeat what each listing says, and they are what we found that day, not every option.

Forecasting is a different job. Which apps add demand forecasting and automate purchase orders around it is covered in our comparison of forecasting and purchase order apps after Stocky.

How to Fix a Purchase Order Mistake

Because the status change you can't reverse comes early, most repairs happen on the records that follow it. Find your mistake in the first column:

The Help Center says to archive an ordered purchase order rather than delete it, but our test store still offered Delete under More actions on one with no linked transfer.

So archive an ordered purchase order, as the Help Center says. If your admin offers Delete on an ordered purchase order, treat it as permanent: the warning in our store said it can't be undone.

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Purchase Order Run Sheet

Tick the steps as you go; progress is saved in this browser, so you can come back when the next shipment arrives. Everything before step four can still be changed or deleted, step four can't be undone, and step six may take several visits if the goods arrive in parts.

The Bottom Line

Native purchase orders cover the whole run from the supplier's quote to stock you can sell, provided you work with two of their habits: the order and the goods live on separate records, and the order's status moves only one way.

Frequently Asked Questions