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Using a Customer Purchase Order, you can allow your customers to set a budget and an end date that can be used for orders from your company throughout the duration. For example, if you provide instruments to a school district, that district can create a PO that is open for its employees to order music supplies and instruments and they can also do work orders through your service department, and all of those transactions would draw on the budget of the CPO (Customer Purchase Order). Unlike a traditional PO, your store would be the 'vendor' and the customer's authorized employees would be ordering from you.

 

Activate Customer Purchase Orders

We can activate this feature for you. If you are in our onboarding process, your client success manager can activate it for you. If you are already live in the system you can contact our Support team (see contact info under the ? button in the upper right of the system) and we can turn it on for your store.

 

Authorizing Customers to Use and Create CPOs

For customers that will want to use this type of Purchase Order with your organization, you will first need to enable it for them. Go to your Customers list page and find the customer, then click on the Settings tab for the customer.

In the General section, you'll find a toggle to Allow Customer PO Creation. Turn it on for the customer and then click Save at the bottom.

Once this has been saved, click the customer's name to reopen the Edit Customer panel and you will see a new tab for Customer PO. Click on the tab to see your options.

If you have created any Customer Purchase Orders for the customer, they will appear in the upper area and will display relevant details. You can see the Customer PO Number and click on it to open the CPO. You can also see the starting Budget, any incoming amounts that are Pending for Work Orders that are in process, funds that have been Committed to the PO for invoices, the Remaining total for the budget, and the Date Created and Expiration Date for the CPO.

The lower area will display Work Orders and Invoices that are tied to the customer but that have not been associated with a CPO. You can click to open any such items using the ID, you can see the Total dollar amount, what Type of item it is, and the start Dates of Work Orders and the creation dates of Invoices. For all items in this area, you can click to Assign PO, and you'll see the following drop-list menu:

You can use the Find PO search field to look for a specific Customer Purchase Order, or you can visually scroll the list of all CPOs that are open for the customer. If you need to associate the item with a CPO that has not been created yet, you can click to Add New Customer PO and the system will let you create a new one and will automatically associate the line item in question with the new CPO. So if you use that option, or if you click the button in the upper right of the tab for +Customer PO, you will see a blank version of the following:

Please note that if there is a Company name saved for the customer, the system will use that name on all Customer Purchase Orders for the customer. In this window, you can enter the PO Number the customer wants to use, the Budget that is being provided, the Expiration Date for when the CPO will close out if it's still open, and any Notes that might help clarify the use of the CPO. Click Save once you have everything you need in place.

Your new CPO will appear at the bottom of the Customer PO List, as seen here. In this example, the new CPO was created and associated with an item from the lower list, so we can see that amount in the Pending column. You can click on the PO Number to see the full details.

If needed, you can change the PO Number, Budget, or Expiration Date. You can add or edit Notes as needed, and if you see an Associated ID for an item that should not be part of the CPO, you can click on the right to Disassociate the item, and it will return to your Transactions Without PO list. If you make any changes, you can Save at the bottom. Also, if the PO has run its course, you can click to Close PO, or if it is being cancelled, you can Delete the PO. Deleting a CPO will return any Associated IDs to the Transactions Without PO list, as well.

 

Using Customer Purchase Orders in Invoices and Work Orders

After creating an Invoice or a Work Order, you have the ability within those items to associate them with a Customer Purchase Order. In both cases, you will find a field in the upper right you can use to either search for a CPO, click on one from the list, or make a new one with the Add New Customer PO at the bottom, as pictured here on an invoice:

Once you have set the associated PO, you will see a Save button in the same area as the Search field. This is separate from the regular Save button and will only save the CPO association change for you. If you make other adjustments to the invoice or Work Order, you will use the Edit and then Save functions on an invoice, or just the Save button on a Work Order to finalize those changes.

 

Using Customer Purchase Orders in the Register

In the Register, there are a couple of ways to work with your Customer Purchase Orders. If you pay for a transaction via the On Account payment method, if the Customer has the permission enabled to create Customer Purchase Orders, you will see this in the payment panel if you click on the Find PO field:

Please note that if you try to associate an item with a CPO that would exceed its budget, a warning will pop up letting you know.