Create Purchase Orders in QuickBooks 2019

Watch the QuickBooks 2019 video tutorial below. In this tutorial, we will talk about how to create purchase orders and how that works in QuickBooks.

Welcome back! We are working in module six right now and we’re talking about working with items and inventory. We’re all the way down to section two now where we’re going to talk about creating purchase orders.

Typically, if you have a business where you buy a lot of physical products, you will use the purchase order option. That way, you can track any orders that you’ve placed to make sure they’ve come in.

A purchase order is basically just your order for a purchase of something. I want to show you how that works in QuickBooks.

In section one, we created a new inventory part called a screen door. If you remember, we actually said we have two of these on hand. What I’d like to do is order five more of these and I’m going to do that using a purchase order.

I’m going back to the Home screen and here’s where you’ll see the purchase order option. Let me just mention that if you don’t see Purchase Orders on your list, it’s because, when you went through the Easy Step Interview, you told QuickBooks you did not track inventory.

Now, you can turn these back on by going through the Preferences and telling QuickBooks you do track inventory, and then this would show up.

Purchase Orders are on the same line as Estimates. They are non-posting. That means that, if you order five of these and they never come in the door, it doesn’t affect your books in any way. It’s just a way of you tracking the orders that you’ve placed to see which ones have come in.

I’m going to click on Purchase Orders. The first thing it asks you is who is your vendor? Let’s say that it’s Pelican Building Materials. If you’re using the class feature, you’ll want to choose the correct class.

If you want Pelican Building Materials to ship this directly to your customer and your job you can choose it from here. And, if you just want them to ship it to your office then just leave that blank.

This is the template we’re going to use for purchase orders. This is the date I’m placing the purchase order. And then, there’s the PO number. Remember that all of your purchase orders will start with number one when you first start your company file, so you might want to change that number to something else.

Here’s your vendor information. And again, if you’re shipping it to someone specific, then you can choose that option here. Other than that it’s going to have your company name and address.

Underneath Item here! This is where we want to pick the screen doors. You’ll see it’s pulled in the description. And we decided we’re going to order five of these. We’ve told QuickBooks we’d pay $100 when we purchase them but let’s say they’re on sale this week for $80. That’s why I’m going to put the rate of $80 in there.

And if I’m ordering some of these for a specific customer and job, then I would choose it from the list. But if I’m just ordering these to have them in the back of my office to use in the future, then I just don’t put anything there. And that’s all I have to do to create the purchase order.

Let’s go up and look at our main tab and see what’s new. We’ve got our Find options here. You know how to use most of these already. We’ve got your print options, your email, attach a file. Here’s something you haven’t seen yet, Create Item Receipt. What we’re going to do over in section three is receive the items and that would create an item receipt that we could go look at. But chances are you’re not going to be on this screen when you’re ready to do that.

Under the Formatting tab, you have your options if you want to change the template. You’ve also got the options for your spellcheck, inserting, deleting, and copying lines. And then, you have your reports.

Here’s your transaction history again. Remember to get really familiar with that because if you ever want to track the history of this purchase order you can do it with this option here. And then, you’ll see all the reports related to purchase orders.

Open purchase orders are ones that you have not received the items from. This is one you’ll want to run regularly just to make sure you’ve received everything you’ve ordered and that’s really all that you have to do.

I’m going to hit Save & Close and now that purchase order is in QuickBooks.

Now, I’ve not received the items yet. So, if I go back to the items list and look at it you’ll see there are still two screen doors. All we did was place an order. The next thing you’ll do is receive those items and that’s where it goes into your actual inventory.

Let’s go ahead and wrap this up and then let’s go over into section three and I’ll show you how to receive these items.

Cindy McGuckin

Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education.Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.