Purchase Orders(POs) are a great way to control costs and boost the efficiency of your finance team. In short, POs are official documents for your suppliers that clearly state your order requirements. Our Word and Excel purchase order templates are customisable to your business, but there are some elements to a PO that are necessary whatever your business does.
The key elements of a Purchase Order are:
The purchase order template opposite is available to download for FREE. Zahara users can create POs that look like this, and have access to a whole library of other templates.
Word is fine if you’re only sending the odd PO, but it’s not really suitable for regular use. In a similar vein, Excel gives you the benefit of calculating your totals but the document itself is a bit of an eyesore!
In essence, because the software will do all the boring bits for you! You can create POs in app, and then send them out for approval before they even go to the supplier. All your records will be stored for you and will automatically be matched to the supplier invoice when that arrives.
Instead of trying to track lots of random documents, there’s a full audit trail so you can have complete control and oversight. It’s a pretty solid system, if we do say so ourselves! .
Yes, enjoy! A free gift from us to you.
PDF is the safest way to send a purchase order to a supplier. Both these templates open in Word or Excel and Microsoft allows you to Send as a PDF, using File > Share > Send as PDF.
If you’re using Zahara, the PDFs can be sent in JSON or CSV format which makes it super easy for the supplier to get the data.
A purchase requisition comes one step before the PO, and it’s simply the request to buy something. Usually, the PR will follow an approval workflow where a person in a company wants to buy something but needs approval from management to spend the money. Then, once approved, the purchase order follows.
A purchase requisition is an internal document that is essentially a request. A request to buy something for the organisation and that request will likely be subject to an approval process.
A purchase order is a formal document that is sent to your supplier requesting goods or services, supplied at a specific price and/or within a specific time frame. A purchase order (is basically an offer of a contract.
Yes! It’s an absolute must. We recommend converting the document into a PDF as soon as it’s sent, and storing them all in a secure folder.
When you send a PO to a supplier, you’re basically offering a contract for them to supply goods at the price you’ve requested. If they accept the order, you’ve entered into that contract and are obliged to fulfil your side of the agreement and make the purchase.
This is why it’s so key to have a robust approval process and full audit trail so you’re never caught out!
When using purchase order software, like Zahara, the invoice will be matched automatically to the adjacent purchase order. It makes the whole process much smoother and safer.
When you create a PO and send it to the supplier, they’ll soon deliver the goods or services you ordered. They’ll then send you an invoice for how much you owe, which can be matched to the original PO.
You may also receive a delivery note or goods received note (GRN), which is the third element. This should arrive before the invoice, and it serves as recognition that you’ve received what you asked for. In this instance, your finance team may now be working with three sets of data to help you crosscheck- hence the term 3-way matching.
Our Purchase Order Software streamlines the entire purchase order process. You can easily create, approve, and track purchase orders in a one place, eliminating paper-based hassles and reducing human error.
Say goodbye to manual data entry and tedious approval chains. Our intuitive, user-friendly interface allows you to generate purchase orders effortlessly, customise templates, and set up automated approval workflows tailored to your needs. You can find out more here or speak to one of our specialists today.
I just love editing word templates
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