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Purchases: suppliers, purchase orders and receiving stock

Keep your suppliers in Catalog → Purchases, raise purchase orders, and receive deliveries in full or in part so stock goes up at the right location at the price you paid — with batch numbers, attachments and a timeline on every document.

9 min read · Last updated 2026-10-21

Catalog → Purchases is where you buy stock. You keep the people and companies you buy from as suppliers, write down what you've asked them for as purchase orders, and log each delivery as a receipt. A receipt is what puts units into stock, at the location they arrived at and at the price you paid. What suppliers ask you to pay, and what you've paid them, lives on the same screen. See Supplier bills and payments.

Order → receive → bill → pay: That's the full flow, and each document can start the next one from its drawer. Every step is optional, though. You can receive stock with no order behind it (a cash purchase or a small supplier), and you can add a bill with no receipt. Only receiving changes stock. Orders, bills and payments never move a single unit.

Where to find it

Open Catalog → Purchases in the sidebar. It sits next to Stock History and is shown to roles with View on Purchases. When Purchases was added, only the Super Admin got access. Everyone else sees nothing until an admin grants it in Workspace → Roles & Permissions (see Who can do what at the end of this guide).

The screen at a glance

Four tiles sit across the top. Clicking a tile takes you to the matching list, and clicking it again clears the filter.

The two bill tiles show only for roles that can view supplier bills. Under the tiles are four tabs:

Orders, receipts and bills can also be filtered by supplier. If you have more than one stock location, orders and receipts can be filtered by location too. Every list has a column picker. On a phone, each list turns into cards. Each tab keeps its own page, filters and search in the page address, so a link you share opens the same view. Click any row to open the document in a drawer. From there you can jump to its supplier, order, receipts and bills, or start the next step.

Add a supplier

1. Open the form. On the Suppliers tab, click Add supplier. You can also click New next to any supplier picker (in a new order, a receipt or a bill) to add one without leaving what you're doing.
2. New contact or existing one. Choose New contact and enter the Business or supplier name (required). You can also add a Contact person, Phone, Email, Address, City and State. If you already have this person or company in LogAI, choose Pick a contact and search for them instead. They keep their activity, phone and email, and are simply marked as a supplier too.
3. Buying details. Add the Tax ID (GSTIN), Payment terms (days) (whole days, 0 to 365), and Notes such as minimum order, delivery days or who to call. If you have more than one location, pick where Deliveries usually land at.
4. Save. Click Add supplier. Their drawer opens, ready for a first order.

A supplier is a contact. A supplier added as a new contact also appears in your contacts list as a new lead (see Leads & customers), so it counts toward your plan's contact limit. Picking an existing contact doesn't add a new one. If that contact was a supplier before and was deactivated, picking them again reactivates them.

A supplier's drawer shows You owe, Bought so far (everything billed that isn't void; people who can't see costs get Last order instead) and Open orders. Below that are their details, Open contact (which opens them in Contacts), their 10 most recent orders, bills and payments, attachments and a timeline. Buttons at the top let you start a New order, Record payment (when you owe them money), Edit or Deactivate. Editing changes the name, phone, email, tax ID, terms, delivery location and notes. To change an address, edit the contact itself.

Deactivate hides a supplier from pickers and from the active list. Their orders, bills and history stay exactly as they were, and Reactivate brings them back. Suppliers can't be deleted.

Create a purchase order

1. Start the order. On the Orders tab, click New order. You can also click New order on a supplier's drawer, which fills in that supplier.
2. Who and when. Pick the Supplier. Check the Order date (it defaults to today) and, if you know it, set Expected by. If you have several locations, choose where to Deliver to. It starts at the supplier's usual delivery location, or yours.
3. Add the items. Under Items, search for a product, pick a variant if it has variants, and enter the Qty. People who can see costs also get Unit cost, Tax % and the line Total. The cost fills in from the item's current cost price, and you can change it to what the supplier quoted. Click Add item for more lines.
4. Save draft or mark ordered. Add any Notes for the supplier (delivery window, packaging, who to call). Then click Save draft to come back to it later, or Mark ordered once you've placed the order. The footer shows the number of items and, with cost access, the total.

Each line keeps the item's name, SKU, variant and cost from the moment you add it, so later catalog changes don't rewrite old orders. Totals add each line's tax to its amount. LogAI doesn't print or send purchase orders, so pass the order number and lines to your supplier yourself. You can attach their quote or confirmation to the order.

Editing works while an order is a draft, or ordered with nothing received yet. After the first delivery the lines are fixed. An order's drawer shows a progress band, each line's receive progress (Awaiting, “2 of 5 received”, Received, or Not received once closed), its deliveries and bills, details, attachments and a timeline.

Receive a delivery against an order

1. Open the order. Click the order and press Receive. On a draft, the button reads Receive now, and the order is marked ordered on the way.
2. Tick off what arrived. Each line that's still expected is listed and starts at the full quantity still expected. Lower it for a short delivery, or set it to 0 for lines that didn't come. You can't receive more than is still expected on a line. With cost access you can also correct the Unit cost to what you actually paid.
3. Batch details (optional). Click Batch details to enter a Lot / batch no. (up to 80 characters) and an expiry date per line. They're saved on the receipt and shown on its lines.
4. Date, reference and place. Check Received on (today by default, and it can't be in the future). Add the Delivery note / invoice no. from the supplier's paperwork, and with several locations pick where it went Into. It starts at the order's delivery location.
5. Receive. Leave Update cost prices on to make what you paid each item's cost price. Add Notes if you like (a damaged box, a short delivery, who signed), then click Receive. A confirmation shows the receipt number and how many units went in where.

Partial deliveries are normal. Receive what came, and the order becomes Partly received with the rest still expected. Receive again when the next lot arrives. Once every line is in full, the order turns Received by itself. Each delivery is its own receipt with its own number.

Receive stock without an order

For a cash purchase, a small supplier or catching up on stock that already arrived, go to the Receipts tab and click Receive stock. The Supplier is optional (“No supplier”). Add the Items with quantity and, with cost access, unit cost. Batch details work the same way. Every item you pick needs a quantity, so remove lines you don't need. Digital products and services can't be received because they don't hold stock. Everything else (date, reference, location, Update cost prices, notes) is the same as receiving against an order.

What receiving does to stock and cost

• Stock goes up at the location you chose. Each line adds its units to that location. If you only have one location, it all goes there.
• Every line is recorded in Stock History as a Delivered movement. It carries the receipt number, the unit cost and a note like “Received from Cotton Mills”. Clicking the reference takes you back to the receipt.
• Cost price follows what you paid. With Update cost prices on (the default), the unit cost on each line becomes that product's or variant's cost price, so margins and stock value stay current. Turn it off for a one-off price you don't want to keep. People without cost access never change cost prices, and their receipts use the order's cost (or the item's current cost price on a direct receipt).
• The order catches up. The received quantities go on the order's lines and its status moves to Partly received or Received.

Receipts can't be undone: There's no void or delete for a receipt. If you received the wrong quantity or item, correct the stock with Adjust stock on the product (see Stock History) and add a note to the receipt or attach the corrected paperwork. Check the lines before you click Receive.

Cancel or close an order

• Cancel order is for an order that won't arrive. If nothing has arrived, stock doesn't change, so tell the supplier separately. On a partly received order, what already arrived stays in stock and the rest is no longer expected. Cancelling a partly received order needs Manage on Purchases.
• Close short (on partly received orders) means the supplier won't send the rest. The order becomes Closed, the missing lines show Not received, and stock stays as it is.
• Both ask for an optional reason (up to 300 characters), which goes on the order's timeline. Orders can't be deleted.

Numbering

Every document gets its own number, counting up for your organization alone: purchase orders PO-00001, receipts GRN-00001, supplier bills BILL-00001 and supplier payments SP-00001. Numbers are assigned when the document is saved and never change. These series use the default format. They aren't on the Record numbering card in Settings, so their prefix can't be changed there. See Record numbering for how numbering works for your other records.

Attachments and timeline

Every supplier, order, receipt and bill has an Attachments section. Click Attach invoice or note (or Add file) to add a PDF or image (JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC) of up to 10 MB, such as a quote, a delivery note or the supplier's invoice. On a phone, Photo opens the camera. Attachments count toward your Drive storage. The Timeline records who created, edited, ordered, received, billed, paid or voided the document, and when, along with any reason given.

Common situations

Who can do what

Purchasing adds three permission items to the Commerce group in Roles & Permissions: Suppliers, Purchases and Supplier bills. Cost figures follow a fourth item, Costs & profit. Only the Super Admin has them to begin with.

Purchases isn't limited by plan. The only plan limits that apply are your contact limit (a new supplier is a new contact) and your Drive storage (attachments). See Plans & billing.

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