Inventory & Manufacturing
Purchase Orders & Receiving
Order from suppliers and receive into shop stock.
7 min readPurchase Orders & Receiving
Overview
Purchase orders track what you ordered, from which supplier, and what arrived—so inventory quantities and costs stay aligned with shop stock and price book roll-ups.
How to access
- List — Inventory → Purchase Orders (
/inventory/purchase-orders) - Create — New (
/inventory/purchase-orders/new) - Receive — Open a PO → Receive action on the detail screen
What you can do today
- Create POs with supplier, line items, quantities, and expected costs.
- Link suppliers on inventory items (supplier name, supplier SKU, cost).
- Partial receive when only part of a shipment arrives.
- Update on-hand quantity and cost on receive.
- Support typical workflow: low stock → PO → receive → inventory updated → review price book costs.
Prerequisites
- Inventory and purchase order permissions for your role.
- Suppliers and SKUs maintained on inventory items (ServiceFlow does not ship a live big-box product catalog).
- Locations configured if you track stock by warehouse, shop, or vehicle.
Step-by-step
Create a purchase order
- Inventory → Purchase Orders → New.
- Select a supplier.
- Add lines: inventory items, quantities, expected unit costs.
- Save and mark as ordered per your internal process.
Link suppliers on inventory items
- Inventory → edit an item.
- Set supplier, supplier SKU, and cost so PO lines match vendor catalogs you use.
- Save.
Receive inventory (full or partial)
- Open the PO from Inventory → Purchase Orders.
- Start Receive.
- Enter quantities received per line.
- Confirm. On-hand quantity and cost update for received items.
After receiving
- Review affected price book bundles if you use Automatic Cost & Pricing.
- Run Bulk Price Book Updates if markup needs a pass across a category.
Current limitations
- No integrated live catalog from Home Depot, Lowe’s, or distributors—you maintain SKUs and costs.
- Receiving does not auto-update every linked price book sell price.
- Advanced three-way match (PO vs invoice vs receipt) is limited compared to full ERP systems.
- Vendor EDI or automated PO submission is not built in—export/send is manual unless you integrate externally.
Roadmap
- PO cost change alerts for linked price book components.
- Supplier performance and lead-time reporting.
- Optional vendor catalog import templates.