An automated PO system helps you do more with fewer people. Real-time spend tracking lets you spot and cut unnecessary costs faster. And when everyone sees what's being bought early on, you can negotiate better prices and terms with suppliers.

Depending on the company’s structure and established procedures, POs can be issued by procurement or purchasing team members, operations officers, department or project managers, and finance or accounting department members. It’s best to use purchase order software for simplified document creation, swift approvals, and reliable tracking.

Purchase order should include the following:

• PO number
• Creation date
• Delivery date
• The buyer’s name and address
• The seller’s name and address
• Billing address
• Shipping address
• Item type
• Product number, model number, or SKU
• Order quantity
• Price of products or services
• Total amount due
• Payment terms

A purchase order number is a unique reference number assigned to each purchase order within a company’s PO system. It helps stakeholders track and identify the order’s status.

While it is possible to create a purchase order in Excel, using online purchase order software is a more efficient approach. In Excel, users design a template with relevant fields such as item descriptions, quantities, prices, and vendor information. Then, they manually enter and update the details for each purchase, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors, especially when it comes to the approval process and tracking purchase orders.

• Standard Purchase Order (PO or SPO) for one-time or infrequent purchases.
• Blanket Purchase Order (BPO) for recurring purchases that happen at regular intervals.
• Planned Purchase Order (PPO) for recurring orders that occur at irregular intervals.
• Contract Purchase Order (CPO) for complex or high-value purchases to outline the terms and conditions under which POs will be issued in the future.

Purchase order software (PO software) is a type of digital business tool designed to help companies centralize and automate the creation, approval, tracking, and management of purchase orders and related documents.

Good purchase order software helps users quickly create purchase orders with drop-down menus as well as item and supplier catalogs. The company can also configure approval steps to send only authorized documents to vendors or suppliers. Then, users can track the order within the PO system and see whether it’s been approved, received, or paid. Purchase order management software also stores all purchase orders and makes them retrievable for users at any time.

Using purchase order software has several key advantages, such as: fewer human errors, remote access to purchase orders, streamlined document approvals, document storage for an audit trail, automatic 3-way matching, and improved cost control.