Where to find it
Purchase orders live inside Inventory (sidebar: "Run the shop" → Inventory), on the "Purchase orders" tab of the sticky subnav that runs across every Inventory screen (Overview, Rolls, Items, Alerts, Purchase orders, COGS, Suppliers). Inventory as a whole — POs included — sits behind a paid-plan feature flag (Growth tier and up). If your shop's plan doesn't include it, the sidebar entry and every tab in the subnav still show up as normal — the gate doesn't hide the "Purchase orders" tab itself. What you'll see instead is a clean upgrade prompt in place of the actual PO list once you click into the tab.
Creating a PO
Click "New PO" from the list to open the order builder — it's a full page, not a popup, and it lands you on the new PO's detail page once you submit. Pick a supplier (optional — skip it and the list just shows "—" in the Supplier column) and an expected date if you have one, then add line items. For each line you can quick-pick an existing film product from your catalog, or just type a product label by hand if it's something new. Set the rolls quantity, width, and unit cost per roll; an "Estimated total" updates live as you go, and the "Create PO" button won't enable until at least one line has a product label. One thing that isn't on this form: roll length. Every line is created at a fixed 100 ft (1200") roll — there's no field to change it, so anything ordered in a non-standard roll length still gets logged at 100 ft.
Separately, your shop Dashboard's "Film stock alert" card (not the Inventory → Alerts tab) can auto-draft a PO for you with one click via its "Draft PO from these" button. It pre-fills one line per flagged film product with enough rolls to bring you roughly back up to double that product's reorder threshold — useful as a starting point, but check the quantities and cost before submitting, since any product with no cost on file gets estimated at a flat $200/roll.
The habit that matters: pick the product, don't just type it
This is the one gotcha worth internalizing. Quick-picking a product from the dropdown links that PO line to your actual film-product record, which is what lets receiving create real inventory. If you instead type a brand-new label by hand without selecting it from the list, the line has no linked product — you can still submit it, track its cost, and click "Receive" on it, but no film-roll inventory record gets created when you do, so your on-hand stock won't reflect that shipment. If you're ordering something that should count toward inventory, add it as a product first so it shows up in the picker before you build the PO around it.
Submitting and receiving
New POs start as DRAFT. From the detail page, "Submit" moves it to SUBMITTED and stamps the date. From there, receiving can happen two ways: line-by-line (enter a quantity, capped at what's still outstanding, and click "Receive" — each roll received creates its own film-roll inventory record at that line's cost), or all at once via "Mark all received" on the header, which runs every remaining line through that same receiving process rather than just flipping a status flag. The PO status updates itself as you go — PARTIAL once some but not all lines are received, RECEIVED once every line is fully received (with a received date stamped). "Cancel" is available any time before a PO reaches RECEIVED or CANCELED, and asks for confirmation first.
Reading the list and KPIs
The list sorts newest-first and filters by status (ALL/DRAFT/SUBMITTED/PARTIAL/RECEIVED/CANCELED tabs). Every status tab except ALL shows a live count next to its name — but only when that status currently has at least one PO in it; a status with zero POs shows no number at all (not even a "0"). "Open POs" combines DRAFT + SUBMITTED + PARTIAL. "Open value" is narrower — it only totals SUBMITTED and PARTIAL orders, so a draft you haven't sent yet doesn't inflate what's "awaiting receipt." "Received (lifetime)" is a running count of every PO that has ever reached RECEIVED, not just recent activity, so don't expect it to reset with a filter or date range.