Purchase Orders for Tradespeople: What They Are and When to Use Them
By Boksit Editorial Team ·
Purchase orders have a reputation for being corporate paperwork. In practice they solve a very ordinary trade problem: the supplier invoice does not match what you thought you ordered, and nobody can remember what was agreed on the phone.
What a purchase order is
A purchase order is a document you issue to a supplier setting out what you want to buy, in what quantity, at what price, and where it should be delivered. It is raised before the goods or services arrive, which is what makes it useful.
When it is worth raising one
- Orders above a value where a mistake would actually hurt.
- Anything ordered verbally or by phone, where there is no written trail.
- Materials for a specific project, so the cost can be attributed to the right job.
- Plant and tool hire, where hire periods and rates are easy to dispute.
- Subcontract labour, where scope and day rate need to be explicit.
- Anything with a long lead time, so the delivery date is recorded.
What to include
- A unique PO number
- Your business details and the supplier's details
- Delivery address, which is often a site rather than your yard
- Required delivery or collection date
- Line items: description, quantity, unit, unit price and line total
- Agreed price, and whether it is inclusive or exclusive of VAT
- The project or job reference the order relates to
- Who authorised the order
Checking deliveries against the order
The value of a PO is realised at delivery. Check what arrived against what you ordered, note shortages and damage on the delivery paperwork at the time, and keep the note. Disputes raised days later are much harder to win.
Matching supplier invoices
When the supplier invoice arrives, compare it to the PO and the delivery record. Differences are usually innocent — a substituted product, a price change, a partial delivery — but they should be spotted before payment rather than at year end.
Keeping job costs attributable
A PO linked to a project turns a pile of supplier invoices into job costs you can actually analyse. Over a year, that is the difference between knowing which job types make money and guessing.
How purchases are recorded for accounting, VAT or CIS purposes depends on your circumstances. Speak to your accountant about the treatment that applies to your business.
Purchase Orders in Boksit
Boksit lets you create Purchase Orders with your branding, send them to suppliers as PDFs, and reuse common orders as Templates. Purchase Orders sit alongside your Quotes, Invoices, Projects and Documents rather than in a separate system.
Frequently asked questions
- Do sole traders need purchase orders?
- They are not required, but they are useful as soon as orders get large enough that an error costs real money, or when you need to attribute material costs to specific jobs.
- Is a purchase order a contract?
- A PO records what you asked for and on what terms, and it is commonly treated as an offer that the supplier accepts. The legal position depends on the circumstances and the supplier's terms.
- Can I reuse purchase orders for regular material orders?
- Yes. In Boksit a Purchase Order can be saved as a Template and edited before each use.