Purchase Orders and Goods Received

Order from suppliers, record goods as they arrive, and turn an order or a delivery into a bill.

A purchase order (PO) records what you have ordered from a supplier. When the goods arrive you record a goods received note (GRN), which puts stock on hand, and then you bill it. Orders live under Purchases → Purchase Orders; deliveries under Purchases → Goods Received.

You do not need a PO for every purchase. For a one-off expense, enter the bill directly.

Create a purchase order

On Purchases → Purchase Orders, click New PO.
Choose the Supplier, the Issue Date and the expected Delivery Date.
Add lines with a Description, Quantity, Unit Price and Account. Pick a stock item on a line if it should go into inventory when it arrives; free-text lines do not move stock.
Add internal Notes if needed and save. The PO is a draft.

Send it

Click Send on the PO to email it to the supplier with your own subject and message, or mark it as sent without emailing. Email history and resend are on the PO page. The PDF uses your document template.

Status

Status on screen	Meaning
draft	Not sent yet; can be edited or deleted
ordered	Sent to the supplier
some items in	Part of the order has been received
all items in	Everything has been received
fully billed	Billed in full
cancelled	Voided

Record goods received

Open the PO and click Mark items as received. This records that everything still outstanding on the order has arrived and creates a goods received note (GRN-…). For stock items it:

adds the quantity to stock on hand,
posts debit Inventory, credit Goods Received Not Invoiced (2150).

Purchases → Goods Received lists every GRN with its value, filtered by Received, Billed or Cancelled. Open one to see the items, location, quantity and unit cost, and View bookkeeping entry.

To receive only part of an order, use an AI assistant connected to Anchor (MCP) or the API; the PO page receives everything outstanding.

Bill it

From the PO: click Create a bill from this order and type the supplier's invoice number; it becomes the bill number. Leave it blank to number the bill automatically, which needs bill numbering set up under Settings → Document numbering. You can still receive remaining items afterwards.
From a GRN: click Create a bill from this to get a draft bill for exactly the items received.

The bill clears Goods Received Not Invoiced instead of posting the stock a second time. Review the draft and approve it as usual.

Bill matching

Settings → Bill Matching controls how supplier bills are checked against orders and goods received:

Setting	What it does
Allowed price difference	How much a bill's price can be above the order before it is flagged
Allowed quantity difference	How much a bill's quantity can be above what was ordered before it is flagged
Require goods to be received first	A bill cannot be entered until the goods are marked as received
Block bills that charge more than ordered	Stop a bill being saved when its total is above what the order allows

Purchase requisitions: request and approve a purchase before the PO
Landed costs: add freight and duty to the cost of received stock
Inventory