Purchase orders: ordering from suppliers and matching their bills

Purchase orders is an add-on, included in Pro and Enterprise, that an owner switches on in Settings, then Integrations & Add-ons. A purchase order is your order to a supplier for a job. It is a document on the job, like a quote or an invoice, and it never changes the job’s status.

Once it is on, jobs have a Purchase orders section and the menu has Purchasing: every order, the deliveries due and the supplier bills to check.

Who can do what

Owners can do everything. For everyone else it is the Purchasing row of their role in Settings, Team, Roles and permissions. The row shows only while the add-on is on, and every role starts at None, except the built-in Full access role.

1. 1.View: see a job’s orders and record a delivery when it arrives.
2. 2.Raise: write and send orders, add suppliers and record supplier bills.
3. 3.Approve: also approve or send back an order waiting for approval, accept the differences on a bill, and void a bill.

Order materials from the accepted quote

Once the customer has accepted a quote on the job, the Purchase orders section offers Order materials. Tick the quote’s lines to order, change a quantity if you need more or less, and choose who supplies each line, or one supplier for all. VexOp+ makes one draft order per supplier with the quote’s words and quantities and no prices, because a quote holds what your customer pays. Add each supplier’s prices, then send the orders.

Raise an order

1. 1.Open the job and press New order in its Purchase orders section (or Or start a blank order under Order materials).
2. 2.Choose the supplier, or press New to add one. Delivery starts at the job’s address; change it, or choose Pickup.
3. 3.Add the lines with the supplier’s prices, ex GST. Untick GST on a line the supplier does not charge GST on.
4. 4.Save the draft. It is numbered from the job: PO-53405-1 for job JOB-2026-53405, then PO-53405-2.

Send it to the supplier

Send to supplier emails the order as a PDF from you, with your sign-off. The supplier’s reply, and often their bill, lands on the job’s conversation in your Inbox. Ordered by phone instead? Press Mark as sent and say how. Once an order has gone out its lines are fixed: cancel it and raise a new one if it is wrong.

If your business has approval switched on, an order over the amount needs an approver first. Pressing Send asks them, and they are told in the bell. An approver’s own orders go straight away. An owner switches approval on, and sets the amount, in the Purchase order settings on the add-on’s page in Settings, Integrations & Add-ons.

Record a delivery

When goods arrive, press Record delivery and say how many of each line came. A part delivery leaves the rest still to come, and the order reads Part received until everything is in. Your crew can record a delivery from VexOp Field with a photo of the docket.

If the supplier will not send the rest, an approver presses No more coming. The order reads Received with what came, what it is expected to cost drops to what was received, and its bills are checked against that. It does not email the supplier.

Deliveries due today and overdue ones show on My Day, under Needs your action, and every delivery still to come sits on its day in the Operations calendar. Both show for roles with Purchasing, and the calendar chip opens the order.

Record the supplier’s bill

From the order, press Record a bill. Its lines start at what was received and not billed yet. Type the supplier’s invoice number and date, and change any line to match their invoice. VexOp+ checks it as you type and lists every difference: more billed than was ordered or received, a price that differs, a line not on the order, or GST that is not 10%. The same invoice number from the same supplier is never recorded twice.

A bill with differences waits for an approver to accept them. An approval covers exactly the differences shown: if the bill changes, or a delivery changes what it is checked against, it needs accepting again. When every line is billed, or you tick that no more bills are coming, the order reads Billed.

Send bills to Xero or QuickBooks

With Xero or QuickBooks connected, an owner switches on Send matched bills in the Purchase orders settings, then chooses the expense account and the GST codes for GST on purchases and GST free, under Supplier bills on the Xero or QuickBooks page in Settings, Integrations & Add-ons.

An approver then presses Send on a bill that matches its order, or whose differences they accepted. VexOp+ looks first: a bill already there from the same supplier with the same invoice number is linked, never entered twice. The supplier is matched by name, or added. The total is the bill’s own, to the cent, and every send and link is listed under the accounting activity in Integrations. A bill in your accounting system is locked here: change or void it there.

Sending bills to MYOB isn’t available yet. Contact us and we’ll set it up for you.

Costs on the job

A job’s Financials show what its orders have committed and what their bills came to, ex GST, and the estimated margin takes both off: committed is what orders sent to suppliers still have to be billed for, and billed is what their bills came to. The Work in Progress report adds the same to each job’s actual cost, and the Purchasing report in Reports shows every order by supplier, by job and by status, with a CSV.

Automations

Two automations can tell your team about purchasing: Supplier delivery overdue (checked the morning after the delivery day, at the time you choose) and Supplier bill to check (a bill with differences for an approver to accept). They are internal only: they notify people or make tasks and never message a supplier or a customer. Each is skipped once the delivery arrives or the bill no longer needs checking.

Suppliers

Suppliers have their own list in Purchasing, apart from your clients. If you moved from ServiceM8, your suppliers are already there, and only an owner can change those. An owner can archive a supplier: their orders and bills stay, and a ServiceM8 sync never brings one back.

Your customer’s order number

The order number your customer gives you lives on the job as Customer’s order number. It is not one of your purchase orders.

Switching it off

Switching Purchase orders off hides it for everyone. Nothing is deleted: the orders, bills and suppliers come back when it is switched on again.