Why not just text your supplier?
You can, everyone starts that way. But six months in, the text thread can't answer: what did I pay per unit last time? What's still on the way? Did the missing box ever arrive? A purchase order is the same order with a memory: cost per unit, expected date, what's been received against it, all attached to your inventory.
The Purchase Orders tile (Track orders from suppliers) is the home for all of it.
Suppliers first
Add Supplier, the app insists on it before your first order (Add Supplier First isn't nagging, it's the address book that makes reordering two taps forever after).
Fill the useful parts: Contact Name, Email, phone, and the quiet gold, Lead Time (days). Lead time is the planning number: a 7-day supplier means your reorder point needs to cover a week of sales, not a day.
Supplier went dormant? Archive. "Archived suppliers stay in your history but no longer appear in the picker when creating purchase orders. You can restore them later.", history stays, the picker gets shorter.
An order's life
New Purchase Order → Select Supplier.
Add Items from your inventory. Each line takes a quantity and Cost/Unit, the number your margins are built on; the Total Cost sums as you go.
Set Expected delivery and any Notes ("deliver to back door").
It starts as Draft, edit freely. Submit Order when it's real; now it's Submitted and on the record.
Receiving: where the magic touches the shelf
Boxes arrive → open the order → Receive Items → check in what's actually in the box. Received quantities flow straight into your stock counts, this is the Receive transaction the inventory guide mentions, happening automatically.
Half the order shows up? Receive the half; the order sits honestly at Partially Received until the rest lands, then flips to Received. The gap between ordered and received IS the record of what to chase.
If something's off
- Can't create an order. No suppliers yet, the app routes you to Add Supplier first. Two minutes, once.
- Received stock but the counts didn't move. Check the receive went through on the order (status changed?) and that the items are stock-tracked, an Untracked item takes no count.
- Wrong cost typed on a line. Costs feed your margin math, so fix it at the source, the order's line. Your cost history is only as good as what's written on the orders.