Send a purchase order to a supplier

What it does

A PO moves through four statuses: draft (still editable), sent (commitment locked, no further line edits), partial (some goods received via GRN, some still outstanding), and received (all lines fully receipted). Sending is the gate between draft and sent — once sent, the PO is committed against your encumbrance ledger and the supplier can act on it.

The Send PO button does two things in sequence: it runs the approval engine if a policy matches the PO total, and then — once approved — emails the PO PDF directly to the supplier as an attachment. Email delivery goes via the worker → Portal /finance/send-po-to-supplier flow (Resend with Exchange fallback), and every send is recorded on the PO's email-history audit card.

How to use it

1. Open the PO from Procurement → Purchase Orders while it's in draft and confirm the supplier, lines, and totals are right.
2. Click Send PO in the action bar. If a policy matches (e.g. POs over £5,000 need director sign-off), the PO lands in pending_approval and the approver gets notified.
3. Once approved (or immediately, if no policy matches), the status flips to sent. The PO is now read-only — no further line edits.
4. From the PO detail page, click Email to supplier. Confirm the recipient email (defaults to the supplier contact's primary address) and optionally add a custom message.
5. The PDF attachment is built on the fly and sent. The result appears in the Email history card on the PO: who sent it, when, to which address, the custom message, and success or failure with error_reason if Resend bounced.
6. Re-send any time — each send appends a new history row. Useful if the supplier claims they didn't receive the original.

Tips

• The Email to supplier button only appears when status is sent, partial, or received. Draft POs can't be emailed — send them first.
• Cancelled POs also hide the email button. If you need to resurrect a cancelled PO, raise a new one rather than uncancelling.
• The email-history card is part of the formal audit trail. If a supplier disputes whether they received a PO, the timestamp and delivery status are the evidence.
• Approval policies for POs are configured under Settings → Approval policies with applies_to='purchase_order'. Most teams put the threshold on the PR rather than the PO, but both gates are available.

Related

• Raise a purchase request
• Receive goods and create a GRN
• Configure an approval policy