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The "Status" of a Purchase Order

Wen I issue a Purchase Order and I view the list of All Purchase Orders I can see that the "Status" is "Approved"

When the goods arrive I would like to be able to edit the Status or apply my own Status that I can filter.

For e.g. "Partly Delivered", "Approved", "Received"

What I am actually trying to get to is I want to be able to view the list and view the list of those that have NOT been received yet so I can follow up with the supplier to check where the goods are...

Any ideas...

We issue PO's to consultants for days we purchase from them. For example: a PO is issued to a consultant for 30 days at $*** amount. Each month the consultant bills the number of days worked against the PO. We need to track billed days against the PO days. We need a report that allows us to easily see remaining days balances on the issued PO after we process bills against the PO. The PO also needs to be closed once the last day is billed by the consultant against the said PO.

When converting a Purchase Order to a Bill, the selected item/line is not automatically removed from the Purchase Order. After creating the Bill, we have to return to the Purchase Order and manually delete the specific line item.
Kindly advise whether this can be changed so that the specific line item is automatically deleted (or marked as billed) when the Bill is created, to avoid duplication and manual adjustments.

It would be great if there was a way to mark a purchase order as delivered.

At the moment we are having to use the approval function as a delivery confirmation tool. What would be great is if the purchase order could be approved when we receive the order confirmation and then there was a way to mark it as delivered after that.
This way we can feel confident that when the invoice is received and the bill is created that the delivery has definitely been delivered.

Would be good to know what they are actually trying to build. We can already receive in partial orders: ie. change the quantity on the bill and choose to not mark as fully billed.
They just have to be careful not to break or add friction to the existing use case for 999 people to enable an edge case for 1 person.
The OP didn't give a particularly detailed use case, and the following comments address a wide range of other possibilities and requests...
So what has actually been 'heard'?
The ideal flow IMO for the feature is 'sounds' like is being developed is.
- Convert PO to bill using a unique 'Convert to Bill - Partial Receipt' option
- This means existing function is unchanged
- New function will allow entering what arrived, and anything unarrived is left in the open PO as 'Awaiting delivery' or similar.

I am concerned that implementing this poorly will make the process messy for everyone who doesnt need it.

Hi Xero Team,

I would like to submit a feature request for your team to review.

It would be far more efficient if the purchase order could automatically update when a bill is entered for a partial delivery from the supplier. Ideally, the purchase order would reflect the quantities that have been received and clearly show the remaining quantities still outstanding.

It would also be very helpful if the purchase order could first be converted into a Goods Received record when stock arrives and then be converted into a bill. This process could then update and highlight on the original purchase order what quantities have been received versus what is still outstanding from the supplier.

This functionality would make stock tracking significantly clearer, improve inventory control, and save a considerable amount of time for businesses that rely on accurate inventory management within Xero.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this request.

Kind regards,

Tanya Critchley

Hi Xero Team,

I would like to log this as a feature request for your team to review.

At the moment, when we receive and bill only part of a supplier’s purchase order, the system requires us to continually go back into billed invoices to determine what stock has actually been received. This process is quite time-consuming and increases the risk of errors.

It would be far more efficient if the purchase order could automatically reduce or update when a bill is entered for a partial delivery from the supplier. Having the PO reflect the remaining quantities outstanding would make stock tracking significantly clearer and save a considerable amount of time.

I believe this improvement would greatly benefit businesses that rely on accurate stock management within Xero.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this request.

Kind regards,

Tanya Critchley

Hi Xero Product Team,

I'd like to suggest an improvement to the current Purchase Order to Bill workflow, specifically around partial order fulfilment.

**The Problem**

When a supplier partially fills a purchase order, creating a bill for only the delivered items currently requires the following manual steps:

1. Open the purchase order and select 'Copy to Bill'
2. Manually delete all line items that have NOT yet been delivered from the copied bill
3. Return to the original purchase order and manually delete all line items that HAVE been billed

This process is time-consuming and error-prone, as every partial delivery effectively doubles the workload — the same line items must be managed in two separate places.

**The Suggested Improvement**

It would be far more efficient if users could select specific line items directly within the purchase order to generate a bill from. The selected items would be carried across to the new bill automatically, and simultaneously marked as billed (or removed) from the purchase order — all in a single action.

This would:
- Eliminate the need for manual deletions in both the bill and the purchase order
- Reduce the risk of human error
- Accurately reflect the outstanding balance of a purchase order in real time
- Save significant time for businesses dealing with frequent partial deliveries

This type of workflow is common in businesses that deal with suppliers on backorder or staged deliveries, and I believe it would be a valuable enhancement for many Xero users.

Thank you for considering this suggestion.

This is a critical part to our business as when we raise large PO's a lot are received/invoiced in 2, 3 or more parts so having an additional columns in the PO to state whether the item lines have been delivered and how many (quantity delivered) would be beneficial as we can identify the remainder that is left to be delivered on the PO by viewing PO/running a report

Ideally it would be within the Purchase orders screen. When received from the supplier, I would like to mark the PO as arrived. Whether it be a Tick box to say arrived or even as simple as a Arrived Date Box, as long as we can filter it like the Date Raised/ Delivery Date.

Thanks

Is it possible to be able to have a tab or highlight the PO's that have been received as part of a filter? Currently, there is no way to tell which PO has been received unless you go into everyone singly to check.
To recap, currently, Xero doesn't have a built-in feature to filter or highlight received POs. The system requires users to check each PO individually to determine its received status.
This can be time-consuming, especially when dealing with a large list of multiple orders.
This could also be used to gauge what is still outstanding on orders placed.

This is long overdue as shown by other users' comments: other accounting software is out there that supports this feature - the ability to show what is outstanding on any approved PO. It's rather time consuming to check each bill which has been created from the PO to see exactly what has/has not been received. Once you know that all has been received the PO can be marked as Complete so it doesn't appear in the Approved tab.

Could XERO please be improved to allow for partial deliveries. It would be good to be able to confirm actual quantities received and show the balance outstanding

We have numerous purchase orders that are often partially filled by our suppliers.

It would be efficient for our inwards goods officer to have an option to tick beside each item as it is received. This would provide an immediate view of which items are still on backorder.

Purchase Orders presently have 4 status: Draft, Awaiting Approval, Approved and Billed. This is an accounting perspective, but not a business perspective. Invoices have "Mark as Sent" which makes perfect sense for Purchase Orders too. The workflow is that there is a lead time so reporting 'Delivery Overdue' based on the "Delivery Date" would be useful - buyers then know which suppliers to chase. And closing a purchase order depends presently on it being invoiced. That's not a reflection of the real world. Delivery may be awaited, partially complete or complete. This is orthogonal to whether it is not invoiced, partially invoiced or fully invoiced. I'm sure different organisations may want different workflows, so across Quotations, Invoices, Bills and Purchase Orders, a useful feature would be to have 'User Status" which is configurable in Organisation Settings. Basic users can ignore this, but users who wish to model workflows more effectively could set up User Status fields and manually set this to stemp through a business process. For Purchase Orders we would set "Order Not Placed", "Delivery Awaited", "Delivery Partial", "Quality Issue", "Delivery Complete", "Closed". The Tabbed view (Draft, Awaiting Approval, Approved and Billed) should have a filter according to User status, so that the view becomes "Approved AND Deliver Awaited".
In summary a configurable USER STATUS for all documents configurable in Organisation Settings and acting as a filter to all views would be really useful.

Hi @Xero

This thread has been running for almost two years with lots of comments and support for the issue, and there are other threads on the same topics. When will something be done about this?

We are in construction, and we often get part deliveries on a purchase order.

An option to part receive would be extremely useful to help use know how much is left outstanding on the PO.
I currently have to run a spreadsheet showing what is outstanding and waiting to be invoiced.

Please Xero catch up with other accounting systems that are out there

It would be extremely helpful if we could upload purchase orders for the full year based on the budget and then chip away at these invoices throughout the year.
E.g. we're expecting 12 x monthly invoices for cleaning for the same amount each month. The year's purchase order is approved by management. Then each month, we receive a bill for 1/12th of the total purchase order.

At the moment, it's not possible to see the REMAINING BALANCE of a purchase order that's been part-receipted.

Same here we often receive items and are billed later