Articles on: Daily Operations

Purchase Orders

Plan Requirement: Core or Ultimate


Purchase orders in CloudBridal help you track your vendor orders through an intuitive status-based approach.


Types of Purchase Orders


CloudBridal supports two types of purchase orders:


  1. Customer POs: Orders placed for one or more customer special orders. The PO is linked to their order and any status updates for the PO, such as moving it into the Arrived status will update the linked customer order.
  2. Stock POs: Orders placed to acquire new or existing inventory.


Customer Purchase Orders


Creating a Customer Purchase Order


  1. Navigate to the Purchase Orders page
  2. Click the New Customer Purchase Order button
  3. Now you can either search by an existing customer's name, or by a vendor if you would like to load all new customer orders for that vendor.
  4. Select one or more customer orders to include in the PO.
  5. Fill out any required fields as needed such as the status, notes, cost, etc.
  6. Create the actual vendor order based on your arrangements with your vendor. This could be through their online portal, via email, etc. Important: CloudBridal does not actually facilitate the vendor order or communicate with your vendor. Recording the PO in CloudBridal is purely used for tracking purposes, and you must actually order the item as required by the vendor.
  7. Update the PO status in CloudBridal any time something changes with the PO. For example, if the item is delivered to your store, you need to update the PO status in CloudBridal to Arrived.


Stock Purchase Orders


Creating a Stock Purchase Order


  1. Navigate to the Purchase Orders page
  2. Click the New Stock Purchase Order button
  3. Select the vendor that you want to create a stock PO for.
  4. Enter one or more items that you want to add to the PO.
  5. Fill out any required fields as needed such as the status, notes, cost, etc.
  6. Create the actual vendor order based on your arrangements with your vendor. This could be through their online portal, via email, etc. Important: CloudBridal does not actually facilitate the vendor order or communicate with your vendor. Recording the PO in CloudBridal is purely used for tracking purposes, and you must actually order the item as required by the vendor.
  7. Update the PO status in CloudBridal any time something changes with the PO. For example, if the item is delivered to your store, you need to update the PO status in CloudBridal to Arrived.
  8. When the order arrives and you move the PO into the Arrived or Partially Arrived status, you will be able to then Receive items in the PO. Receiving an item from a PO will automatically create or update the corresponding inventory item record in CloudBridal for you. That said, you will still need to enter additional details such as the desired retail/sale price of the item.


Entering Stock PO Line Items


Line items are grouped into a table per item type. For each line:


  • The Size/Name column follows the item type's configuration—sizes for size-tracked types (e.g. dresses), names for everything else.
  • If the item has varieties defined in inventory, a Variety dropdown appears before the size column. Selecting a variety makes the size/name optional.
  • When the selected variety has a wholesale price, a Variety price button appears next to the unit cost—click it to fill the cost in one step.


When you save, CloudBridal checks that each line is complete and that any linked item or variety still matches the vendor's inventory, with a clear message for anything that needs fixing.


Label Printing for Received Items from a Stock Purchase Order


When receiving items from a purchase order:


  1. The label printing dialog will show only the received items
  2. You can print labels for the newly received inventory items
  3. This streamlines the process of getting items onto the sales floor


Purchase Order Statuses


Purchase orders follow this typical lifecycle:


  1. Draft: Initial state, the order has not been placed yet as you are still working on drafting it.
  2. Scheduled: An order has been sent to the vendor but isn't being fulfilled yet or hasn't been confirmed. This status is hidden by default, and can be turned on in the order settings.
  3. Ordered: The order has been placed with the vendor.
  4. Ready to Ship: Order is prepared and ready for the vendor to ship (optional).
  5. Shipped: Order has been shipped by the vendor (optional).
  6. Partially Arrived: Some items from the PO have arrived but others are still pending.
  7. Arrived: All items have been received.
  8. Cancelled: The order has been cancelled.


Printing and Sending Purchase Orders


After creating a PO, you can:


  1. Click the Print Purchase Order button
  2. Choose from:


  • Personal Records: Includes customer information and internal details
  • Send to Vendor: Excludes customer-specific information. This also allows you to email the PO to the vendor if that is a valid fulfillment method between you and your vendor. Note: When emailing a PO to your vendor, you should be diligent and obtain confirmation from the vendor, and follow-up with them if you do not receive confirmation. You should also not move the PO to Ordered until you receive confirmation. This is a good opportunity to move the PO into the Scheduled status while you await confirmation.


Display Options


A Display Options bar sits above the printed sheet so you can adjust one specific purchase order before printing or emailing it:


  • Include Cost Summary: On for Personal Records, off for Send to Vendor.
  • Include Customer Measurements: Available on customer purchase orders. On for Personal Records, and otherwise starts at whatever your Customer Measurements setting is in Purchase Order Settings.


Tip: If you want to email vendors, it's a good idea to include your account number with that vendor. You can configure this for each vendor in your vendors list.


Viewing Purchase Orders


Purchase orders can be accessed from several places:


  1. Purchase Orders Page: Orders are grouped by status for easy tracking
  2. Customer Order: Click the View Purchase Order button on a customer's order
  3. Vendor Details: Click the purchase order icon in the vendors list
  4. Inventory Item: Click the PO History button on an item's details page to see its purchase order history broken down by Stock or Customer PO


Purchase Order Settings


You can configure certain aspects of the feature in the Purchase Order Settings:


  • Custom Fields: Add custom fields to purchase orders. See Custom Fields for more information.
  • Send to Vendor fields: Surface additional fields on the Send to Vendor view, such as Customer Name and your event date field. Any Order Custom Fields you've created appear here too. Customer Measurements sets the default for the print view's toggle rather than hiding the field outright.
  • Purchasing Email Address: The address vendors see and reply to. It prints in the purchase order's store heading and is used as the reply-to when you email a PO or send a general vendor email. Leave it blank to keep everything on your business email address. Only the purchase order heading uses it — every other printed document still shows your business email.
  • Email Body: General information included when emailing a vendor from the Send to Vendor view.

Updated on: 21/08/2026

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