Purchasing & Receiving
Everything between deciding you need stock and having it on the shelf: raising a purchase order, getting it to the vendor, tracking what they say back, and receiving accurately enough that your numbers stay trustworthy.
Who this is for
Buyers, purchasing managers, and warehouse staff who receive deliveries. If you're reconciling vendor invoices after receiving, that's the Invoicing & Reconciliation guide.
What you'll have when you're done
A PO raised against the right supplier, sent and acknowledged, received in whatever number of deliveries it actually arrives in — with stock landing in the right warehouse and the order closing itself when it's complete.
The lifecycle
A purchase order moves through five states. Knowing which one you're in tells you what you can do next:
| Status | Means | You can |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Being built. Vendor hasn't seen it. | Edit freely, delete |
| Submitted | Committed and ready to send. | Send, receive, cancel |
| Partial | Some quantity received; more outstanding. | Receive the rest, cancel |
| Received | Every line fully received. Set automatically. | Invoice against it |
| Cancelled | Abandoned. Kept for the record. | Nothing — it's terminal |
You never set Partial or Received by hand. Foundry derives them from what you've actually received line by line, which is why the status can be trusted in a report.
Raise a purchase order
Pick the supplier and destination
From Purchase Orders → New, choose the supplier. Then pick the warehouse the goods are coming to — this is what decides where stock lands at receiving, so getting it right now saves an adjustment later.
Choose warehouse or dropship
A warehouse PO replenishes your own stock. A dropship PO is raised to fulfil specific customer orders, and behaves differently at receiving — see dropship POs.
Add lines
Search your catalog and add what you're ordering. Each line carries a quantity and a unit cost — the cost defaults from the supplier's price for that SKU, and you can override it when the vendor has quoted you something different.
For anything not in your catalog — pallets, tooling, a freight charge the vendor bills on the same PO — add a custom line. Custom lines appear on the PDF and the invoice but never touch inventory, because there's nothing to stock.
Set the expected date
Expected arrival drives your inbound visibility. Quantities on an open PO count as inbound against the destination warehouse, so you can see what's covered before deciding to reorder.
Submit
Submitting commits the order. Do this before sending — it's the point where the PO becomes a real obligation rather than a working draft.
Get it to the vendor
Two ways out, and they're not mutually exclusive:
Email it
Foundry sends the PO as a PDF from your own configured sending address, with any global CC list applied. The send is timestamped on the order, so "did we actually send this?" is never a question. If the vendor goes quiet, Send follow-up chases the same thread rather than starting a new one.
Download the PDF
For vendors who want it uploaded to their own portal, or who only take orders by phone. The PDF is identical either way.
The vendor portal
Every emailed PO carries a private link. The vendor doesn't need a Foundry login — they open it and can:
- • Acknowledge the order, with their own reference number
- • Add carrier and tracking when it ships
- • Upload documents — packing slips, invoices, certificates
- • Download the PDF again without asking you for it
Everything they do lands on the order in Foundry. This is the cheapest way to kill the "where is our order?" email thread — the answer maintains itself.
Receive the delivery
Receiving is per line, per delivery. Count what physically arrived and enter that — not what the paperwork claims.
What happens when you receive
- • On-hand stock increases at the PO's destination warehouse
- • A stock movement is written, referencing this PO
- • The line's received quantity goes up
- • The PO re-evaluates itself — Partial, or Received once everything's in
That movement record is the audit trail. Months later you can still answer "where did these 40 units come from?" from the variant's history.
Partial deliveries
Receive what turned up and leave the rest open. The PO sits at Partial and shows exactly what's outstanding. Repeat as many times as the vendor sends boxes — there's no limit and no need to split the order.
Over-shipments are refused
You can't receive more than was ordered. Foundry tells you the maximum remaining instead. If a vendor genuinely sent extra and you're keeping it, raise the ordered quantity on the line first — that way the PO still reflects what you agreed to pay for, and your invoice match won't break.
Short shipments
If the balance is never coming, cancel the PO. It stays at whatever was received and stops showing as inbound — which matters, because phantom inbound quantity is what causes you to under-order next time.
Dropship purchase orders
A dropship PO exists to fulfil specific customer orders. The goods never touch your warehouse, so receiving means something different.
Lines are linked to customer demand
Each line is tied to the customer orders it's covering. Receiving fulfils that demand rather than adding to your on-hand stock — which is correct, because you never held it.
Why this matters
If dropship receipts incremented on-hand, your stock would inflate by every dropshipped unit you ever sold, and you'd oversell everything else. Foundry closes out the customer demand instead, oldest first.
Partial dropship receipts
Receiving part of a dropship line satisfies as much customer demand as it covers and leaves the rest waiting. Nobody's order is marked shipped on the strength of stock that hasn't left the vendor.
Common problems
Stock went to the wrong warehouse
Receiving always uses the PO's destination warehouse — there's no per-receipt override. If it was wrong, transfer the stock to the right warehouse and fix the destination before the next delivery against that order.
A PO stays at Partial forever
Something is outstanding — often a line everyone forgot about, or a custom line nobody thought to receive. Open the order and look for lines where received is less than ordered. Cancel if the balance isn't coming.
Received quantity is right, on-hand looks wrong
Check whether the line was linked to customer demand. Dropship lines deliberately don't add to on-hand. If it should have been a warehouse receipt, the PO type was wrong when it was raised.
Vendor says they never got the PO
The order records when it was emailed. If the timestamp is there, it left Foundry — the problem is downstream, usually a spam filter or a stale address on the supplier record. Send a follow-up, or download the PDF and send it yourself.
Vendor's invoice doesn't match the PO
That's expected often enough to have its own workflow — price changes, freight, partial billing. Don't adjust the PO to force a match. See Invoicing & Reconciliation.
Next
- • Warehouse Operations — bins, counts, and keeping on-hand honest after receiving
- • Invoicing & Reconciliation — matching vendor bills to what you received
- • QuickBooks — push approved bills to your accounting system
- • Partner API — raise and receive purchase orders programmatically