How to create a purchase order in Business Central

A purchase order in Business Central records what you're buying from a vendor, and posting it in stages — receipt, then invoice, or both together — is what updates inventory and the vendor ledger. It's the standard way to buy anything from raw materials to office supplies once a business has moved past ad hoc purchase invoices.

Where it lives

Search (Alt+Q) for Purchase Orders and select New, or start from a vendor card's New Document action, which pre-fills the vendor.

Steps

1. Create the order and pick the vendor. Business Central pulls the vendor's default payment terms, currency, and shipping method from the vendor card.
2. Add lines. Enter the item number (or use the picker), quantity, and check the direct unit cost — it should default from vendor purchase pricing if that's set up, but confirm it against the vendor's quote for anything unusual.
3. Set the expected receipt date on the line if delivery timing matters for planning — this feeds into the item's expected availability elsewhere in the system.
4. Release the order. Use the Release action once the order is ready to send. If your company uses approval workflows for purchasing, releasing is usually what sends the request — see Approving a request in Business Central workflows if the order sits waiting instead of releasing immediately.
5. Send it to the vendor. Use Print or Send to email a PDF, or export it in whatever format your vendor expects.
6. Post the receipt when goods arrive. Open the order, check received quantities on each line against the delivery, and use Post with the Receive option. This updates on-hand inventory immediately.
7. Post the invoice when the vendor bill arrives. Reopen the same purchase order (Business Central keeps it available until fully invoiced), enter quantities to invoice if different from what was received, and post with the Invoice option. This creates the vendor ledger entry.
8. Check for a match. If received and invoiced quantities differ, Business Central flags it rather than posting quietly — resolve the difference before continuing rather than overriding it out of habit.

What you need

A buyer or purchasing role typically has permission to create and release orders; posting receipts and invoices may sit with a different role in some setups, particularly where warehouse staff post receipts and finance posts invoices separately. Check current licensing and role assignment with your Business Central administrator — purchasing permissions vary more between companies than sales ones do, because approval and segregation-of-duties setups differ.

Limits and gotchas

• Released orders lock the header. If you need to change the vendor or a major term after releasing, reopen the order first (Reopen action) — editing everything mid-flow is the more common source of confused vendors than any system limitation.
• Item availability isn't guaranteed by the order alone. Creating a purchase order records intent to buy; it doesn't reserve supply for a specific sales order unless you explicitly link them.
• Partial receipts are normal, not an error. A vendor shipping half an order today and the rest next week is handled by posting two receipts against the same order — don't try to force one receipt to match the full quantity.
• Dimensions on non-item lines. A G/L account line (freight, a service charge) usually needs a department or project dimension the same as an item line would — see Using dimensions on a sales document in Business Central for how dimension defaults and requirements work; the same mechanics apply on the purchase side.
• Serial and lot numbers on receipt. If the item is tracked, you'll be prompted to assign or scan lot/serial information at receipt — see Item tracking with lot and serial numbers in Business Central.

Building the habit of checking before releasing

A purchase order that's wrong when it's released causes more friction than one caught before — once it's out to the vendor and an approval has fired, correcting it means reopening, editing, and potentially resending, which looks disorganised to a vendor even when it's a minor fix. Get in the habit of reading every line once, quantity and cost together, before releasing rather than after. It's also worth checking the vendor's own item or part number if one is captured on the line — a mismatch there is a common reason a vendor ships the wrong item even when your own internal item number was completely correct.

The mirror-image task on the sales side is How to post a sales invoice in Business Central, which follows the same create-review-post pattern from the selling side.