A purchase order is the document of your offer that you send to the seller indicating the product type, quantities, agreed price, and other information about you to help the seller make the final invoice to you. Attached to this lesson is a purchase order template that you can download and use for your own product. Let's go over the document so you know how to fill it in properly. On the upper right-hand cover, you'll fill in the name of the supplier and its contact information.
The next few sections will be the information about the buyer and the receiving contact. The first box will be your information. The second box will be the recipient information for the shipment. If you're just starting out, these two boxes may have the same information. But if you do have a third party logistics partner, you'll fill in their receiving information here. The third box is the PO number, which is an internal number that you'll set for this order to help you keep track of the invoices and the orders placed.
This will be the date that you send the PO, and here will be your name so the vendor knows who is the main point of contact if they have any questions. Next, you'll fill in the shipping method, the FOB designation, which is where you'll take delivery of the product. Typically, it will be the city name of your destination. Terms is for the payment terms. Whether it is a deposit or a pay-in-full, this will be the terms that you will have previously agreed with your supplier.
The next few sections are pretty straightforward. This is where you fill in the quantity and unit type of your product. The quantity is the amount that you're ordering, and the unit refers to the packaging configuration. For example, if you order a hundred envelopes and they come in one box, the quantity will be one and the unit will be the box, which tells the suppliers to fill your orders with one box of envelope, instead of just a hundred envelopes loosely. The unit price will be the cost per unit of the products that you're ordering, and the total is calculated by multiplying the quantity with the unit price.
Finally, you'll get to the subtotal, which is the sum of all the numbers above it, and the rest of the numbers are determined by your location and rates that you have received with your supplier. Adding all these together will bring you to the total price of your order.
