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A purchase order is what you send a supplier and what you receive against when the delivery arrives. Raising one from ClinikEHR means the received quantities, the costs and the lots all land back on the same document instead of on a printout somebody has to reconcile later.

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What you’re looking at

Purchasing is a tab on the Inventory screen, not a screen of its own. It carries three buttons — New PO, Draft PO from these and Vendors — over a list of orders, each row showing its vendor, expected date, estimated total and status: draft, submitted, partially received or received. Two of those three buttons are permission-locked. Without Manage suppliers and purchase orders, New PO and Draft PO from these are visible but disabled, with the reason attached: “Needs authorisation — buying on the clinic’s account is purchasing authority. Ask your clinic owner to allow “Manage suppliers and purchase orders” for you.” Vendors stays open to everyone and simply opens read-only — it is also the picker you use when receiving stock. A pharmacy that has never ordered anything sees an empty list, and — only when it has no active paid subscription — a Free plan strip counting purchase orders against a cap of five. Every paid pharmacy plan, Starter upward, is uncapped.

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Raise a purchase order

1

Open a new order

On the Purchasing tab, select New PO.
2

Choose the vendor and the date

Pick the Vendor, then set the Expected date you have been promised. That date is what the delivery is chased against.
3

Add the lines

Add each product with its quantity and Unit cost. The Est. total updates as you go — check it against the quote before you send anything.
4

Submit it

Select submit. A toast confirms “PO submitted” and the order is emailed to the vendor. Until it is submitted it is a draft nobody has seen.

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Receive against it

Deliveries rarely arrive complete, so receiving is per line rather than all or nothing.
1

Open the submitted PO

Find it on the Purchasing tab.
2

Receive each line into a location

Enter what actually arrived for that line and the location it is going into. A line you leave alone stays outstanding, so a part-delivery is recorded as a part-delivery.
3

Record lot and expiry as you go

Every received line becomes a lot. Scan the pack where you can — see Batches, expiry and FEFO for why an undated lot causes trouble later.
Receiving through a PO and receiving through the toolbar’s Receive button end in the same place: stock on hand, and a movement on the Ledger tab.

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Vendors

Vendors on the Purchasing tab opens the supplier manager — the addresses, contacts and account details you order against.

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Ordering from the reorder suggestions

The Catalog and Alerts tabs carry a strip counting the items at/below threshold, with Draft PO from these. It builds a draft order from exactly those items — and deliberately skips any that are also projected to expire unsold, telling you how many it skipped. See Batches, expiry and FEFO.

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Vouchers — the goods-received record

A voucher is the document behind a delivery: what arrived, from whom, against which invoice, at what cost. The tab opens on three figures — Voucher value for the chosen period, Stock received, and the number of Vouchers — with a period and status filter, and a Receive stock button that starts a new one. A voucher takes a Vendor, a Receiving location, a Vendor invoice #, a Funding source and a line per product with Qty, Cost price, Markup %, Sale price, Lot and Expiry. Two shortcuts save most of the typing: “Scan a pack to add it…” adds a line from the pack itself, and Add from a purchase order pulls the lines straight off an order you already raised. Notes — “Delivery condition, discrepancies, credit notes…” — is where a short delivery or a damaged carton gets written down while somebody still remembers it. Each row can be downloaded or printed as a PDF for the supplier file.

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Who can do this

Role decides whether Inventory opens at all — a Cashier / Till Operator reaches only POS and Sales, so purchasing is not theirs. Permission decides whether you may commit your pharmacy to a supplier’s invoice. Two gates are worth stating plainly, because they change what is on the screen rather than what happens when you select something:
  • Manage suppliers and purchase orders redacts money, not just buttons. Negotiated unit cost and supplier account numbers read “Hidden — needs authorisation” for anyone without it, so somebody who can count your stock does not automatically learn what you pay for it or where you pay it.
  • View cost prices and margin withholds the valuation and margin figures the same way — as text, never as a zero.
Two behaviours surprise people:
  • Enforcement is opt-in, per person. A colleague never saved in the permissions sheet is unrestricted, and the sheet warns “Saving starts enforcing”.
  • A denied action is recorded; an allowed one is not. The disabled New PO button is courtesy — the refusal is made server-side whether or not the button was showing.
See Staff permissions.

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Check it worked

  • The order shows as submitted on the Purchasing tab, not as a draft.
  • Your vendor has the email.
  • After receiving, the Stock tab shows the new lots at the location you chose, and the Ledger tab shows the movements.
  • The voucher for the delivery appears on the Vouchers tab and the Stock received figure has moved.

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Common issues

Either you do not hold Manage suppliers and purchase orders — hover it and the tooltip says so — or your pharmacy has no active paid subscription and you are at the free tier’s cap of five purchase orders. The Free plan strip shows which.
The supplier manager opens read-only without Manage suppliers and purchase orders. That is deliberate: everyone needs the vendor list to receive stock against, and only a buyer needs to edit it.
Costs and account numbers are withheld from anyone without the relevant switch, rather than shown as zero. Ask an owner or manager — see Staff permissions.
The email goes out on submit, so check the order is submitted rather than still a draft, and check the address on the vendor record. Download the PDF from the voucher or the order and send it manually in the meantime.
Receive the quantities that arrived and leave the rest of the line outstanding. Do not receive the full quantity and adjust it afterwards — that hides the shortfall from the supplier record.
Saving and submitting are different. Until you submit, nobody has seen it and no email has gone out. A submitted order confirms with “PO submitted”.

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FAQ

A purchase order is what you send: an intention to buy. A voucher is what you got: the goods-received record behind an actual delivery, with the invoice number, costs, lots and expiries. Add from a purchase order on the voucher pulls the lines straight off the order so you are not typing them twice.
No. The toolbar’s Receive books a delivery straight in, and that is the right route for a cash purchase or a walk-in rep. Both routes end in the same place — stock on hand and a movement on the Ledger tab.
Treat a submitted order as sent, because it has been. If the quantity changes, receive what actually arrives against the line rather than editing the order to match — the difference between ordered and received is the record you will want when you query the invoice.
No. Nothing moves until you receive against it. A PO is a document, not a stock movement, so an order that never arrives leaves your figures untouched.
It leaves out anything also projected to expire unsold, and says how many it skipped. See Batches, expiry and FEFO.