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Purchasing & Procurement
Know what you ordered – and what it was for.
Raise the order, send it, receive it against the job — and know what it cost before the supplier invoice turns up.
Overview
Put the order in writing and keep it tied to the job.
A purchase order in WorkGuru moves through three states, and they mean what they say. Draft is a saved order you can still change. Approved is the one you’ve formally sent to the supplier — to edit it you have to revert it to draft first, which is the point: what’s approved is what was sent. Received means the goods or services physically turned up.
Receiving and costing are handled as two independent workflows. That sounds like a detail until the supplier invoice arrives three weeks after the steel did, at a different price, with freight on it. Because WorkGuru runs a FIFO perpetual inventory, you can re-cost the order after it’s been received and the landed cost stays correct — rather than being stuck with whatever number was on the order when you raised it.
Orders can be raised against a project, so the cost lands on the job it belongs to rather than in a general pile you reconcile later. That’s what makes job costing reflect what was actually spent.
You can also set purchase value limits on how much an individual staff member can raise orders for. That’s usually enough control for a workshop: the people doing the buying can buy, and anything above the threshold needs someone else.
What’s inside
What you get
01
Supplier-linked orders
Keep each order against the supplier.
02
Project-linked purchasing
Put job purchases where they belong.
03
Line items
Record what you are actually buying.
04
Purchase history
Look back at what was ordered.
05
Approval connection
Use approvals where purchases need sign-off.
The reality
Why you need it
Orders happen by phone and email.
Fast at the time. Harder when somebody needs the details later.
The invoice is different from what you expected.
You need something to compare it with.
A part arrives with no obvious job attached.
The order should tell you where it belongs.
Two people order the same thing.
Visibility beats another “I thought you were doing it.”
The supplier asks what you meant.
A clear order saves another round of back-and-forth.
How it works
How it works
01
Choose the supplier
02
Add what you need
03
Tie it to the job
04
Send the order
05
Use it when the cost comes back
Capabilities
What it does
Capability
Supplier-linked orders
Keep each order against the supplier.
Capability
Project-linked purchasing
Put job purchases where they belong.
Capability
Line items
Record what you are actually buying.
Purchase history
Look back at what was ordered.
Approval connection
Use approvals where purchases need sign-off.
Day to day
What it looks like on a normal day
The workshop needs material for Job 2217.
Raise the PO against 2217 so the cost has a home before the invoice arrives.
A supplier says the price has changed.
Update the order and keep the new number with the job.
Someone asks if the part was ordered.
Open the purchase instead of checking three inboxes.
What you get out of it
What changes
Fewer “did we order it?” conversations
Give the team somewhere to look.
Better job costing
Keep supplier spend against the work.
Cleaner supplier conversations
Everyone can see what was actually ordered.
Less double ordering
Make existing orders visible.
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Discovered their contract work wasn’t profitable.
We didn’t wanna pay 100 grand upfront for a program – but then we found WorkGuru.
Nick Mazzella, Administrator, Frontline Trays & Trailers
Fit
Will it work the way we do things?
“We usually just email the supplier.”
Plenty of orders start that way. The trouble comes later — when nobody can find what was ordered, at what price, for which job, and the supplier invoice arrives with a number nobody recognises. Raising the order takes about as long as writing the email, and the difference is that the cost lands on the job and there’s a record of what was agreed.
“We have a lot of small purchases.”
Small purchases are the ones most likely to go missing from the job cost, precisely because individually none of them seem worth the paperwork. Collectively they’re often the gap between what a job was supposed to make and what it made. Purchase value limits let the small stuff be raised by the people doing the buying without a bottleneck.
“We already enter supplier bills in accounting.”
Accounting tells you what the business spent. It doesn’t tell you which job spent it. A purchase order raised against the project puts the cost where it belongs while the job is still running, so you find out about an overspend at the point you could still do something about it rather than at month end.
By trade
Where this gets used
Also in this area
Goes further with
Purchase Approvals
Use purchase approvals where the business needs control, without slowing down every small buy.
Works with
Connected features
Purchasing
The wider buying workflow.
Supplier Management
Keep the order with the supplier.
Project Management
Keep the cost with the job.
Job Costing
Use the real purchase in the job result.
Purchase Approvals
Put sign-off around purchases where needed.
FAQs
Purchase Orders questions
Can a purchase order be linked to a project?
Yes, and it’s the normal way to work. Raising the order against the project puts the cost onto that job, so what you spent on materials shows up alongside labour in the job cost instead of sitting in a general expense pile that gets reconciled later, if at all.
Can we keep supplier details with the order?
Yes. Orders are raised against a supplier record, which holds their contact details, and the order itself keeps what was ordered, at what price and against which job. When the invoice arrives and the price doesn’t match, you have the order to check it against.
Can purchase orders help with job costing?
That’s most of the point of them. Materials and subcontract costs are a large share of the cost on most workshop jobs, and if they aren’t attached to the job the job cost is wrong. Because receiving and costing are separate steps, you can also re-cost after receipt so freight and price changes end up in the landed cost rather than being lost.
Can approvals be used around purchases?
Yes. Purchase value limits set how much a given staff member can raise orders for, and the Draft to Approved step gives you a deliberate moment where an order becomes the thing you sent the supplier. Approved orders can’t be quietly edited — they have to be reverted to draft first.
Put the order where the job is.
See how purchase orders fit into the rest of the WorkGuru job flow.