Order materials. Track delivery. Match against the job.
Issue a purchase order to your supplier, watch the delivery status update, and reconcile every line against the job's material list. The PO is the bridge between what you ordered, what showed up, and what got installed.
How a PO flows through the system
Open a job, hit "Issue PO," pick the supplier, and add line items, quantity, unit, price. The PO gets a number, a status (draft, sent, partial, received), and a link back to the job it belongs to.
When materials arrive, mark them received against the PO. Quantities short-shipped or back-ordered carry a status of their own; the materials list on the job updates so the foreman in the field knows what's actually on hand.
- Pick supplier from your supplier directory, contact info auto-fills.
- Line items: quantity, unit, unit price, line total.
- Status flow: draft → sent → partial → received.
- PO is linked to the parent job, material costs roll into the job's P&L.
- Print or PDF the PO to send to a supplier that doesn't take email.
Why POs matter for trade margins
Materials are the second-biggest cost on most trade jobs. Without a PO discipline, costs creep, extra trips to the supplier, line items that never get billed back to the customer, change orders that don't get approved before the work happens.
A PO captures the commitment at the moment you make it. The supplier knows what to deliver, the foreman knows what to expect, and the per-job P&L knows what the materials cost. Reconciling against the job's material list closes the loop, you can see where the budget went and what's left.
- Material cost flows into the job's P&L the minute the PO is issued.
- Reconciliation surface highlights variances (ordered vs. received vs. installed).
- Print-ready PDF for suppliers that don't take email POs.
- Search POs by supplier, by job, by status, by date range.
What's not in here today
Bit & Grain tracks the PO and reconciles it against the job's materials list, not against a stock-on-hand inventory. The product does not maintain a warehouse-style inventory count today (the architecture gap is preserved per planning/marketing-plan.md). If you need stock-on-hand inventory, that's a different shape of tool.
What we do track: per-job material status (ordered, on-site, installed) for the materials attached to a job's PO. That's the discipline most trade businesses actually need, without the overhead of full inventory management.
Available on the Free tier.
Ready to try Purchase Orders?
Issue a purchase order to your supplier, watch the delivery status update, and reconcile every line against the job's material list. The PO is the bridge between what you ordered, what showed up, and what got installed.