Monitoring Purchase Orders: How to Keep Track of PO

Over 66% of small businesses face financial challenges, and only a few can cope with managing those challenges.

Proper tracking and management of finances can enable the business to ensure that they bypass different financial hurdles and achieve their desired financial goals

If we talk about purchasing orders, they are considered a critical resource in an organization and have an important role in business purchasing transactions.

So, you need to integrate effective business systems that can help monitor purchase orders and ensure that you can manage business finances effectively.

How to track purchase orders?

What are the effective methods for monitoring purchase orders?

Let's find out.

Table of Content

1. What is Purchase Order Tracking?

2. How to Track Purchase Order?

3. Method to Track Purchase Orders

4. Traditional pen and paper method

5. Accounting software

6. Purchase order tracking software

7. Benefits of Purchase Order Tracking Software

8. Saving time

9. Minimal errors

10. Optimized management

11. Standardized forms

12. Rapid processing

13. FAQs

14. InvoiceOwl Can Automate Your Purchase Order Monitoring

What is Purchase Order Tracking?

The tracking of the lifecycle of a purchase order is considered the purchase order tracking. From the creation of the purchase requisition to the final payment and approval, you can track your purchase order and check the status whenever you want.

It can be done using traditional methods like a spreadsheet, and office suite or by a professionally purchased order tracking software.

Irrespective of the methods, purchase order tracking has specific goals that it covers:

• It standardizes the processing time and ensures a smooth workflow. It focuses on minimizing the errors with consistent monitoring and enables them to spot the problem before it causes havoc.
• The purchase order tracking focuses on channeling different order approval workflows in the right direction.
• You can make informed decisions based on the tracking details to ensure smooth business workflow.
• You can communicate with the seller based on the tracking details to point out different issues in the purchase order processing from their end.
• Tracking can assist you in keeping a bird's eye view of your internal purchase order approval process.

These goals can be accomplished when you can implement the right purchase order system in your business operations and make the right moves to extract the benefits of the tracking.

You can use different ways to track purchase orders based on requirements and goals, but before that, you need to understand the range of options.

How to Track Purchase Order?

With the advancements in technology, you can use multiple ways to track your purchase orders. Either you can rely on traditional methods using spreadsheet templates or manual pen and paper tracking and cross-checking techniques.

You can also switch to different modern purchase order tracking apps or accounting software to help you explore the power of automation and advanced system processing.

Every approach has its pros, cons, and tracking methods, but these PO tracking systems aim to help you extract efficient and quick purchase order tracking details.

If you are starting your contractor business and don't have enough requirements to be tracked efficiently, then you choose the traditional method.

Otherwise, if you want to scale your contractor business and ensure quick purchase processing of your material, then you will require modern tracking software.

Method to Track Purchase Orders

There are broadly three methods to track purchase orders. You can choose one based on your budget, requirements, and goals.

1. Traditional pen and paper method

Traditional approach of using a spreadsheet template is the most popular PO tracking method. It is a manually managed process where you need to track the procurement data in your Excel spreadsheet.

You need more resources, time, and effort to ensure accurate and precise data entry in the spreadsheet that can deliver the best tracking results. But the process is highly prone to inefficiencies, invoice fraud, and errors in transactional data that lead to miscommunications and additional expenses for your business.

The manual process makes it difficult for cross-checking, as the emails and tracking sheets can be misplaced, which can cause trouble for your procurement and accounts payable representative team.

2. Accounting software

You can use accounting software like QuickBooks and ERP to track your purchase order. Although accounting software can offer you great PO tracking ability, they are not primarily designed to deliver you the desired results.

They are suitable for tracking purchase orders at a volume of 10-20 per month and offer limited features to perform different actions.

3. Purchase order tracking software

The best option for result-oriented contractors is to use the purchase order tracking software to help you streamline the PO tracking process and ensure better compliance and efficient processing.

You can use the software for high PO volumes, add multiple changes to the purchase order data, track PO updates at different touchpoints, and simplify the complexities of the purchase order workflow.

These benefits can help you get a clear overview of the purchase order processing and ensure you don't lose control over the process.

We recommend choosing a professional PO tracking system to deliver an end-to-end purchase order tracking solution.

Benefits of Purchase Order Tracking Software

Your contractor business can gain many significant benefits from purchase order tracking software as it can assist you with.

1. Saving time

You can save time and energy based on real-time tracking of your purchase orders. You can instantly point out different issues in the processing and ensure that there are no further hurdles with the delivery of material.

You can channel your resources into your core business operations that can scale your contractor business. You don't want to process the purchase order manually and go through different spreadsheets and emails to cross-examine the processing details.

Your account payable team can also quickly process the payment based on the invoice, purchase order, and other valid documents. The software can provide instant details about the previous history and well-vetted purchase order tracking reports of the purchase orders that can help you ‌make better purchasing decisions.

2. Minimal errors

Purchase order tracking software can help you bypass the inefficiencies and human errors of the procurement process and manual purchase order tracking.

A purchase order tracking system can streamline your tracking process, and you don't want to fall into the troubles of finding the right tracking documents.

With a few clicks, you can get tracking details of the purchase order and make desired changes in the software with finesse. With minimal errors, you can increase the speed of the purchase order approval and ensure that your service business gets the required supplies within a limited time.

3. Optimized management

You get centralized control of your operations and can check different bottleneck situations of your purchase order process that can help you avoid delays in the material delivery.

You can get in instant touch with the sellers and ask them to resolve troubles from their end (if any) to ensure that they match the required delivery date. The software can help you gain visibility and control spending for a better and more efficient purchase order lifecycle.

You can communicate effectively with your authorities for PO approvals and assign them access to different controls.

4. Standardized forms

You can simplify your supply chain management process with the help of quality purchase order software that can help you create standardized forms for purchase requisitions.

The purchasing department can create purchase orders while accessing the inventory and other vital factors before initiating a purchase request.

You can choose different purchase order templates provided by the software that can help you add different purchase order information to your form like payment terms, preferred suppliers, PO number, company name, and delivery address.

The pre-built standardized purchase order requisition form can help you save time and effort. You can channel your resource and focus on your core business operations to ensure quality customer service.

5. Rapid processing

The purchase order management system offers fast and reliable processing of your purchase orders and ensures that you can access the details and tracking details of the process.

The accounting department can help you manage your inventory and minimize manual labor, additional expenses, and rogue spendings on your purchases. You can extract real-time actionable insights from the software to help remove the complexities and simplify the purchase order workflow.

These are the key benefits of using professional purchase order tracking software. But with the rise of the purchase order software industry at a CAGR of 7.6%, the number of software has increased, and it has become difficult for the contractors and businesses to shortlist one for their business.

But we've got you covered as our team has finalized the best purchase order tracking software that can help you improve your tracking results.

InvoiceOwl Can Automate Your Purchase Order Monitoring

InvoiceOwl is the leading estimation and invoicing software for contractors that offers quality purchase order tracking features. The software's interface is smooth and intuitive, enabling users to quickly adapt to the software integration and access the wide range of features.

It offers an automated tracking process that makes purchase order tracking easy and efficient. The software provides you with professional purchase order templates which your employees can use to create quality purchase orders in no time.

Apart from purchase order processing, the software also offers to record a credit memo journal entry, estimates processing, payment processing, invoicing, reporting, and other features to strengthen your business finances.

You get a centralized control to handle your purchase order processing and ensure that you get real-time tracking updates to resolve different processing issues.

The software can help your team handle their assigned responsibilities with finesse. You can streamline your purchase order workflow from creation to multiple approvals, from seller communication to final payment.

Access the FREE trial today and transform your purchase order tracking process with the power of modern-day automation software.