Purchase Orders

What is this page about: Purchase orders (POs) record a committed purchase with a vendor before you receive the bill for it. This page covers the PO lifecycle, how to create a PO and add line items in Light, and how Light matches a PO against the bills that come in against it.

# On this page

• Purchase order states
• Creating a purchase order
• Adding line items
• Viewing a purchase order
• Matching a PO to a bill
• Related articles

Purchase orders record committed spend with a vendor ahead of the bill. In Light, POs live under Spend management → Purchase orders.

# Purchase order states

On the PO's details page, the current state shows as a badge next to the "Purchase order" title, rather than as a banner across the page.

Light also moves a PO through brief intermediate steps while it finishes an approval, a close or a reset. These are not shown as badges and need nothing from you.

If you're looking for "cancel a PO" in the product, look for Archive instead. One thing worth knowing: the filter dropdown for this state currently reads "Discarded," while the badge and banner on the PO itself say "Archived." Same state, two labels, so expect either wording depending on where you're looking.

# Creating a purchase order

1. In Light, go to Spend management → Purchase orders.

2. Click Create purchase order. Light creates an empty draft right away.

3. On the draft's details page, fill in:

   • Vendor: who you're ordering from.

   • Date: when you created the PO.

   • Delivery date (optional): when you need the goods or services.

   • Delivery address (optional).

   • Entity: which company entity is making the purchase.

   • Currency: the PO's currency.

   • Request owner: who's requesting the purchase.

   • Description (optional) and Vendor notes (optional).

     Each field saves as you enter it, and line items live on this same page.

4. Add line items (below).

Once the PO is approved and syncs to your ERP, it moves to Open and picks up its PO number there, this is the ERP-assigned number, not something you enter yourself.

# Adding line items

1. On the PO's details page, click + Add line item. This appends a new row to the line items table, there's no separate form to fill in and submit.

2. Fill in the row's cells directly:

   • Description: what you're ordering.
   • Quantity and Unit price.
   • Account: the general ledger (GL) account the cost is charged to.
   • Cost center (optional): the department or project.
   • Tax code (optional).

3. Each cell saves as soon as you click away from it, no separate save or confirm action.

4. Light calculates the line total for you.

5. Click + Add line item again for each additional item.

# Viewing a purchase order

The PO details page shows the document preview (the PO PDF) alongside the PO's fields. Click Hide document in the header to collapse the preview and give the fields and line items more room, or Show document to bring it back.

Next to the fields, an Activity / Documents tabbed panel shows:

• Activity: a log of changes and actions taken on the PO.
• Documents: any files attached to the PO, plus a link back to the purchase request it originated from, if any.

# Matching a PO to a bill

Bills are matched to purchase orders in two ways. Light tries to match every new bill automatically, and anyone working on the bill can match, change or remove a match by hand.

# Automatic matching

When Light reads a bill document, for example one you upload or forward to your bill inbox, it tries to match the bill to a purchase order straight away. It only makes the match when all of these are true:

• The bill shows a PO number. Light ignores formatting differences, so PO-00123 on the bill matches PO number 123.
• Light recognised the vendor, and it's the same vendor as on the purchase order.
• The purchase order is open.
• The bill isn't already matched to another purchase order.

If any of these isn't true, Light leaves the bill unmatched. You won't see an error, and you can match the bill yourself. Light doesn't try to match credit notes or bills it has flagged as duplicates.

Automatic matches show in the bill's history as made by Light's AI assistant rather than by a person, so you can always tell which matches were automatic.

# Matching by hand

On a bill, you can link it to an open purchase order, switch it to a different one, or remove the match. The bill and the purchase order must have the same vendor. Use this for anything automatic matching didn't catch, such as a bill with no PO number on it or a vendor Light didn't recognise.

# What happens after a match

• The bill picks up the PO's coding. Light copies the GL account and tax code from the purchase order onto the bill's lines. If every line on the PO uses the same coding, every bill line gets it. If the PO's lines are coded differently, each bill line takes the coding of the PO line with the same net amount.
• Your edits are kept. An automatic match replaces the bill's existing coding with the PO's. A manual match only fills in fields that are blank. Any line someone changes after the match is never overwritten.
• Light tracks what's left on the PO. One purchase order can be matched to several bills. Light keeps a running total of how much has been billed against it and how much remains, converting bills in other currencies to the PO's currency. If bills add up to more than the PO, the remaining amount goes negative so you can see the overspend.
• People can be notified. Light can send a notification in Slack, Microsoft Teams or the mobile app when a purchase order is matched to a bill.

For POs that are open or closed, a Matched invoices table on the details page lists every bill matched against the PO so far, with the matched date and amount for each, and shows the remaining unmatched amount at the top.

# Related articles

• Entering bills
• Bill approval
• Managing vendors

Also searched as: PO, PO number, PO status, archive a purchase order, cancel a purchase order, GL account on a PO, PO matching, match PO to bill, spend management, procurement.