Some Customers need to pay by Order Number or Purchase Order.

[ozdrum]

I need to have "Payment by Purchase Order" as a payment option. 

We deal mainly with B2C direct customers, however we also deal with a lot of schools and government agencies who prefer to place an order with a Purchase Order Number which we fulfill the order and then invoice them for payment. 

Is there any better option than adding a Manual Payment for us to offer the customer the option of adding a Purchase Order Number and/or uploading a Purchase Order as a form of payment when they submit their order? 

I am ready to transition from BigCommerce to Shopify and this is one of the main issues we currently have where for example a school will call to ask about ordering with a purchase order rather than paying by credit card - they then have to email us the details and we manually create their order and enter their details as a Manual Payment. Obviously sending them an invoice is then manually done in our Xero software. 

If this was already an option in our checkout the order would have already been placed which we can complete easily. We don't know how many orders we are missing without it as schools and government agencies are having to take the extra step to contact us directly. 

Thanks for any feedback or suggestions. 

[CrystalPhoenix]

We need this as well, and it’s very frustrating. Coming from Wordpress, where there are dozens of PO gateway plugins, I don’t understand why this is so difficult. It’s the first spot I’ve seen where Shopify loses the race. Doesn’t someone out there have an answer?

[Imogen]

Hi there, @ozdrum and @CrystalPhoenix. Thanks for taking the time to reach out to the Shopify Community with your feedback around Purchase Orders as a payment method option in the checkout.

Currently, it's not possible to have a Purchase Order listed as a payment method within the online checkout. With that being said, we have heard feedback around this request in the past, and I'm happy to pass along your feedback to our developers to they know that there is continued interest in this functionality. Though it is possible to create purchase orders via the 'Draft Order' functionality, it does make sense to streamline this process by negating the step to require an initial reach out.

I did some digging into things, and did find some third party app suggestions that may streamline this purchase order workflow for your businesses and your customers. Specifically, I came across the 'Easy Purchase Orders' app. Those this is a paid application, it's got some great reviews, and it looks like the app developers often work with their users to help them get the app functioning as needed! I recommend reaching out to these app devs to see if their app may be a good fit for you!

[CrystalPhoenix]

Thank you, Imogen - this is the first helpful step I've seen, and I appreciate it! I can't imagine there wouldn't be demand for something here, with wholesale taking to Shopify. 

[Julie_Olson]

The app you linked (and others like it) focus on generating a quote and do not actually address the issue of "what comes next."

Once a quote has been sent, our corporate/government customers send us a purchase order (PO) which is generated by their A/P department. This PO number needs to be added to all invoices, shipping confirmations, etc. 

Other people have been talking about this (https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-design/add-purchase-order-number-text-field-during-checkout/...) and other platforms offer this feature, but for some reason Shopify doesn't seem to recognize the need for a simple text field that can be added to orders for POs.