How to tackle Purchase Orders UI issues with new tab changes?

Store Design

Topic summary

Main issue: A new Purchase Orders (PO) tab was rolled out, converting supplier transfers into POs. Users report the UI lacks key functionality and increases manual work.

Key pain points:

  • Item entry requires re-creating data per variant (SKU, price, tax) instead of auto-filling from existing product info. Supplier SKU doesn’t auto-populate, limiting usefulness for suppliers.
  • Search isn’t scoped by supplier, making product selection cumbersome when building a PO.
  • Received items display only the main product title, not variant or variant SKU, hindering reconciliation with warehouses or audits.
  • Cannot edit/add the supplier after creation, and cannot fully delete bad POs (only close), cluttering records.
  • Changes were not documented in the changelog.

Minor positives:

  • Export to PDF helps create shareable PO documents.

Context/terms:

  • PO: Purchase Order; SKU: Stock Keeping Unit.

Requests/Action items:

  • Auto-fill product and supplier data (costs, SKUs, price/tax) with manual override.
  • Supplier-scoped search and full variant/SKU visibility in receipts/comments.
  • Allow supplier edits post-creation and true PO deletion.
  • Provide transparent changelog entries.

Status: Discussion ongoing; users evaluating whether to keep Shopify’s PO or revert to third-party apps by year-end.

Summarized with AI on January 11. AI used: gpt-5.
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So the new Purchase Orders tab came out today and they changed all of the transfers over to ‘purchase orders’ if they were from outside suppliers. This new format while giving a little more flexibility does not have the bones to back up its creation. When adding items in the new form would have you re-create every item you want to put into the purchase order putting in a new SKU, price and tax information. These fields would be fine but especially for such a radical change should auto fill with the information you already have in the system rather than requiring this much labor to add that information to each not only item, but individual variant of every item.

Taking the approach that these are now a full on purchase order which would be coming from one company the search system is still the same and does not make searching any easier by limiting down to just the products which are attributed to that company or supplier.

The comments section has also changed again and when items are received into the purchase order it will show only the main title of the item not the individual variant or variant SKU, which means if you are using a different warehouse program or need to look up what items were received on a particular day or who received those items you have no idea what specific variant was received.

AND WHERE IS THE CHANGE IN THE CHANGELOG.

1 Like
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Would love to hear more about this too. Not auto filling the Supplier SKU (or less importantly for me the price/tax) means the fields dont get used and my supplier asks why they cant have thier SKU there to make it easier their side…

Export to PDF beats my screenshots and making a document however.

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I’d like to add to the PO UI issues. It is nice they tried making a real PO system but we need to be able to edit and add the supplier when it gets missed or actually be able to delete and completely remove a bad PO instead of it just being closed and sitting like a good PO that was closed. Even if they keep a secret copy like they do when an order is deleted that would be great.

I would have loved the costs and SKU’s to auto-populate too and then we could change as needed but oh well. not the worst part of the package since we have to change those depending on which supplier a product comes from on that order.

They’re good at changes and not putting them in the changelog. Especially UI changes.

We’re using the PO system in Shopify until end of year to see if we’re going to discontinue use of our Full Shelf app. or go back to it. It is nice having PO’s integrated and will save us a monthly fee but we’re not sure yet if the shopify PO system beat the full shelf system or not.