Shopify has completely changed the process to receive a purchase order and complicated it for no apparently reason. POs are now put into “transfer” mode which would be fine if a business has more than one location but for those of us who do not, then this adds an extra complication to receive a purchase order that in my opinion is redundant. Not only that, Shopify did not provide any advance notice that this change was occuring so I was quite caught off-guard when I went to receive an order this morning and had to spend unwarranted time trying to figure out what had happened and why. You can no longer go directly into a PO and receive it, make changes or update shipping. It has to be “transferred” from the vendor to the store inventory. Why make something that was so easy become so complicated?
There’s no setting to revert to the old direct receive flow unfortunately, this is the new system and it’s staying. The realistic adjustment is just learning the new path: you receive against the PO/transfer in one motion now rather than opening the PO and receiving directly, but functionally it’s the same end result once you know where the receive action moved to. Annoying relearning curve, not actually more work once it clicks.
Best,
Moeed
Agreed. With so many small merchants on Shopify, why make our lives more difficult? The receiving process was so quick and easy and having spent time relearning the new path it’s certainly not as straight forward and easy as it was. It’s also very frustrating that such a big change was made with no notice and also with no option to revert to the old setting.
What is very important to me is the PO expected receive date…not creation date, but there used to be a date that we would use & put in our order “cancel date.” This is the day by which we have the right to cancel our orders if they are not received. Daily we sort by this date so that we can reach out to vendors & exercise our right to cancel if we choose to. When we hit TRANSFER, that page ONLY shows the expected received dates for my old POs prior to the conversion. Now when you hit “create PO” or even when you transfer, there is no place to enter a received date. We don’t want to have this information ONLY once a vendor ships something, but I need to sort my POs (or transfers…we can just hit transfer immediately on all POs entered) by expected received date. My business cannot function without this. This is such a game changer that we will need to switch to something else. We are a women’s boutique with one location & sell online, too. I would like something simple for POs, receiving that allows for expected receipt date & sorting by this field like before. If anyone can help me understand if this is possible w/ Shopify now, that would be great. I never really liked Stocky so I reverted back because of how EASY Shopify was to sort my POs in a long list based on dates/vendors, etc.
So agreee with your comments. Have made something that was good into total crap
Sorry we are the users, Shopify should listen. With what seems to be no consulation they have implemented a totally stupid change. A change should bring benefit. This change does not. The workflow does not make sense. Nor does it add benefit. It would be better if they added a box to show the order has been paid.
What I like about it is that you can now import an order file rather than keying it in manually. I don’t believe that was a function at all before. The rest of it seems like extra steps or over complication of the process. Also the discount functionality doesn’t work for our store as a dollar amount. Was really hoping that would have changed to a percentage off. Does anyone know if when receiving an order with over 50 skus on it it will now move to the next page of the PO to receive or do you have to save and manipulate the pgs in order to receive on the next page of the PO?
That is an exceedingly arrogant response. Shopify would not exist without small businesses. To reply, “That is simply the way it is; you will just have to accept it,” reveals the utter arrogance of someone who is not listening to their customers.
The fact that things are currently done this way does not mean Shopify should refuse to listen to its clients. An innovative company is one that knows how to heed its customers and, when something fails to satisfy them, is willing to reconsider its approach.
What would have become of Coca-Cola if, when they changed the recipe and customers complained, they had answered, “This is how it is now; you will simply have to get used to it”?
The also removed the functionality to see only orders that haven’t been received. There is a column for Linked Transfers but I can’t find a way to sort by that column. There are more comments and concerns about this under a few other topic headings. Lots of frustrated retailers out there!
This new update is yet again another bad one. I don’t understand why Shopify always changes what doesn’t need to be changed, but never changes what ACTUALLY needs to be. They always see to make everything extra complicated?
Who came up with this change? They need to consult actually businesses before so we can let them know how things should function. Shopify seems to slowly be going down hill.
Whats the purpose of a purchase order if it just goes into a transfer anyway? We already have transfers!!! Why would you transfer FROM A VENDOR? Makes no sense. You PURCHASE FROM A VENDOr! And why is there no way to add the quantity when choosing products to add to the PO. When you search for products you can only add them with a checkbox, then after choose all of your products, you then need to remember how many you needed and choose the quantity when you cant see how many you have. That is what was needed to be changed. Not this unnecessary step.
This new Purchase Order Receiving/Transfer process is super time consuming and NOT user friendly. Way more clicks, way harder to see at a glance which PO’s are still open and what items have been received and which are still outstanding on an individual PO. Why would I want to go to a Transfer to receive instead of just doing it from the PO?? And since I have already chosen the destination on the PO, why would I need to do a transfer from the PO? This is not just a case of not liking change because it’s new. This is truly more difficult, more time-consuming and has zero benefit. PLEASE give retailers the ability to opt out of this workflow and go back to receiving directly from the PO!
Oh, and when I was using the chat bot AND chatting with a human on support, they said there was nothing they could do, but I should use the “report feedback” button from the admin page. There was no such button to be found in any of the 4 places they told me to look. 
I also just discovered, if you don’t create a transfer after marking the PO as ordered and mark the Transfer as In Transit, the item won’t show as incoming in the product page, which can lead to over ordering. Yet another problem caused by this “fix”
Wow! I didn’t even realize that I had to create the transfer then mark as in transit in order to get the incoming product to show on the product page. That is ridiculous! Two extra step on top of the multiple steps already added.
I haven’t found the report feedback button either…
Have you actually tried to use it as a busy shop with hundreds of suppliers and deliveries with some only being partially delivered? Because it is NOT functionally the same. There are multiple extra steps. Before I’d create a PO, add the products and mark as ordered. Once arrived I’d receipt what was there directly from that PO and done. Now I need to raise a PO, addd the products and mark as ordered. Then I need to create a transfer and mark that transfer as in transit. When receipting I can no longer receipt “all” of a single product line, either I use the little arrow(which is ridiculous if I have 100 of each line) or I manually have to click the box and type in how many arrived. Then I have to scroll up and down later on if something is partially receipted as the green/blank/red bar of receipting status has gone and I have to spot the products lines at the bottom that shows how much are still “in transit”. Oh and if I edit a PO to add or remove a product line/quantity after I already created a transfer I have to delete the transfer and make a new one as it does NOT update on the transfer page so it’ll still show the original number/products even with the PO itself being updated.
We are the paying customers, if you want us to keep using shopify you need to listen when everyone is complaining the new system wasn’t a good change.
To add even more unnecessary complexity, the Transfers screen doesn’t show the PO number related to the transfer until the transfer is opened. This is extremely inconvenient when receiving multiple POs from one vendor that arrived at the same time. I have to open every transfer to see which PO number is attached. The transfer number is different and unrelated to the PO number. There is no link that I can find on the PO to go to the transfer once it has been put into transfer status. The developers really missed the ball on this. I’m sure there is more complexity that I haven’t found yet that is unwanted and unwarranted.
We are also finding the new purchase orders to be a very negative change. How we use the purchase orders is actually a bit different, as a work around to display the restock dates clearly on our website because we are a sewing workshop and make everything in store. We restock key products weekly and it’s helpful to have these all organised and counted in the same way. Our products are coming from us, so we really don’t need the more complicated transfers options, why isn’t this extra step just optional? To accommodate those those working at different scales? Disappointingly the only change that Shopify could have made that would work for us, they still haven’t done, which would be the stock automatically being added to inventory at a set date and time. Our products sell out quickly once available so we need someone live with their finger on the button at 8:59 am for a 9am drop!
As a not for profit organization, we have been using the starter plan, which has recently completely done away with the ability to receive inventory from purchase orders. This ‘transfers’ function is not available at starter level. Very disappointed, making volunteers lives much more difficult. It wasn’t broken. Why force such an update?
This update is horrible, we need it reverted to the old method
A couple of weeks into this awful new PO system I am still completely astounded that in 2026 a company like Shopify with (according to a quick google - powers approximately 4.8 to 6 million live online stores globally!!) would roll out the most ridiculous update that makes ABSOLUTELY no sense whatsoever. Shopify engineers if you read this could we all please get some clarification on what you were thinking when you decided to make all of our lives much harder?
And this is the only communication sent out?
Early access to the new purchase order workflow
We’re improving how purchase orders work in Shopify admin and want you to be among the first to try it. Here’s what to expect.
What’s changing
**Purchase orders will be for tracking what you’re buying from your supplier(s) and at what cost. Moving those goods will happen through Transfers, which can also track shipping and logistics costs separately.
It works like Fulfillment does for Orders. The order captures what was sold, the fulfillment handles the delivery. Here, the PO captures what you bought, the Transfer handles what arrived.
If you use POS, your team will also be able to receive shipments in-store. Either way, you’ll get a clear trail from what was ordered to what arrived and what it cost.**
I never wanted to be the the first to try it - I wanted to be given the choice!
| But the more merchants who post on this forum (hopefully) the quicker Shopify will realise that they fixed something that wasn’t broken and how much we would all like to go back to the simple, easy, straight forward old PO system that worked really well. |
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I completely agree! I didn’t even get the notice. I’ve seen other threads on the forum about this as well with harsh comments that should make Shopify take notice - fingers crossed!
Hi @LCL333 . Hope you are doing great !
Well, that’s totally annoying! Shopify snuck in this change with zero warning and now receiving a simple PO takes way more steps than it should, especially when you have only one location.