Streamline purchasing and receiving by managing Vendor Purchase Orders (POs), Cut Tickets, Garment Dye processes, Screen Printing, and more. Automate purchasing based on demand forecasts or specific order criteria.
If you import what you sell, your business runs on purchase orders. The vendor PO is where a season starts: it tells your factory exactly what to make, it carries the costs that decide your margin, and it is the record your warehouse checks when the boxes finally show up. Here is how vendor POs work, why landed cost matters more than factory price, and how AIMS360 runs the whole flow for brands that sell on Shopify and wholesale.
A vendor purchase order, or vendor PO, is the document you send a supplier that spells out exactly what you are buying: which styles, in which colors and sizes, at what price, delivered when and where. Once the supplier accepts it, the PO is the agreement both sides work from. In AIMS360, vendor POs run purchasing and receiving for finished goods and raw materials, link to cut tickets and production processes, and carry the costs that become your landed cost.
That is the whole idea. Everything else on this page is what happens around the PO: how the goods get made, how they cross the ocean, what they really cost by the time they land, and how your warehouse, your Shopify store and your wholesale team all end up trusting the same numbers.
Think of a busy restaurant. You tell the server what you want, the server writes a ticket, and the ticket goes to the kitchen. From that moment nobody argues about what was ordered: the ticket says two steaks, one medium, one rare. The vendor PO is the kitchen ticket of your supply chain. You are the customer, your factory is the kitchen, and the PO is the written record that says 1,200 units of style 4402, in black and ivory, sizes S through XL, at this price, shipping by this date.
Three details trip people up at the start. First, the buyer sends the PO, not the seller. You write the ticket. Second, the PO is not a bill. The invoice comes later, from the vendor, and one of the quiet superpowers of doing POs properly is that you can check the invoice against what you ordered and what actually arrived before you pay it. Third, in apparel the word "order" gets used in both directions, so keep them straight: the PO you send your factory is a vendor PO, while the order a boutique or a department store sends you is a customer order. When a retailer transmits a purchase order to you over EDI, that is their PO and your sales order. This page is about the first kind: the money you spend, not the money you earn.
Why so much fuss over one document? Because in an import business the PO is the only early warning you get. The goods do not exist yet, the money is committed, and the selling season is already on the calendar. The PO, tracked properly, tells you what is coming, when it lands, and what it will really cost. Tracked in a spreadsheet, it tells you what someone remembered to type.
This is the flow every apparel importer lives, whether it is written down or not. The difference an ERP makes is that each step updates the same record instead of a different spreadsheet.
| Step | What happens | What the system tracks |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Place the PO | You send the factory a vendor PO with the full style, color and size breakdown, unit costs, terms and ship dates. | The commitment: quantities, costs, dates, vendor, season. |
| 2. Production runs | The factory cuts and sews. For domestic production, the PO side connects to cut tickets, garment dye and screen printing processes. | Work in process, so you know what stage goods are actually at. |
| 3. Goods ship | Cartons leave the factory and get on the water. Ship notices tell you what is actually in the shipment. | What is on the water, advance ship notices, expected dates. |
| 4. Costs attach | Freight, duty, brokerage, insurance and fees pile onto the factory price as the goods travel. | Landed cost: the true per-unit cost of every import. |
| 5. Warehouse receives | Your team checks cartons in against the PO, so shortages and overages surface immediately, and puts stock away. | Received quantities against ordered quantities, into inventory. |
| 6. Inventory sells | Shopify and your wholesale team sell from one inventory pool, and orders can even reserve production that has not landed yet. | One available-to-sell number across every channel. |
Say your factory quotes a blouse at $8. By the time that blouse is folded on a shelf in your warehouse, you have also paid ocean freight, import duty, brokerage, insurance and handling. Landed cost is the all-in figure: the total cost of getting a unit to your warehouse, ready to sell. Depending on the category and the tariff situation, the $8 blouse might really be an $11 blouse, and if you price and plan off $8, your margin quietly evaporates before the first sale.
Landed cost has to be calculated per unit, per shipment, because the same style can land at different costs in the same season: freight rates move, duties change, and a half-empty container spreads its cost across fewer units. This is exactly the kind of arithmetic software should do for you. AIMS360 calculates the true landed cost of every import, so margin reports by style, customer and channel are built on what goods actually cost, not on what the factory quoted.
If you want the deeper math, the AIMS360 team keeps a plain-language explainer on pricing and margins and on how landed costs flow into inventory value.
Vendor POs carry the style, color and size breakdown natively, for finished goods and for raw materials. Domestic production connects to cut tickets, garment dye and screen printing processes, so imported and made-here goods live in one purchasing flow.
POs do not have to begin with a blank form. Purchasing can be automated from demand forecasts or specific order criteria, low stock can trigger a vendor PO, and customer pre-orders can generate allocated purchase orders directly, so what you buy is tied to what is actually selling.
Between the factory and the dock, AIMS360 tracks work in process and the import side: what is on the water, advance ship notices and expected dates. Paperwork has a home too, with documents stored alongside the vendor and vendor PO records. The production process tracking page covers this in depth.
The warehouse receives against the PO, landed cost is calculated on every import, and vendor PO billing syncs with QuickBooks Online, Desktop and Enterprise, so accounting sees the same purchase the warehouse just counted, without re-keying.
The payoff for a brand selling Shopify plus wholesale is the last step. Because purchase orders and work in process live in the same system as inventory and orders, incoming goods are visible with dates, orders can reserve stock or incoming production, and Shopify and wholesale sell from one pool instead of two guesses.
| The assumption | What is actually the case |
|---|---|
| A PO is just paperwork | The PO is the backbone record of an import business. Receiving checks against it, landed cost builds on it, the vendor invoice is verified against it, and available-to-sell reads from it. Weak PO records make every one of those steps a guess. |
| Shopify can track my factory orders | Shopify runs your storefront. It does not place factory POs, track goods on the water or allocate freight and duty into unit costs. The working pattern is an ERP that manages purchasing and inventory and feeds Shopify one trustworthy stock number. |
| Landed cost is factory price plus a freight guess | It is a per-unit calculation: goods, freight, duty, brokerage, insurance and fees, spread across the units that actually landed. A flat percentage guess is how an $8 blouse gets priced like an $8 blouse when it is really an $11 blouse. |
| You cannot sell what has not arrived | With POs and work in process in the system, incoming production is visible with expected dates, and orders can reserve stock or incoming WIP. Brands sell against goods on the water all the time; the risk is doing it blind. |
| PO software is for big procurement departments | An importer placing a handful of factory POs each season has more riding on each one than most corporate line items. One PO can be a meaningful slice of the company's cash, which is an argument for more visibility, not less. |
| Our spreadsheet works fine | A spreadsheet holds the plan. It does not receive cartons, allocate freight, check invoices or tell your channels what is sellable. The gap between the sheet and reality is where margin leaks, usually quietly. |
It is the document a buyer sends a supplier listing exactly what is being purchased: items, quantities, prices, terms and delivery dates. In apparel it carries the style, color and size breakdown. Once the vendor accepts it, it is the agreement both sides work from.
The PO comes from the buyer before the goods exist and says "this is what I am ordering." The invoice comes from the vendor after shipment and says "this is what you owe." Matching the invoice against the PO and the receiving count is how you avoid paying for goods you did not order or never received.
Direction. A vendor PO is one you send a supplier, spending money. A customer order is one a buyer sends you, earning money. Confusingly, a retailer's EDI order is called a purchase order too, because it is theirs: their PO is your customer order. Your vendor PO is the one going to your factory.
The buyer. If you are ordering fabric or finished garments from a supplier, you issue the PO. The seller responds by accepting it, then later ships and invoices against it.
The style numbers with the full color and size breakdown, unit costs and currency, quantities per size, ship and cancel dates, ship method and destination, payment terms, and the vendor. In an ERP each PO also carries its season and links to the shipment and receiving records that follow it.
The all-in cost of getting a product to your warehouse, ready to sell: production cost plus freight, duty, insurance, brokerage and customs fees. It is the number pricing and margin decisions should be built on, because the factory price alone understates what goods really cost.
By working backward from delivery windows. Each season's vendor POs are placed with ship dates that land goods in time to fill customer orders, and the system tracks what is committed, what is in production and what is on the water. With incoming production visible by date, brands can sell into a season before every carton arrives.
Yes, if your system can see it coming. In AIMS360, purchase orders and work in process make incoming goods visible with expected dates, and orders can reserve stock or incoming production. That is how pre-orders and early wholesale bookings get filled without overselling.
Purchasing can be automated based on demand forecasts or specific order criteria. Low stock can trigger a vendor PO, and customer pre-orders can generate allocated purchase orders directly, so supply follows real demand instead of a guess.
Both. Vendor POs cover raw materials and finished goods, and they link to cut tickets for production, including garment dye and screen printing processes. Importers and domestic producers run the same purchasing flow.
Yes. AIMS360 works with QuickBooks Online, Desktop and Enterprise, and vendor PO billing is part of the sync, so the purchase the warehouse received is the purchase accounting sees, without re-keying.
The textbook four are standard (one order, one delivery), planned (quantities set, dates loose), blanket (an open commitment drawn down over time) and contract (terms agreed, items later). Apparel importers mostly live on standard POs per season, sometimes with blanket-style fabric commitments behind them.
Last reviewed 9 August 2026 by the AIMS360 product team.
Reviewed against the AIMS360 purchasing and receiving workflow for vendor purchase orders and the landed cost definition used across AIMS360 resources. Purchase order concepts on this page follow standard commercial practice; your own workflow depends on how your purchasing, costing and receiving are configured.
Bring one real purchase order, even if it lives in a spreadsheet today. We will walk it from entry to the water to landed cost to received stock, and show you exactly what your Shopify store and your wholesale team would see along the way.
