A reorder starts in a sheet.
The price lives in email.
Carton marks sit in WhatsApp.
The version the factory builds is whoever attached the last PDF.
That holds until they ship the wrong variant, freight moves, or duty lands harder than the margin you approved.
Then you find out the PO was a summary of a chat, not the record.
Use this as the how-to.
A purchase order for an FBA or Shopify importer has to lock the commercial deal, the pack-out, the dates, and the cost assumptions before production starts.
What landed cost is is why those assumptions matter.
Stay here for the document and the workflow.
Need a blank form first?
Use the purchase order template or the free PO creator, then add the fields below.
Do not send a generic office PO to a factory that is packing FNSKUs.
If Someone Still Asks Which File The Factory Accepted
You import finished goods.
The POs repeat.
You sell on Amazon FBA, Shopify, or both.
Someone still asks which file the supplier accepted.
Skip a long template if you buy stocked domestic SKUs from one vendor who already ships the same carton every time.
You still need a number, a quantity, and a price.
You do not need FBA carton marks on the PO.
When The Spreadsheet Stops Being The PO
A shared sheet is fine while one person owns buying and the factory never changes the file.
It fails the minute you cannot answer "which exact version did they accept?" in a minute.
The usual mess is not a formula error.
Quantity lives in the sheet.
Price lives in email.
Packaging lives in chat.
The freight quote never makes it back onto the order.
Receiving has nothing clean to check against.
That is the same break as landed cost spreadsheet vs software, on the buying side.
The sheet can list numbers.
It rarely keeps the acknowledgment, the revision, and the freight assumption on one record.
A usable PO does three jobs:
| Job | What It Has To Lock |
|---|---|
| Commercial | SKU, quantity, unit price, payment terms, Incoterm |
| Operational | Pack-out, labels, ship-to, dates the factory and the warehouse can follow |
| Margin | The landed-cost range you used to approve the buy |
If any of those live only in a thread, the PDF is decoration.
What Has To Be On The Document
The supplier should be able to start production from this file.
The forwarder should be able to book against it.
The 3PL or prep center should be able to receive against it without asking what you meant.
Office templates cover the obvious: PO number, legal names, lines, dates, payment terms.
Imported inventory needs more precision than that.
The expensive miss is often a barcode version, a carton mark, or a destination that never left chat.
Fields On Every PO
- PO number. Unique and searchable.
PO-2026-0147is enough. One sequence. Reused numbers break receiving and AP. - Buyer. Legal entity, billing address, and the person who will answer questions. If the trading name is not the brand name, show the legal entity.
- Supplier. Factory or vendor legal name, contact, factory address, and the payee finance will use.
- Ship-to. The actual destination: 3PL, prep center, consolidator, or your warehouse. "To be confirmed" is how cartons route wrong.
- Lines. Internal SKU, supplier SKU if different, variant, description, unit of measure, quantity, agreed unit price.
- Dates. Production-complete is not ex-factory. Ex-factory is not the delivery window. Write each one.
- Payment terms. Deposit percent, balance trigger, method. Whether the balance is due before shipment, against inspection, or against copy docs. What Net 30 is is the cash-flow version of that line.
Fields Importers Add
Private-label and custom product fail on the extras, not the price.
- How you sell it. Size, color, pack configuration, inner pack. Apparel and bundles need this on the PO, not in a side note.
- Packaging and compliance. Carton pack, FNSKU or UPC placement, suffocation warnings, inserts, retailer marks.
- Routing. Direct to FBA prep, to your warehouse, or to a consolidator. That changes labels, pallets, and the booking.
- Incoterm. If the deal is FOB Ningbo, the PO says FOB Ningbo. Do not bury the term in email.
- Approved files. Spec sheet, artwork version, dieline, sample approval. Factories build the last file they have.
- Lead time. Calendar days or a named completion date. "About 30 days" is not a commitment.
I have seen a factory hit quantity, unit price, and carton count, then still miss the order because the PO never named the barcode version.
They printed the old file.
The units were finished.
They were not ready for Amazon check-in.
Relabel, extra prep, delayed launch.
Before you send it, three questions:
- Can the factory build the exact SKU and pack-out from this document alone?
- Can receiving check cartons, labels, and counts without opening email?
- Can finance match the invoice and the terms without reopening the deal?
If any answer is no, it is still a draft.
Estimate Landed Cost Before You Send It
A founder approves a reorder at $4.80 a unit.
Two weeks later the forwarder revises freight, customs asks for the heading, and FBA prep adds a line.
The PO was "correct."
The buy was not.
For FBA and Shopify, estimate landed cost before the PO goes out.
After production starts you can update the forecast.
You cannot undo a buy that never had the margin.
At this stage the number is a working SKU estimate: factory + freight + duty and entry + insurance + brokerage + inbound handling, divided by the units you expect to sell.
How to calculate landed cost for imported products is the policy walkthrough.
Allocating freight across SKUs is the split when the container is mixed.
Same shipment the supplier-software post uses.
2,000 units at $6.40.
Sheet used the first freight quote and the PO quantity: $8.50.
Documents and 1,970 sellable units: $9.06.
Approve the next PO off $8.50 and every unit is $0.56 light before ads.
Run it through the landed cost calculator before you send PO-2026-0147.
The factory offering a lower unit price at 3,000 instead of 2,000 is the other trap.
The quote looks better.
The container, the storage, and the cash locked before sell-through may not.
If the SKU also needs polybags, warnings, and FNSKUs, the cheapest factory line can be the weaker landed margin.
| Before You Issue | Confirm |
|---|---|
| SKU setup | Description, pack-out, HS code, origin |
| Cost | Unit price plus expected freight, duty, insurance, prep, receiving |
| Margin | Still works after marketplace fees and the discount you actually run |
| Cash | Deposit, balance, freight timing, how long the cash sits |
| Issue | Send only after those assumptions are on the PO |
What usually misses: an old HS code, a stale freight number, a carton that grew after artwork changed, prep priced in email and never on the order, mixed SKUs averaged as if they shared cube and duty.
Talk To The Factory About This PO, Not "Same As Last Time"
A clean PDF still fails if the message around it is vague.
Spendflo's PO process is issuance, then supplier confirmation, then three-way match.
Fuzzy terms follow the order through production, receiving, and payment.
A risky send:
Please proceed with the reorder. Same as last time. Need it soon. Let us know if price changed.
"Same as last time" can mean the old insert, the old carton pack, or a price that no longer matches material cost.
On FBA, a carton-label miss is extra fees and a late check-in.
A usable send:
Please confirm acceptance of PO-2026-0147. This order includes SKU A in black and SKU B in sand. Unit prices, quantity split, packaging, and delivery window are on the PO. Confirm price, lead time, carton specs, and any exceptions before production starts.
Carton specs are not a side note if you allocate freight by cube.
A larger carton makes the landed cost you approved wrong.
Worth pushing before you approve, even on early orders:
- MOQ mix. They may hold total units and still let you change size or color split.
- Payment structure. Deposit, balance trigger, method: on the PO, then in the acknowledgment.
- Lead time. A production-complete window and a cargo-ready date. Not "about 30 days."
- Who labels. FNSKU, warnings, inserts, carton marks, pallet rules.
- Change control. Quantity, price, packaging, ship date, or Incoterm changes only in writing against the PO.
Ask them to confirm carton dimensions, gross weight, inner pack, and prep before production.
If those move after approval, the unit price on the PO can stay still while the margin does not.
A supplier evaluation matrix helps you pick factories that will confirm that in writing.
Changes Get A New Version
Chat is where control dies.
One WhatsApp, a new artwork file, a production update that caught half the request.
Risky:
Can we update the order to the newer packaging? Also maybe adjust quantities if possible.
Safer:
Please revise PO-2026-0147 to packaging file version B. Keep total units. Update the mix in the attached revision: SKU A up, SKU B down. Confirm any impact on unit price, carton count, gross weight, production timing, and booking readiness before you proceed.
Specific.
Tied to the PO version.
The factory has to answer the cost and date impact before they cut.
One Owner, One Version, One Acknowledgment
A founder approves a reorder on a phone.
The factory starts from an older attachment.
Finance budgets the newer quantity.
The forwarder books carton counts from neither.
That is a routine PO turning into a bad container.
A small team does not need procurement theater.
It needs one owner and one accepted file.
- Draft. SKU, description, qty, price, Incoterm, ship-to, terms, packaging version, labels, ship window.
- Check the buy. Open-to-buy, cover, SKU landed cost. Kill a low-margin line here.
- Approve that file. The person who can spend the money signs the version that will be sent.
- Send one file. PDF or system document. PO number and version in the filename. Do not split instructions across email, chat, and a voice note.
- Get a written yes. Quantities, prices, specs, dates, exceptions. Silence is not acceptance.
- Hang later files on the same number. Deposit, pro forma, artwork signoff, booking, commercial invoice. Organize supplier invoices by PO.
If commercial terms or execution details change, the PO changes.
| Change | Version |
|---|---|
| Typo only, no commercial or ops change | Keep the version |
| Quantity, price, date, packaging, or labels | New version |
Name it PO-2026-0147-v2.
Mark v1 superseded.
Resend the whole document.
Get the factory to confirm they are building that version.
If you are costing v3 and they are building v1, that is inventory risk on every unit in the container.
Common misses: treating silence as a yes, approving on unit price without looking at landed cost again, "black yoga mat" as the whole description, revisions that live only in WhatsApp, invoices stored away from the order, a verbal yes with no file.
A PO the factory can read two ways will get acknowledged two ways.
The useful check is whether you can still point at the acknowledgment, the carton specs, and the freight number you used to approve it.
The PO template or PO creator will tighten the next one.
Supplier management software is the shortlist when dates, files, and cost still live in three places.