Purchase orders for small trade businesses: control material costs before they're spent

By the SKEDS Team · 21 August 2026 · 5 min read

Most small trade businesses discover what they spent on materials the same way — a stack of supplier invoices at month end, some for jobs nobody can quite place, at prices nobody agreed to. By the time the spend is visible, it's already spent, and there's no arguing with a merchant's invoice from three weeks ago that half-matches a docket somebody lost.

Purchase orders fix this, and they're not the bureaucratic overhead their reputation suggests. A PO is one simple idea: write down what you're buying, for which job, at what price — before you buy it.

What a PO actually does for you

1. It puts the cost on a job before the invoice arrives. The moment the PO is raised in SKEDS against a job, that job's costing already reflects it. No more jobs that looked profitable until the supplier invoices caught up — see job costing.
2. It gives you something to check the supplier invoice against. Merchants make mistakes: wrong price, wrong quantity, someone else's account. With a PO, the invoice either matches or it doesn't. Without one, you're approving from memory.
3. It controls who can spend. "Anyone can buy anything on the trade account" is fine at two people and dangerous at six. POs make spending deliberate without making it slow — raising one takes a minute on the phone.
4. It captures the negotiated price. Quoted a price at the counter? On the PO. When the invoice comes in higher, you have the number in writing.

The workflow, kept small-business simple

• Raise the PO from the job — supplier, items, price, delivery to site or pickup. In SKEDS this happens on web or the iOS/Android app, so it works from the van outside the merchant.
• Reference the PO number when ordering. Suppliers are used to this; most will print it on their invoice, which makes matching trivial.
• Receipt the goods — mark what actually arrived, catching shortages while the driver's still there instead of at month end.
• Match the supplier invoice to the PO, then it flows into your accounting file. Because SKEDS integrates with Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks via API, the books and the jobs agree without retyping.

POs and quoting: closing the loop

Your quotes assume material prices. POs record what materials actually cost. Compare the two per job and you learn, precisely, where your quoting is optimistic — which supplier crept prices up, which job types always blow the materials line. That feedback loop is how quotes get sharper every month instead of staying folklore.

Frequently asked questions

Aren't POs overkill for a small crew? The one-minute version isn't. If you've ever disputed a merchant invoice from memory and lost, one PO would have paid for the habit.

Do suppliers accept POs from small businesses? Yes — trade merchants handle POs all day. Quote the number when ordering and it appears on their paperwork.

What about emergency purchases mid-job? Raise the PO on the phone as you buy, or immediately after. The point isn't approval ceremony — it's that every cost lands on a job at a known price.