Creating Purchase Orders

A purchase order in Profit Hawk starts with a routing decision: how does this inventory get from your supplier to where it sells? You pick the route, Profit Hawk sizes the order for those destinations, and the order opens as a document you can edit line by line and export as a PDF for your supplier.

When to create a purchase order

Create a purchase order whenever the Restock tab on the Inventory Overview shows products that need a fresh supplier order. Most sellers run this on a weekly or bi-weekly cadence aligned with their supplier's order windows.

If you have not used the Restock tab to identify reorders yet, start there: Identify Reorders.

Creating the order

Start from the Inventory Overview's bulk action toolbar.

You land on the order document, where the rest of the work happens.

The order document

The order reads like the paper it will become:

1. Header -- the routing chain, supplier, ship-to, bill-to, payment terms, and dates
2. Line items -- one row per product with the order quantity, per-destination split, unit cost, and line total
3. Detail panel -- click any line to inspect its health and adjust its shipment split

Header fields

Click a value to edit it in place:

• Order name -- defaults to the generated PO number; rename it for clarity (for example, "Acme -- April Order")
• Status -- Draft, Active, Complete, or Archived
• Payment terms -- standard terms like Net 30, or your own custom text
• Bill to -- which of your organization addresses appears on the PDF; defaults to your default address
• PO date -- when the order is placed
• Est. ship -- when the supplier is expected to hand the goods to the carrier. The forecast adds your supplier lead times on top of this date, so keep it as the departure date, not the arrival date.
• Est. arrival -- when the goods are expected to arrive. On FBA via 3PL/warehouse orders this field is labeled Arrives FBA, because it describes the end of the chain -- the FBA check-in, not the 3PL delivery.

Line items

Each line shows the order quantity with a per-destination breakdown, an editable Unit cost, and the Line total. Unit costs default to the product's manufacturing cost converted to USD; type a new cost to override it for this order -- totals, the footer, and the PDF all follow. The footer keeps a running Units by destination summary and the Order total.

Click any column header -- Item, Order qty, Unit cost, or Line total -- to sort by it; click again to reverse the direction. Lines default to sorting by product name, and the order stays put while you edit costs, so a row never jumps around as you work down the list.

The line detail panel

Selecting a line opens its detail panel:

• Live health -- velocity, days of supply, projected stockout, and an urgency chip, all scoped to this order's destinations. A product the forecast has not covered yet shows no health rather than a misleading "healthy zero".
• Forecast snapshot -- a muted line that captures what the forecast said for this product when the line was added (velocity, days of supply, projected stockout, urgency, and on hand). It is the frozen "why this was ordered" reference, so it stays put even as live demand shifts. Lines added before this feature, and products the forecast had not yet covered, show no snapshot.
• Shipment split -- the line's quantity per destination. Use the steppers, or type an exact quantity per destination. Reset returns every destination to the forecast's original suggestion, and the case count updates as you type.
• Profit Hawk warns when a destination's split drops below Amazon's recommended 5 cases per marketplace.
• Remove from order -- takes the line and its routed quantities off the order.

Notes

The order document has a Notes tab for anything specific to this order. Use it for agreed pricing or payment terms, packaging and labeling instructions, QC requirements, or a reminder for whoever opens the order later. A small dot on the tab tells you at a glance when an order already has notes.

Notes save with the order and print on the exported PDF, at the bottom of the summary page, so they double as a note to your supplier. You have up to 2,000 characters.

Exporting the PDF

Click Export PDF in the header. For a draft, Profit Hawk asks how to handle the status in the same step:

• Set to Active & export PDF -- the usual path when you are sending the order to your supplier. Active orders count toward incoming inventory in your forecasts.
• Keep as draft & export -- for a preview or an internal review copy.

The PDF contains the order summary -- vendor, bill-to, ship-to, dates, payment terms, line items, totals, and any order notes -- plus a shipping breakdown page per destination so your supplier can label cartons correctly. The ship-to reflects the routing: for a direct order it is Amazon FBA, and for a via-warehouse order it is the warehouse, with a note that it forwards to FBA. Send it to your supplier via email or their order portal; Profit Hawk does not send it for you.

When the order arrives

When the supplier ships, use Profit Hawk's inbound shipment wizard to package and ship the inventory to FBA. See Inbound Shipments for the full walkthrough.

Once the order is fully received, set the status to Complete so it stops counting as incoming inventory. Completed orders can be archived for record-keeping.

Adding products to an existing order

If you have a draft in progress and find another product that should join it:

1. Open the Inventory Overview and select the additional products
2. Click Add to Order in the bulk action toolbar
3. Pick the existing order from the list

Profit Hawk merges the new products in. If a product is already on the order, it is skipped (you will see a "skipped" count in the success notification).

Changing destinations later

You can edit a draft's destination channels, but the order is re-sized for the new destinations when you save: recommended quantities are recalculated and manual quantity edits are replaced. The dialog warns you before this happens. The routing itself (FBA Direct, via warehouse, warehouse direct) is fixed at creation.

Deleting an order

Draft and Active orders can be deleted. Deletion is permanent; there is no undo. Completed orders are kept for record-keeping and can only be archived.

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