For many businesses, purchase order (PO) management starts with a spreadsheet. It’s familiar, accessible, and seems simple enough at first. But as your company scales, adding more locations, employees, and vendors, that once-manageable spreadsheet quickly transforms into a complex web of disconnected data, manual entry errors, and operational bottlenecks. If you’re spending more time chasing approvals and correcting PO numbers than focusing on strategic growth, it’s time to move beyond spreadsheets.

Smarter ways to track and manage POs involve adopting dedicated software that automates manual tasks, centralizes purchasing data, and provides real-time visibility into every purchase. These tools replace the chaos of spreadsheets with streamlined workflows, giving finance and operations teams the control they need to manage spend effectively. By moving to a centralized platform, you can eliminate errors, accelerate approvals, and unlock data-driven insights that save your business time and money.

Download the free ebook: Choose the Right Procurement Technology With This Decision Matrix

The limitations of tracking purchase orders with spreadsheets

Tracking purchase orders with spreadsheets may suffice for single-location businesses with limited purchasing needs. But they are inefficient for growing businesses because they lack automation, real-time visibility, and scalability, which can lead to manual errors, compliance issues, and wasted time. While they offer a basic way to log purchases, they cannot support the dynamic needs of a growing, multi-location business.

Prone to manual data entry errors

Manual data entry is the Achilles' heel of spreadsheet-based PO management. A single typo in a PO number or a misplaced decimal can create significant discrepancies that take hours to track down. These errors cascade through the procurement process, causing delays in payment, frustrating vendors, and corrupting financial reports.

Lack of real-time visibility and collaboration

Spreadsheets are static documents. When multiple people need to access or update a PO tracker, it results in version control nightmares. Team members end up working from outdated information, leading to duplicate orders or confusion about an order’s status. There is no single source of truth, making it nearly impossible for finance leaders to get an accurate, real-time view of company-wide spend.

No automated approval workflows

Without automation, getting a purchase approved is a manual chase. Employees create a PO and then send it via email to their manager, who might be busy or out of the office. The request gets buried in an inbox, and the employee is left waiting for the supplies they need. This workflow is slow, untraceable, and creates significant delays that impact productivity across the organization.

Difficult to match POs, invoices, and receiving documents

The manual process of three-way matching (comparing the purchase order, invoice, and receiving report) is incredibly tedious in a spreadsheet. Finance teams must manually sift through different files and email chains to confirm what was ordered, what was received, and what’s being billed. This is a massive time sink and a common source of payment delays and inaccuracies.

Limited reporting and analytics

Extracting meaningful insights from a spreadsheet is a difficult and time-consuming task. You can’t easily analyze spend by vendor, category, department, or location without significant manual effort. This lack of visibility means you’re missing out on opportunities to consolidate vendors, negotiate volume discounts, and create more accurate budgets.

Ebook

Choose the Right Procurement Technology With This Decision Matrix

Find 15 must-ask questions to narrow down your software search and make your research process MUCH easier.

Download now

What are the best tools for tracking and managing purchase orders?

The best tools for tracking and managing purchase orders are dedicated procurement platforms, comprehensive procure-to-pay (P2P) systems, and certain modules within enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. These tools move beyond simple tracking to automate workflows, centralize purchasing data, and provide real-time visibility and control over company spend.

Dedicated procurement and PO management software

Purchase order software focuses specifically on automating and streamlining the creation, approval, and tracking of POs. These tools are a significant step up from spreadsheets, offering features like templated PO creation, automated approval routing, and basic vendor management. They are designed to bring order to the purchasing process and are often a good starting point for businesses looking to digitize their procurement.

While these tools solve the immediate problem of PO creation and approvals, they often function as point solutions. They may not cover other critical parts of the procurement lifecycle, such as strategic sourcing, invoice processing, or payment automation, leaving finance teams to manage those processes in separate systems.

Procure-to-pay (P2P) platforms

Procure-to-pay (P2P) platforms offer a more complete solution by managing the entire purchase-to-pay process in a single, unified system. These platforms cover everything from the initial purchase requisition and PO creation to automated invoice processing, reconciliation, and vendor payments. By connecting every step, P2P solutions eliminate data silos and provide end-to-end visibility.

More advanced P2P platforms act as a central hub for all business buying. They provide a guided marketplace where employees can purchase pre-approved products from vetted vendors, ensuring compliance and controlling costs from the very start. This holistic approach makes P2P platforms one of the most effective solutions for scaling businesses.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems

Many large-scale ERP systems like NetSuite and Workday include procurement or purchasing modules. These modules can handle PO creation and often integrate directly with a company’s core financial ledger. For businesses already heavily invested in an ERP ecosystem, using its native procurement module can seem like a logical choice.

However, some ERP procurement modules are often notoriously complex and not user-friendly. They are typically designed for finance professionals, not for the everyday employees who need to order supplies. This can lead to low adoption, forcing employees to find workarounds and contributing to the very maverick spend the system was meant to prevent. A more effective approach is to integrate a user-friendly procurement platform with your ERP, creating a seamless and efficient experience for everyone.

Key features to look for in a system to help with PO management

Essential features for PO management include automated PO creation, customizable approval workflows, centralized vendor management, real-time tracking, robust reporting, and seamless integration with accounting systems. These capabilities work together to create a streamlined, transparent, and controlled purchasing environment.

• Automated PO creation and processing: The software should automatically generate and send purchase orders once a request is approved, eliminating manual work and reducing the risk of human error. This accelerates the entire purchase order processing cycle.
• Customizable approval workflows: Look for the ability to create dynamic, multi-step approval chains based on factors like dollar amount, department, location, or product category. This ensures the right people approve every purchase without causing unnecessary delays.
• Centralized vendor and product catalogs: A central place to manage all vendor information and product catalogs is crucial. This allows you to guide employees toward preferred suppliers and pre-approved items, helping you enforce brand standards and leverage negotiated pricing.
• Real-time order tracking and status updates: Your team should be able to see the status of any order — from requested to approved, shipped, and delivered — in real time. This transparency reduces follow-up emails and keeps everyone informed.
• Robust spend analytics and reporting: The platform must provide dashboards and reports that give you line-level visibility into spend. Analyzing purchasing data helps you identify savings opportunities, track budget performance, and make smarter financial decisions.
• Seamless accounting and ERP integrations: Your PO management tool must integrate with your existing accounting software or ERP. This ensures that purchasing data flows automatically into your financial systems, simplifying reconciliation and enabling a faster month-end close through features like GL code automation.

Ebook

Choose the Right Procurement Technology With This Decision Matrix

Find 15 must-ask questions to narrow down your software search and make your research process MUCH easier.

Download

"*" indicates required fields

X/Twitter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

First Name*

Last Name*

Company*

Email*

Phone

How a centralized platform transforms PO management

A centralized platform transforms PO management by unifying all purchasing activities, data, and communication. This eliminates information silos, improves spend control, and streamlines the entire purchase-to-pay process for greater efficiency and savings.

Gain complete spend visibility and control

By channeling all purchases through one system, you get a complete, real-time picture of who is buying what, from which vendors, and at what price. This total visibility is the foundation of effective spend management. With clear insights, you can enforce budgets, prevent off-contract spending, and ensure every dollar is accounted for.

As Stefanie Teintze, Facilities and Property Management Specialist at CorePower Yoga, notes, “By implementing controls and approval processes, Order.co has allowed us to essentially eliminate all unapproved spending, which had gotten as high as $50,000 per month.”

Streamline approvals and reduce cycle times

Automated, customizable approval workflows built into a centralized platform drastically reduce the time it takes to get a purchase approved. Requests are automatically routed to the correct approver based on your business rules, and notifications keep the process moving. What once took days or weeks of email chasing can now be completed in hours, ensuring teams get what they need without delay.

Simplify reconciliation and month-end close

A unified platform connects the dots between purchasing, receiving, and accounts payable. Because purchase orders are created and approved within the system, the platform can automatically match them to corresponding invoices and delivery confirmations. This automates the reconciliation process, reduces the burden on your AP team, and helps you close the books faster and more accurately.

Empower employees while maintaining compliance

The best platforms make it easy for employees to purchase the right products. Providing a user-friendly, curated marketplace empowers your team to buy what they need from approved vendors at negotiated prices. This guided buying experience increases user adoption and ensures compliance without adding restrictive administrative layers, giving employees autonomy within a controlled framework.

Unify your PO tracking and management with Order.co

While many tools can help you track purchase orders, Order.co provides a complete procurement and finance automation platform that transforms the entire process. Order.co goes beyond simple PO management by unifying every step of the purchase-to-pay lifecycle — from requisition and approval to fulfillment and payment — into a single, guided marketplace.

Order.co’s platform is designed to give you unparalleled control and visibility. Instead of juggling dozens of vendors, you can centralize them all into one system. Employees shop from a curated catalog of pre-approved products, ensuring every purchase is compliant and on budget from the start.

Here’s how Order.co delivers a superior solution:

• Automated end-to-end workflows: Order.co automates the entire procurement process. Once a purchase is approved, Order.co handles PO creation, submission, and fulfillment tracking.
• AI-powered strategic sourcing: Order.co AI works in the background to find cost-saving opportunities, suggesting alternative products or vendors to ensure you always get the best price without sacrificing quality.
• Consolidated billing: Say goodbye to endless invoices. Order.co pays your vendors upfront and provides you with consolidated weekly or monthly bills. This drastically reduces the workload for your accounts payable team and simplifies reconciliation.
• Vendor issue resolution: If an order is wrong, late, or damaged, you don't have to chase down the vendor. Order.co manages all vendor communications and resolves any issues on your behalf, ensuring your team gets what they need without interruption.

It’s time to move past the limitations of spreadsheets and embrace a smarter way to manage your purchasing. A dedicated platform not only solves the challenges of tracking POs but also turns procurement into a strategic advantage for your business.

Ready to see how you can gain complete control over your POs and unlock significant savings? Schedule a demo of Order.co today.