Executive summary
- What: Purchase orders are now reportable in Shopify Analytics. Three default reports cover purchase order costs, linked transfers, and open orders with no transfer, and the data feeds custom explorations.
- Why: Inbound inventory spend becomes queryable alongside sales, with supplier cost, acceptance and ageing detail, so routine buying questions stop needing a data request.
- Who: Merchandising planners, supply chain leads, and finance teams who currently rebuild purchase order performance in a spreadsheet.
What changed
Three default reports ship with the release. Purchase order costs shows ordered quantities, supplier costs, estimated taxes and total costs by purchase order, date, supplier, destination and item. Purchase order transfers follows orders into shipments and receiving, with shipment status, expected delivery dates, and shipped, received, accepted and rejected quantities. Purchases on order isolates open purchase orders with no linked transfer, the queue where a late order hides. The Purchase Orders page also now shows on order totals, acceptance rate and shipments due soon.
Purchase orders are also available to custom explorations. Metrics include ordered quantity, unique items ordered, supplier cost, tax amount, total cost, and average supplier unit cost weighted by quantity. Dimensions cover reference numbers, placed, ordered and closed dates, supplier note, payment terms, tags, and supplier and destination attributes. Supplier currency is a dimension, and costs convert into your store currency. Watch the grain: cost reports are built on purchase order line items, so grouping by variant splits a multi product order across rows, while transfers use shipment line items.
Why it matters
Most Plus merchants answer sales questions in Shopify and buying questions somewhere else. That split is where inbound problems hide: a supplier whose unit cost crept up three percent over two quarters, a location quietly accumulating rejected units, an order marked ordered in March that never produced a transfer. These reports make those answerable in the admin.
It also changes the integration calculus. If you sync purchase orders into a warehouse purely for cost and receiving visibility, these reports may cover it, and acceptance rate plus shipments due soon give supplier scorecard inputs without custom modelling. Deeper needs stay upstream: landed cost with freight and duty, multi echelon planning, and any order raised outside Shopify. Availability is gated per store, so confirm the reports exist first. To weigh this against your ERP or BI layer, Makro can help scope it.
Role-specific impact
- Marketers: Indirect but usable. Average supplier unit cost by product gives a defensible margin floor for promotions, and shipments due soon shows which inbound stock can anchor a launch.
- Developers: No breaking change and nothing to ship. The value is in what you might retire: if a job exists purely to push purchase order lines into a reporting database, compare it against these reports before renewing that pipeline.
- Store admins: Data hygiene now has consequences. Supplier names, reference numbers, payment terms, tags and destinations all become dimensions, so inconsistent entry fragments the output.
Use-case example
Real-world scenario
A Plus home goods merchant buys from forty suppliers across three distribution centres. Monthly supplier review meant exporting orders and transfers, joining them in a spreadsheet, about half a day of analyst time. Purchase order transfers grouped by supplier replaces that join and surfaces rejected quantities directly: two suppliers account for an eight percent rejection rate on received units, concentrated at one destination. Purchases on order then flags eleven open orders older than sixty days with no transfer, roughly one hundred and forty thousand dollars assumed inbound that nobody chased.
Implementation checklist
- Confirm purchase order analytics is on your store by checking for the three default reports.
- Run Purchases on order first and resolve aged open orders with no linked transfer.
- Review Purchase order costs by supplier and item, comparing average supplier unit cost against your planning model.
- Audit hygiene: consistent supplier names, populated reference numbers and correct destinations.
- Validate a sample total against your existing extract, remembering cost reports use order line items.
- Check supplier currency conversion for any supplier not billing in store currency.
- Build one custom exploration for a recurring question, for example rejected quantity by supplier, then decide whether an existing pipeline can retire.
FAQ
Q: Do these reports give us landed cost?
A: No. The metrics cover supplier cost and estimated tax on ordered units, converted to your store currency. Freight, duty, insurance and brokerage are excluded, so landed cost still has to be assembled in your ERP.
Q: Will a purchase order raised in our ERP appear here?
A: Only if it exists as a Shopify purchase order. Reporting is built on purchase order line items, and shipment line items for linked transfers, so orders living solely in an external system are invisible. Keep the sync or accept partial coverage.
Resources
Creating custom reports for purchase orders
Need guidance? Talk to Makro.