The mirror image of a sale — ordering from a supplier, billing, and paying it off. Here's what buying looks like day to day, once onboarding is behind you.
Every business sells something, but every business also buys — stock, supplies, services, fuel, whatever keeps it running. The purchase side of CloudERP follows the same shape as the sales side, just pointed the other way, and it's worth knowing on its own terms because it's where most of a business's cash actually goes out.
Purchase Order
A purchase starts with a Purchase Order — what you're ordering, from which supplier, and on what terms. It's your side of the commitment, on record before a single item or invoice arrives.
Purchase Invoice
When the supplier's bill comes in, the Purchase Order becomes a Purchase Invoice, carrying the order's details forward automatically and adding the supplier's own bill number and date alongside it. This is the document that raises what you owe — the mirror of a Sales Invoice on the selling side.
Payment Made
Paying the bill is recorded against that specific invoice, not as a generic payment to the supplier — so it's always clear which bills are settled, which are still open, and what you owe any one supplier right now, not just in total.
Why it's worth getting right
A creditors listing that isn't kept current is one of the most common sources of confusion in a small business's books — bills that were actually paid still showing as outstanding, or payments that were made but never matched to the invoice they settled. Following order → invoice → payment consistently is what keeps that listing meaning something, rather than needing to be reconciled by hand every time someone asks "do we still owe them?"
We run this exact cycle on our own reference companies too — real purchase orders, real supplier bills, real payments, one per industry. See them all.
Get in touch if you'd like a walkthrough for your own business.
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