What Is an Order?
An order or a business purchase order is a document sent by a buyer to a supplier that requests for specific products or services to be delivered in the future. Effective purchase orders include specific orders, with specific details such as type of item, quantity, and agreed prices for the products.
How to Create an Order
In creating your purchase order, as a buyer, you must clearly communicate your requests to the seller to reduce confusion and several follow-up questions that may delay the process. According to Jillian Hufford in her "Amazon Statistics: Need To Know Numbers about Amazon [Infographic]," Amazon is currently the biggest e-commerce company that sells more than 12 million products, not including books, wine, media, and services and has 310 million active customers. With the aforementioned statistics, not being specific with your order might get you ignored. Here are some guidelines that can help you in creating an effective purchase order.
1. Work with the Format
The first thing that you must do is to choose a tool that you can use in creating your purchase order. There are various software programs that you can use in creating this document such as Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, and Apple Pages, it's up to you to choose. Afterward, you have to decide the format and the arrangement of data of the entire document.
2. Seller and Buyer Information
Providing the name/company name, complete address, personal or business phone number, and email address of both parties will make the transaction easier. Having these details would also make your formal document more professional and reliable compared to those who don't specify the aforementioned data.
3. List of Product or Service Being Purchased
Since it is a purchase order, you must specify all the items that you want to buy from the seller. You need to be specific of the type of service or product that you want to purchase, the brand names, model numbers, the quantity, and the price per unit. Having these details would make your order confirmation more comprehensible and effective. Indicating the preceding data has an advantage to the buyer too since they can get the exact items that they have envisioned.
4. Specify the Billing Address
After providing the items that you want to purchase, you need to specify the exact delivery date and the delivery location. These details should be indicated in all purchase orders so you can expect where and when to wait for the purchased items to be delivered. Of course, you should also include the billing address so the seller would know where to deliver the bill of all the items you purchased.
5. Terms of Payment
You should also indicate how you should pay the stuff that you ordered in your purchase order—whether through card/debit, check, or direct money upon delivery. This type of document also has terms and conditions. When a supplier receives your purchase order, they will immediately send you an order confirmation and an invoice that indicates the total amount of money that you have to pay.