What should I check in a customer purchase order?

Before starting work against a customer purchase order, match it to the proposal you are willing and able to deliver. Check the parties, authority, quantity, specification, price, dates, acceptance and invoice requirements. Resolve mismatches before treating the paperwork as a production instruction.

Customers have different purchasing processes. Ask what this customer's process requires. Do not assume a department's enthusiasm, a draft requisition or a purchase-order number establishes the same authorization.

Understand the customer's actual process

As one primary example, Cornell's purchase-order guidance describes its institutional procurement review and approval process. Its supplier terms page also addresses resolving conflicting terms through an authorized procurement agent. Those are Cornell's rules, not a universal policy for private customers.

For your customer, establish who may request work, who can place the order, how the supplier is registered and what records allow an invoice to be processed. Ask about changes as well as initial orders. A person who checks delivery may have a different role from the person who approves extra spending.

Match a real proposal inside the fiction

Consider a wholly fictional workshop quoting fifty identical specimen kits to a training company. Quote K-17 specifies the contents, labeling and packing, a $40 unit price, $2,000 total and delivery on May 14, 2027. The customer will check quantity and the listed contents on delivery; payment is due May 28 after the agreed receipt and invoice process.

The supplied customer policy requires an issued purchase order from its procurement lead, matched terms and the workshop's acceptance before work begins. A department coordinator may request kits but cannot commit the company. No order has yet been accepted by both parties.

The issued PO arrives for forty kits at $40, totaling $1,600. It references K-17, but its quantity does not match. The department still wants fifty. A matching reference does not remove the ten-kit, $400 difference.

Resolve the difference before making the goods

The workshop should identify the mismatch to the authorized procurement lead and department contact through the established customer channel. It can ask whether the intended order is forty or fifty and request corrected documents if fifty is approved. It should not silently make fifty and hope accounts payable pays beyond the issued amount.

An original illustrative note could read:

PO 804 references quote K-17 but lists forty kits and $1,600. K-17 covers fifty kits and $2,000. Please confirm the intended quantity through your procurement lead and send a corrected PO if fifty is approved. We will confirm the production and delivery arrangement after the documents match.

This message has not been sent. It does not state that a PO is legally unenforceable or that nobody owes anything under an actual disputed order. Its purpose is to resolve this fictional pre-start mismatch under the supplied process.

If the customer wants forty, check the smaller job and confirm its complete scope and dates rather than assuming every other term survives a quantity change. If it wants fifty, obtain the approved correction before using the higher quantity.

Check the date again after the paperwork changes

In the completed fictional branch, procurement issues the corrected fifty-kit, $2,000 PO on May 4. The workshop checks the listed specification, acceptance terms, delivery location and invoice process. No attached term conflicts with the accepted quote in this example. It confirms its acceptance and the May 14 delivery before production begins May 5.

The workshop has checked ten paid production and administration hours for the fifty kits, with all required materials available. Its separately assigned $1,450 covers $1,000 materials, $300 paid owner work and $150 of complete other job costs before delivery. Other accepted work and household money are excluded; no future customer payment is needed to begin.

A later correction might remove that production window. In that branch, the workshop would need to propose another executable date before acceptance. A department's old desired date does not create time lost while a decision remained open.

Keep the order connected to the invoice

The workshop delivers fifty conforming kits on May 14, obtains the specified receipt record and prepares a $2,000 invoice carrying the correct customer entity, PO reference and receipt information. These are supplied completed events inside the fiction. May 28 remains the agreed payment date, not a receipt already observed.

Each event deserves its own status: order accepted, work complete, delivery received, invoice accepted for processing and money collected. Moving the invoice into a queue is not proof that payment has cleared.

The scope-change guide handles a later request after work begins. The supplier-funding guide handles how agreed payment dates affect production. This earlier check is about whether the business has a coherent authorized order to start.