Storekeeper
For shops, brands and wholesalers that buy stock

Purchase order system for small business and purchase order software for small retailers

Most small businesses do not lose money on the PO form. They lose it on the quantities typed into it. Storekeeper reads your sales, forecasts every SKU and drafts the purchase order for each supplier, so the order is right before anyone signs it.

Draft POs on Growth, $149 a month or $74 billed yearly. No sales call.

Create your account in a minute · no card required

Nothing you paste is stored.

SKU On hand Cover

SKUs, scroll for the rest

A live preview of Storekeeper's forecasting engine on fictional sample dataon the rows you pasted. The full product connects to your POS and store and runs this continuously.

The short answer

The best purchase order system for a small business depends on what you buy. If you buy inventory to resell, you need a system that tells you what to order and how much, then writes the PO per supplier; Storekeeper does that for $149 a month, and QuickBooks Online Plus or Zoho Inventory can hold the PO once you know the quantities. If you mostly buy services and office supplies and need managers to approve spend, a procurement tool fits better: Tradogram from $99 a month, Precoro from $499, or ProcureDesk from $830.

Prices from each vendor's own US pricing page unless marked otherwise.

What the system actually does

A purchase order that starts from your sales, not a blank form

A blank PO template in Excel, Word or QuickBooks asks you for the quantity. That number is the whole decision, and it is usually a guess based on last month and whatever is left on the shelf.

Storekeeper fills it in. For each SKU it forecasts demand over the supplier's lead time, adds safety stock, subtracts what is on hand and already on order, and rounds up to the case pack. Lines are grouped by supplier, so on Monday morning you open one draft per vendor, adjust anything you know the forecast does not (a promotion, a discontinued color), and download the PDF to send.

The math behind each line is on our inventory replenishment software page.

Before you shop

Two different products are both sold as a PO system

Search results mix them together. Knowing which one you need saves you a demo with the wrong vendor.

Inventory purchase orders

You buy products to resell or parts to assemble. The hard part is the quantity: order too little and you stock out, too much and cash sits on the shelf. You need sales history, lead times, reorder points and a PO per supplier. This is the job Storekeeper, Zoho Inventory and the inventory side of QuickBooks Online Plus are built around.

Procurement and spend approval

Employees request laptops, software, cleaning services or marketing work, and a manager has to approve before money is committed. The hard part is control: budgets, approval chains, three-way match with the invoice. Tradogram, Precoro and ProcureDesk are built for this, and none of them forecasts demand for stock.

Plenty of small companies need a little of both. In that case the inventory side usually costs more when it goes wrong, because a bad stock order ties up thousands of dollars for months, while an unapproved office purchase is a few hundred.

Side by side

Purchase order software for small business compared on price

Entry prices are monthly list prices from each vendor's page. Where a vendor only bills yearly, that is noted.

Tool Price for POs Who decides the quantity Approvals Best for
Storekeeper Growth $149/mo, or $74/mo billed yearly Forecast per SKU with lead time, safety stock and case pack No approval chain; you review each draft Shops, ecommerce brands and wholesalers buying stock from several suppliers
QuickBooks Online Plus About $140/mo (2026 list price, independent price guides) You type it; reorder point is a number you set per item Approval workflows on Advanced Businesses already keeping their books in QuickBooks with a short item list
Zoho Inventory Standard $39/mo, or $29/mo billed yearly You type it; reorder point sends a notification only Basic PO approval Small sellers under 500 orders a month who want stock and orders in one place
Tradogram Essentials $99/mo, or $950.40/yr; extra user fee The requester Yes, requisition to PO to invoice Teams controlling indirect spend on a small budget
Precoro Core From $499/mo, billed yearly The requester Yes, with budgets and QuickBooks Online or Xero sync Growing companies that need procure-to-pay controls
ProcureDesk Startup $830/mo, billed yearly ($9,960), 10 users The requester Yes, requests, POs, receiving and invoices Companies under 100 employees on QuickBooks or Xero replacing email approvals

The honest read: if approvals are your problem, Storekeeper is not the tool, and Tradogram is the cheapest real option above. If quantities are your problem, the procurement tools will not help, because they assume someone already knows what to order.

Shop owner checking stock levels on a tablet between stockroom shelves
Setup

How to set up a purchase order system for a small business

  1. 1Bring in products and sales

    Connect your store or upload a CSV or XLSX of SKUs, stock on hand and at least a few months of sales. Twelve months lets the forecast see seasonality.

  2. 2Add suppliers and lead times

    Assign each SKU to a supplier with its real lead time, unit cost and case pack. This is the step most PO templates skip, and the one that sets the quantity.

  3. 3Review the drafts

    Each supplier gets a draft with suggested quantities and line totals. Change what you know better than the data, drop lines you do not want.

  4. 4Send and record

    Download the PO as a numbered PDF, email it to the supplier, and enter it in your accounting system if you track POs there.

Who buys it

Small businesses that get the most from forecast-driven POs

The common thread is buying the same products again and again from a handful of suppliers.

Independent retailers

A gift shop, bike shop or pet store reordering from 10 to 40 vendors. Storekeeper reads POS sales from Square, Clover, Lightspeed or Shopify POS and turns them into one draft per vendor.

Ecommerce brands

A Shopify or Amazon brand buying from overseas factories with 30 to 60 day lead times, where a late PO means a month out of stock. If you sell on Shopify, our Shopify purchase order app page covers the specifics.

Small wholesalers

A distributor with a few hundred to a few thousand SKUs whose buyer still rebuilds supplier orders in a spreadsheet each week. See also wholesale inventory software.

Budget

How much does purchase order software cost a small business

Purchase order software for a small business costs from about $30 to $150 a month for inventory tools and $99 to $830 a month for procurement suites, before extra users. The cheaper inventory tools hold the PO but leave the quantity to you; procurement suites price by user because their value is approvals.

A useful way to judge the price is against one bad order. A shop that over-orders $3,000 of a slow SKU carries that cash for months, and one stockout on a best seller in December can cost more than a year of any tool on the table above. Storekeeper Starter at $49 a month gives you the forecast and reorder alerts for one location; Growth at $149 adds the drafted purchase orders, supplier lead times and up to 5 locations and channels. Both are cheaper billed yearly, and every plan is on the pricing page.

Already on QuickBooks? Our QuickBooks inventory forecasting page shows how the forecast sits next to the books you keep today. For the full feature set behind the drafts, see purchase order software with PO forecasting.

Frequently asked

Purchase order system questions from small businesses

What is the best purchase order system for small business?
The best purchase order system for a small business that buys inventory is one that sets the order quantity from sales and lead times, not just a PO form. Storekeeper does that from $149 a month. If you mainly need managers to approve spend on services and supplies, Tradogram from $99 a month is the lowest-priced procurement option, with Precoro and ProcureDesk above it.
How to set up a purchase order system for a small business?
Start with a clean product list and stock counts, then assign every product to a supplier with its real lead time, cost and case pack. Decide how quantities are set (a reorder point and forecast, not a guess), number every PO, and keep one place where open orders are tracked until received. Storekeeper covers the first three steps and exports numbered PDF purchase orders.
Does QuickBooks have a purchase order system?
Yes. QuickBooks Online creates purchase orders on the Plus and Advanced plans, and QuickBooks Desktop has them too. You choose the vendor, items and quantities, and QuickBooks can warn you at a reorder point you type in per item. It does not forecast demand or suggest how much to order. Our QuickBooks inventory forecasting page shows how to add that.
How much does purchase order software cost?
Inventory-focused purchase order software costs about $30 to $150 a month for a small business: Zoho Inventory Standard is $29 to $39, Storekeeper Growth with drafted POs is $74 to $149. Procurement suites with approvals cost more: Tradogram Essentials $99 a month, Precoro from $499 and ProcureDesk from $830, all before extra users.
Do small businesses need purchase orders?
A small business needs purchase orders once it buys from several suppliers or lets more than one person place orders. The PO records the agreed price, quantity and delivery date, so you can check deliveries and invoices against it. Below that size a written order by email works, but you still need a reliable way to decide the quantity.
Can Storekeeper send purchase orders to suppliers?
Storekeeper drafts one purchase order per supplier and exports it as a numbered PDF with SKUs, quantities, unit costs and line totals. You review it and email the PDF from your own address, which keeps the supplier relationship in your inbox. Drafted POs are part of the Growth plan and above; see pricing.

More ways teams use Storekeeper

AI inventory

Stop guessing the number on the purchase order.

Create your account, upload your products and sales, and get a draft PO for every supplier.

One confirmation email, no spam, no card required.