The vendor accepted your order for ten, delivered six, and sent a bill for six. What most businesses do next is open a blank bill and type it out again. That works, and it quietly costs you the one thing the purchase order was for: knowing what is still outstanding.
In short
- Where
- Procurement → Purchase orders → open the order
- The button
- Convert to bill, top right
- Takes
- About four minutes, most of it typing the vendor’s invoice number
- Needs
- An order that is Open, not Draft
Why re-typing costs you something
A purchase order is a promise with quantities on it. The moment you record the bill somewhere that does not know about the order, three things stop being answerable:
- What is still on order. You ordered ten. Six arrived. Nothing now holds the four.
- Whether you were billed at the agreed rate. The order said ₹250 a unit. The bill says ₹268. Nobody notices, because the two documents never meet.
- Whether you have paid twice. The vendor sends a consolidated invoice in April covering March’s part-deliveries. Without the link, that is a second bill for goods already billed.
The three-way match — order, receipt, bill — exists to catch exactly this. It only works if the three documents know about each other.
Step by step
Open the purchase order
Procurement → Purchase orders, then the order the vendor has delivered against. Check the status: it must be Open. A draft has not been placed with anybody and cannot be billed.
Press Convert to bill
Top right of the order. If the button is not there, either the order is still a draft, or everything on it has already been billed — both of which the order will tell you in its status.
Pick what actually arrived
Reduce the quantity on any line the vendor part-supplied. Ordered 10, delivered 6 — put 6. Lines you leave alone come across in full. Ask for more than is outstanding and it refuses, naming the line and the quantity still available.
Enter their invoice number and date
The bill opens as a draft already carrying the vendor, the lines, the tax treatment, the terms and the TDS section. The one thing it cannot know is the vendor’s own invoice number — that is their document, not yours, and it is what your GST input credit will be matched against.
Save, then open it
Save the draft. Then Mark as open. A draft bill is not yet something you owe; opening it is what makes it payable and puts it into your payables ageing.
The bit that trips people up. A draft bill will not take a payment, and the refusal is deliberate rather than a bug — a draft is a document you are still writing. Mark it open first. This catches almost everybody once.
What the order does on its own
After the first conversion the order shows Partially billed. It is not a label somebody chose from a menu — it is computed from the quantities, and it cannot be set by hand for exactly that reason. A status you can type is a status that can lie.
Bill the remaining four next month and the order moves to Billed by itself, and Convert to bill stops being offered. Delete a bill and the quantities go back; the order moves back with them.
| Order status | What it means | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Written, not placed | You |
| Open | With the vendor, nothing billed | You |
| Partially billed | Some of it converted | The conversion |
| Billed | All of it converted | The conversion |
| Closed | Nothing left to do | You, or cancelling the rest |
| Cancelled | The vendor turned it down | You — and it cannot be undone |
When the rest is never coming
Sometimes the four are not late, they are cancelled — the vendor cannot supply them at all. Do not edit the quantity down to six: that destroys the fact that ten were agreed. Use ⋯ → Cancel items instead, which records what was called off beside what was ordered. That is its own post.
Common questions
Can I bill a purchase order more than once?
Yes. Each conversion takes only what is still unbilled. The order moves to Partially billed and then to Billed on its own, and Convert to bill disappears once nothing is left.
What happens if I delete a bill raised from an order?
The quantities go back to the order and its status moves back with them. A fully billed order returns to Partially billed or Open depending on what else stands against it.
Why can I not bill a draft purchase order?
A draft has not been agreed with anybody. Billing it would record a liability against an order the vendor has never seen. Place the order first, then bill it.
Does receiving the goods mark the order complete?
No. What arrived is recorded on the goods receipt and on the lines. The order status says how much has been billed — a different question, and an order can easily arrive in full and be billed for none of it.
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