Your supplier is probably on Shopify too. So why are you emailing them a PDF?

If your supplier sells on Shopify, the purchase order you email them as a PDF gets typed back in by hand on their side. Connected purchasing skips that: the order you built arrives in their store as an order, already matched to their products, and their fulfillment updates your purchase order as it ships.

Millions of stores run on Shopify, and a growing share of them are wholesalers, makers and distributors selling to other businesses. So there is a decent chance the supplier you restock from runs on the same platform you do. The purchase order that travels between you is still a PDF in an email, much as it would have been a fax in 1995.

The round trip a PO makes today

Follow one order from end to end and count the manual steps:

1. You build the PO with products, quantities and costs, and email it as a PDF.
2. Someone on their side re-types it into their system. For a Shopify-based supplier, that means keying your lines into an order by hand, matching your SKUs to theirs from memory.
3. Confirmation comes back by email, if you get one. So does every follow-up: “did you get our order?”, “when does it ship?”
4. They ship, and the tracking number sits in an email thread instead of on the order.
5. You receive, checking cartons against a PDF and typing quantities back into your own system.

At every step a digit can get transposed, a line missed, or a day lost waiting on a reply. Neither side is doing anything wrong. The problem is that two systems are talking to each other through a document designed for printing.

What connected purchasing changes for the buyer

With Stockroom Network, you and a supplier who both run Stockroom connect once, and from then on your purchase orders go straight into their Stockroom:

• You order the way you already do. Build the PO and mark it ordered. It lands in your supplier’s Stockroom instead of an inbox, with every line matched to their catalog by the supplier SKUs you already keep.
• The status updates on its own. When they fulfill, their shipped quantities and tracking come back onto your PO and move it through ordered, partial and received.
• Your costs stay current. A connected supplier can publish the prices they charge you, so the costs behind your margins and reorder planning are kept up to date.

What it changes for your supplier

The supplier has the worse end of a PDF purchase order, because they are the ones re-typing it. Once connected:

• Orders arrive as data, matched to their products, with quantities and requested dates already filled in.
• One click creates the order in their store, or it happens automatically if they turn that on. How incoming orders are handled is the supplier’s setting.
• Shipping the order is the update. Fulfilling it tells the buyer it shipped, so there is no confirmation email to write.
• It costs them nothing. Stockroom is free, so accepting a connection does not mean buying software for one customer’s sake.

If you’re a supplier holding a PO from a Stockroom store right now, there’s a page for you.

What crosses the connection and what does not

Connecting two businesses’ systems raises a fair question about what each side can see. The rules are:

• Both sides approve the connection before anything crosses. The buyer agrees when inviting and the supplier agrees when accepting.
• Only the purchase orders the buyer sends that supplier cross: lines, quantities and the buyer’s costs on those orders, plus the buyer’s business contact details so the supplier can set them up as a customer.
• Nothing else crosses. The buyer’s sales and stock levels, their other suppliers and either store’s customer data stay where they are. The supplier’s own costs never cross either, only the prices they choose to publish.
• Either side can disconnect at any time. Orders already shared stay where they are, because they are that side’s business records.

If your supplier isn’t on Shopify (yet)

Nothing changes. The PDF-and-email flow keeps working as it does today, and the network is optional. Stockroom also flags which of your suppliers look like they are on Shopify, so you know who to invite first.

The next time you email a PO, think about someone on the other end re-typing it into the same platform you just exported it from. There is a better way to send it.