Hello Laura Ksmith,
Welcome to the Community.
It's really important to be able to keep track the items from the Purchase Order. In QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced versions, PO needs to be turned on from the company settings. Here's how:
- Click on the Gear icon.
- Select Account and Settings.
- In the Expenses section, check the Use purchase orders box.
- Click on Save.
About allocating items from a Purchase Order to multiple bills, yes, that's possible. These are the steps:
- To create a PO, click on the Plus icon, choose Purchase Order, enter the item details, and click on Save.
- To convert this PO to a bill, click on Copy to Bill button from the PO transaction. Edit the quantity and click on Save.
When you open the PO again, you'll get to see the RECEIVED column. It means that you've received partial items. Click on the Copy to Bill button again to create a new bill for this PO. If it's about time to pay these bills, you'll see the quantity in the CLOSED column.
With regards to marking the items on that purchase order without creating a bill is not yet available. I'll take note of it as a product feature request, and I'll personally send it to our developers.
For now, you can try searching for a third-party application in the Intuit Apps Center that have more capabilities on tracking purchase orders. Just go to https://apps.intuit.com and select Inventory Management or Billing & Invoices in the Categories section.
If you need more help about QuickBooks, please let us know. We'll be right here to help.
