Purchase order transaction journal

Good day and I'm happy to share some details about the purchase order and how it affects your accounts, nicole_lahti.

A Purchase Order (PO) is a non-posting transaction, so it does nothing to the accounting and won't duplicate any of your expenses.

For the item receipt, this transaction increases your inventory asset account and accounts payable. Use this entry if you've received the items without a bill. 

Once you receive the bill from the vendor, proceed to Entering bills against inventory. This records the corresponding payable for the item receipt.

Here are the steps you can follow.

1. From the Home page, select Enter Bills against Inventory.
   
2. This opens the Select Item Receipt window.
3. From the Vendor drop-down, choose the correct vendor name.
4. To keep the original inventory availability date, mark the  Use Item receipt date for the bill date checkbox.
   
   
5. Select the Item Receipt that corresponds to your bill.
6. If there are multiple Item Receipts, convert each bill separately.
7. Click OK. QuickBooks converts the Item Receipt into a bill.
8. When you're ready to pay the bill, proceed to Pay bills.

Entering bills against the inventory is part of your usual Accounts Payable (A/P) workflow in QuickBooks. To see the complete list of steps and other vendor-related transactions, check out this article: A/P workflows in QuickBooks Desktop.

Keep me posted if you have additional questions about running inventory purchases through the Purchase Order. Just leave a comment below and I'll provide the answer that you need @nicole_lahti.

Thank you for your reply. 

Regarding your note: A Purchase Order (PO) is a non-posting transaction, so it does nothing to the account and won't duplicate any of your expenses.

I'm not finding this to be the case. When I create a PO, I select the inventory item to be ordered. I tied this item to an Account when I created the item. It's my understanding that selecting an Account at item creation is necessary so that the item is posted correctly during Item Receipt. When the PO is saved, the non-posting Purchase Order account is credited (as expected), and the Account I tied the item to is debited (not expected). See below transaction journal...

The items should not be posted to our ledger during PO creation, only during Item Receipt. Any insight as to why creating a PO increases our inventory would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Thanks for coming back, nicole_lahti. I'm here to help you fix the issue.

The creation of a purchase order shouldn't affect your ledger since it's a non-posting transaction. 

Let's check if it's a data issue by running the Verify Data Utility tool. This helps resolve unexpected behavior like this.

Here's how:

1. Click on File.
2. Select Utilities and choose Verify Data.
3. When prompted with the error, go to Rebuild Now.

Or you can do the following to rebuild your data:

1. Choose File.
2. Go to Utilities.
3. Click Rebuild Data.

For more detailed instructions, I'd recommend checking this article: Resolve data damage on your company file.

Keep me posted for additional info after performing the steps or any other concerns. I'd be more than happy to help.