Hello TedK,
The ability to quickly created related transactions from those you've already entered into the program is great for easily managing your books. As you know, an estimate will allow you to create an invoice or to copy information to a purchase order, but I can see how needing to get the items onto multiple purchase orders isn't quite as straightforward. Don't worry, I can walk you through this.
For situations where you need to create multiple purchase orders from a single estimate, it's a matter of repeating the process of creating the purchase order a few times. Here's how you would do it.
- Open the estimate and click the down-arrow beside Create Invoice.
- Choose Copy to purchase order.
- Choose the first vendor in the Vendor drop-down.
- On the purchase order, select the trash can icon on the line items that don't apply to that vendor to remove them.
- Click Save and close.
- Go back to the Estimate (Note: You can reopen it from the transaction list in the Sales tab or from the customer profile).
- Click the down-arrow beside Create Invoice.
- Choose Copy to purchase order.
- Choose the second vendor in the Vendor drop-down.
- On the purchase order, select the trash can icon on the line items that don't apply to that vendor to remove them.
- Click Save and close.
I think that should give you an idea of the process. Simply do this for the amount of purchase orders you need. I know this process is a bit clunky, and you're right that QuickBooks doesn't create a purchase order from preferred vendor information or other things you may have configured on the item setup. Additionally, QuickBooks Online allows for one customer or vendor per transaction, so creating five individual purchase orders from a single estimate means a bit of extra work.
Feel free to submit feedback about this process and any ideas you have to improve it by following the steps in this article: How do I submit feedback? Comments from users such as yourself help us enhance what QuickBooks can do for you and we love hearing your ideas.
For your reference, here are the community's help articles about estimates and purchase orders.
Feel free to stop by again if you need anything else! Have a great week.
