Purchase Order Lifecycle

A Purchase Order advances through a series of states throughout its lifecycle.

This diagram illustrates the different states in the lifecycle and the transitions between them. The most typical transition paths are shown in solid lines, while dotted lines indicate possible but less common paths.

States

State	Description
draft	Purchase Order is in a draft state, meaning it can be edited.
pending_approval	Purchase Order is waiting for a somebody to approve or reject it. It cannot be edited in this state.
rejected	Purchase Order has been rejected. It can be edited in this state.
approved	Purchase Order has been approved. At this point, it can no longer be edited.
purchased	Purchase Order has been purchased
received_partial	Some line items has been partially received
received_full	All line items have been fully received
closed	Purchase Order is complete. The only editable fields at this point are description and labels.

State Transitions

To transition from one state to the next, you must call the appropriate API endpoint with the PATCH method.

info

We do not support receiving inventory in the Purchase Orders API.

The table below describes which all possible states and which endpoints you need to call to perform the transition.

caution

If you attempt to call an endpoint and the transition is impossible, you will get a HTTP 422 with an error in the response body.

Initial State	Possible Transition States	Endpoint
draft	pending_approval	/purchase_orders/:number/submit_for_approval
	approved	/purchase_orders/:number/approve
pending_approval	approved	/purchase_orders/:number/approve
	rejected	/purchase_orders/:number/reject
rejected	pending_approval	/purchase_orders/:number/submit_for_approval
	approved	/purchase_orders/:number/approve
approved	purchased	/purchase_orders/:number/purchase
purchased	approved	/purchase_orders/:number/undo_purchase
received_partial
received_full	closed	/purchase_orders/:number/close
closed