Shopify can't email a purchase order. Send it from the record instead.

The wall, in Shopify's own words

Three separate limits, all from Shopify's migration guide and help pages:

• No email. "You can't email a purchase order from your Shopify admin." The instruction is to download the PDF and email it yourself.
• PDF only. The PDF is the one file Shopify gives you for a finished purchase order. A PDF is a picture of the order, not the order itself: your supplier's system can't import it, so someone at their end re-keys it.
• No spreadsheet export. Shopify's purchase order CSV runs the other way: it uploads line items into a new draft. There is no CSV or spreadsheet export of a finished PO, which is why merchants have an open feature request asking Shopify to add one.

(Source: Shopify Help Center: Migrating from Stocky to Shopify inventory management.) None of this mattered while Stocky lived, because Stocky sent the order. It matters now, on every order, forever.

What suppliers actually need

Strip it down and a supplier needs four things from your purchase order: the PO number, where they will look for it (in the subject line and on the order itself, because their invoice has to quote it); the lines, with SKU, quantity and the cost you agreed; the delivery address and the date you need it; and a file their system can read. Meet those four and the order moves. Miss the file, and your order joins a queue of PDFs waiting for someone to type it in, with the typos that implies.

The manual workaround, and where it breaks

Most merchants land on the same workaround: download the PDF, then retype or transpose the lines into a spreadsheet the supplier can use, and email both. It works until it doesn't:

• Quantities drift. A line transposed by hand is a line that can arrive wrong, and the first anyone knows is the delivery.
• The invoice quotes the wrong number. If the PO number was retyped or left off the spreadsheet, the invoice comes back unmatchable and the three-way check becomes archaeology.
• The agreement lives in an inbox. When the supplier disputes a price in March, the proof is an email thread from November, if it survives. The order record itself says nothing about what was actually sent.

The workaround's real cost is that it scales with your ordering. Every order pays it again.

What sending from the PO system should look like

The fix is structural, not a better spreadsheet. You send from the record: the email goes out from the purchase order itself, the version you sent stays attached to that order, and a revision is a resend from the same record, clearly the newest version. Then receiving is checked against exactly what the supplier was sent, and the invoice is matched against the same record. One document, three jobs, no retyping anywhere in the chain.

How Sutler sends

In Sutler, the purchase order is emailed to the supplier from the order itself. The sent PO stays the record: you receive against what was sent, and when the invoice arrives it is matched against the same order. Supplier lead times and minimums sit on the supplier record the order was built from, so the order you send is built on the real numbers in the first place.

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Quick answers

Can you email a purchase order from Shopify?

No. Shopify's migration guide says you can't email a purchase order from your Shopify admin; you download it as a PDF and send it by email yourself. There is no CSV or spreadsheet export of a finished purchase order.

How do I send a revised purchase order?

Resend it from the same order record, so your supplier works from the newest version and your receiving is checked against what you actually sent, not against a spreadsheet edited afterwards.

What if my supplier replies with changes?

Agree the change on the order itself (quantities, costs, dates), then resend from the record. If the change only lives in an email thread, the order, the delivery and the invoice will disagree with each other later.

Check your Stocky export first: two minutes, nothing uploads.

The free Stocky Export Checker reads your Stocky CSV files in your browser and tells you what is inside them: purchase orders, products, suppliers named on your orders, open orders still to arrive, and what is missing. It also builds a list of the suppliers you'll need to re-enter, because Stocky can't export them.

Check my export →

What Sutler doesn't do

What Sutler does and doesn't do: Sutler suggests what to reorder from your sales, lead times and minimums, with the math shown, but makes no promise about forecast accuracy, and it does not do transfers between locations. What it does is the purchasing desk: purchase orders, receiving, labels, stocktakes and landed cost, and it imports your Stocky export into working purchase orders.