Every remodeler has had the same conversation: 'did the tile for the Martinez job get ordered?' 'I think so?' 'From where?' 'Uh…' Purchase orders in MY LAURA exist to end that conversation. Every material order is a real document, tied to a project, visible to your bookkeeper, and trackable from placed to paid.
Create a PO from an approved estimate's line items, or from scratch on a project. Vendor, line items, notes, done in 60 seconds.
Each PO is created under a project and carries that project through to QuickBooks. Nothing floats in a "general expenses" bucket, so your project profitability numbers stay real.
Every PO has a money state (Draft → Sent → Partially Paid → Paid) and an independent work state (In Progress → Work Complete). A trade can finish their work before you've paid the final invoice, or a payment can clear before the work is done. Both pills show on the PO so nothing falls through the cracks.
Open any project. Click New Purchase Order. Pick a vendor (or add a new one). Add the line items — either manually, or by pulling directly from the project's approved estimate. Add notes about delivery location, expected date, job site contact. Save as draft or send immediately.
The vendor gets a PDF of the PO via email with the header info, line items, quantities, and delivery notes. If you need to jot something down about the order — confirmation numbers, delivery ETA a supplier gave you over the phone, anything — add a note on the PO so it stays with the record.
A material order isn't done when you pay for it — it's done when the materials show up and the work using them is finished. MY LAURA tracks those two states independently. Use the action menu to Mark Work Started when a trade begins their portion, and Mark Work Complete when they wrap up. The work pill renders alongside the money pill, so a PO can read "Partially Paid · In Progress" or "Paid · Work Complete" — whatever the real state is.
Record the payment against the PO and MY LAURA pushes it to QuickBooks as a bill or expense, depending on your QBO tier and chart of accounts setup. Vendors you pull in from QuickBooks during setup stay linked, so every material cost lands on the right vendor and the right project in your books.
Most contractor software treats purchase orders as an afterthought — a slight variation on invoices. But POs have a different lifecycle, different stakeholders, and different accounting treatment.
An invoice goes to a client. A PO goes to a vendor, but it's about a project. MY LAURA keeps that relationship explicit — every PO belongs to a project, and the project's expense report shows what you spent, when, on what, and from whom.
Real job costing needs two things: what you billed (invoices) and what you spent (POs + trade partner payments + labor). MY LAURA's project profitability report uses PO data as a core input. Without structured POs, profitability reporting is fiction.
Open the Accounts Payable report to see every unpaid PO grouped by vendor, with aging. When vendors call asking to be paid, you have an answer. When you're planning cash flow, you know what's due next week.
Purchase Orders is included in MY LAURA at $199/month. Unlimited everything. 30-day free trial, no credit card.