For food & drink producers
Purchase order automation, from raising to chasing
Most purchase order software stops at creating the document. The work is everything after it — sending, chasing, reading the reply, and noticing when a confirmed date no longer covers the batch it was bought for. Leio does that part, on top of the ERP you already run.
What purchase order automation actually covers
Purchase order automation is software taking over the mechanical parts of the PO cycle: spotting what needs ordering, drafting the order, sending it, chasing an acknowledgement, reading the reply, and keeping expected dates current. What it does not take over is the buying: which supplier, what price, whether to commit the spend. That stays with a person, and any tool that pretends otherwise gets switched off in its first month.
A purchase order is a commitment, not a form — if you want the full anatomy, we wrotewhat a purchase order is for exactly that. The automation question is narrower: which steps of its lifecycle still need a human, and which are just typing and waiting?
Where the time goes
Six steps, and only two of them need judgement.
| Step | Usually | With Leio |
|---|---|---|
| Spot the need | Weekly spreadsheet | Continuous, from the plan |
| Decide supplier and price | Buyer | Buyer |
| Raise the PO | Typed into the ERP | Drafted for approval |
| Send it | Copy, paste, email | Sent on approval |
| Chase confirmation | If someone remembers | Chased automatically |
| Apply the reply | Read, then re-keyed | Read and applied |
Do the arithmetic on your own numbers
Take a producer raising 40 purchase orders a week. Say each one takes six minutes to build and send — pulling the quantity, checking the last price, typing it into the ERP, attaching it to an email. That is 240 minutes, four hours a week, before anybody has chased anything.
Chasing is the part nobody logs. An order goes out, no acknowledgement comes back, and it sits unconfirmed until either the delivery arrives or the shortage does. The follow-up is genuinely easy work — which is precisely why it loses every time it competes with a customer on the phone.
Those are illustrative numbers, not a benchmark. Put your own PO count and your own minutes in; the shape of the answer rarely changes.
Why it has to be connected to the plan
Automating PO creation alone speeds up typing. It does not tell you the order was for the wrong week. The useful version is connected to a live material plan: the order exists because a scheduled batch needs it, so when the supplier moves the date by four days the system knows which batch that breaks — and whether it breaks anything at all.
That is the difference between an inbox full of confirmations and a short list of orders that genuinely need a decision.
How Leio handles the PO round
- Orders come from requirements
- Every draft PO traces back to production that needs it, netted against stock and what is already on order, with minimums and order multiples applied.
- You approve, Leio sends
- The order goes out from your purchasing mailbox to the supplier's usual contact. No portal for suppliers to sign up to.
- Chased until confirmed
- Silence gets followed up on a schedule instead of when someone notices. Confirmations get read, including the ones that quietly change a date or a quantity.
- The ERP stays the record
- Orders and statuses are written back to Dynamics 365, Cin7, Unleashed, Xero or QuickBooks. Receipts, invoices and matching stay where they already work.
"A system like this, for the lack of better phrase is idiot proof"
Nick
Supply Chain Director
Purchase order automation FAQs
What is purchase order automation?
Purchase order automation is software taking over the mechanical parts of the purchase order cycle: working out what needs ordering, drafting the PO, sending it to the supplier, chasing an acknowledgement, reading the reply and keeping the expected dates current. The buying decisions — which supplier, what price, whether to commit — stay with the buyer.
Does purchase order automation replace my ERP purchasing module?
No. Your ERP stays the place purchase orders live, along with receipts, invoices and costs. Automation drives that module rather than replacing it: it decides what should be ordered, creates the order and keeps its status current as suppliers reply.
Is this the same as procurement automation or a P2P suite?
Procure-to-pay suites are built around indirect spend and approval workflow — requisitions, budget sign-off, invoice matching, supplier onboarding. Purchase order automation for a manufacturer is about direct materials: the ingredients and packaging your production plan requires, ordered on time and chased until confirmed.
Does it send orders to suppliers without approval?
Not unless you want it to. The default is that Leio drafts the order and the buyer approves it. Once sent, the chasing and the reading of replies happen without you, which is where most of the time goes.
How do suppliers receive the orders?
By email, the way they already do, from your purchasing mailbox on Gmail or Outlook. No supplier portal to roll out and no requirement for suppliers to adopt anything — the ones who reply with a PDF and a hand-typed date carry on doing exactly that.
Does it do three-way matching?
No. Matching the invoice to the purchase order and the goods receipt is your ERP or accounting system's job, and it already does it. Leio works upstream of that: getting the right order out, confirmed, and arriving on the date the plan needs.
What if a supplier confirms a different date or quantity?
That reply is read and applied to the plan. If the new date still covers the batches the order was bought for, nothing needs your attention. If it does not, it comes to you as an exception, with the production it threatens attached.
Related: supply planning software, food manufacturing software, and on the blog, what is a purchase order andagentic AI in supply chain.
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