How to Generate a Purchase Order

Send your stone vendor a clean order saying which items you need, what size and color they should be, and where to ship them.

Written By Dennis Rodin

Last updated 5 days ago

Most monument companies buy stones from vendors (often imported). The Purchase Order is the document you send to that vendor, listing the items you need, their size and color, and where to ship them. Its Order Notes section pulls together all of the notes on the order (external, internal, supplier, cemetery, and client) so the vendor has the full picture.

To generate one, open the order, click Document Generation at the top right, and select Generate Purchase Order from the dropdown.

PO numbers

Every Purchase Order gets its own sequential number (PO-1, PO-2, PO-3, and so on). The number increments each time you generate a PO PDF for that order, so it's tracked per order rather than across your whole account. PO numbers are independent from order numbers.

Single vendor (most common case)

Search for the vendor in the search bar at the top and select them. Their info card (name, address, phone, email) appears below.

The Select Items for This PO section lists every line item from your order (Die, Base, Vase, etc.) as checkboxes. All items are checked by default. Uncheck anything you don't want to send to this vendor.

The Ship all items to line shows your company name and address by default (most common case: vendor ships everything to your shop). Click Different address for each item? if some items should ship somewhere else.

Click Generate Purchase Order and you're done.

Multiple vendors

If you're ordering from more than one vendor, click Different address for each item? or just search and select multiple vendors at once.

The popup splits the vendor cards side-by-side and adds two dropdowns to every line item:

  • Assign to: which vendor is supplying this item

  • Ship to: where this item should ship (defaults to your own company)

When you click Generate, MonuDesk creates one separate PO PDF per vendor, each with only the items assigned to that vendor and the correct ship-to address. So if you've split items between two vendors, you'll get two PDFs.

To go back to single-vendor mode, click Ship all to same address.

Drawings

If you've uploaded design drawings to the order (with the Drawing category), attach up to two of them to the Purchase Order. The popup shows thumbnails for each.

Important: Files only appear in the drawings selector if they have already been uploaded to Notes & Files on this order with the Drawing category. To attach a sketch or drawing, upload the file first under Notes & Files, choose Drawing as the category, then come back here and open the popup. Files saved with any other category (Instructions, Financial Document, Other, etc.) will not show up in the selector. This applies to every file you want to attach during document generation.

Sketches built in the Sketch & Inscription step of the wizard automatically save as Drawing-category files on the order, so they appear in the selector here without any manual upload step.

What shows on the PDF

Each item appears with:

  • Material and color

  • Size

  • Finish

  • Quantity

For slant, bevel, and flush markers, the Finish column now prints a per-side finish label for each face, so the vendor can see exactly how each side should be finished. P2 and P3 BRP are now available as finish options as well.

When you choose a different ship-to address for each item, the header reads Ship To: See line items for address, and every row gets its own → Ship to: subline so the vendor can see exactly where each piece goes.

If the order has no drawings attached, the PDF falls back to a Design Information box that lists the decedents and plot details, so the vendor still has the design context even without an image.

Every page ends with your company name above Powered by MonuDesk, with page numbers (like 1/2) in the bottom-right corner.

Caps mode

The Generate in all caps checkbox at the bottom of the popup converts every text element on the PDF to uppercase. Some sandblasters require this so they can copy and paste names and inscriptions directly into their machines.

Off by default. Toggle it on per-PO when you need it.

After you click Generate

Each generated PO PDF is saved automatically to the order's Notes & Files under the Financial Document category. Like every newly generated document, it starts as Internal; flip it to External if you want it visible in the Customer Portal. Multi-vendor jobs save each PDF as a separate file.

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