Description
WooCommerce tracks what you sell. It has never tracked what you buy — so the
purchasing side of a store ends up in a spreadsheet, and the cost of goods ends
up out of date.
PurchaseDesk closes that half of the loop. Create a purchase order for a
supplier, send it, then receive the goods when the box arrives — in full or a
few units at a time. Receiving is the only step you take: stock goes up, the
product’s cost is updated, and the receipt is logged so you can see exactly who
received what, when, and at what price.
What it does
- Suppliers — real supplier records with contact person, email, phone, address, lead time and notes.
- Purchase orders — search your catalogue by name, SKU or barcode and add lines in a click; set quantity and unit cost per line; track the order through draft ordered partially received received. Search, filter and sort the order list.
- Goods receipt, in full or a few units at a time — stock is written through WooCommerce’s own product API, so every integration, low-stock notice and lookup table stays correct. Receiving the same delivery twice cannot double-count.
- Scan to receive — a barcode scanner is just a fast keyboard. Scan a code and the matching line counts up.
- Stock adjustments — record damage, loss, customer returns, goods sent back to a supplier or a plain correction, each with a reason and a note.
- Product cost the rest of your store can see — cost is written where WooCommerce and the established cost-of-goods plugins read it, including WooCommerce’s built-in Cost of Goods Sold field when you have it enabled.
- Planning grid — set reorder points, default order quantities and suppliers for a whole page of products at once, and edit each product’s cost and supplier SKU inline on the same screen. Setting them one product at a time is why inventory plugins stay empty.
- Reorder list — everything at or below its reorder point, with anything already on its way subtracted so you never buy the same thing twice. Snooze a product for two weeks when you do not want to see it.
- Undo a receipt — received 100 when 10 arrived? Reverse it. Stock and the order go back, and the reversal is written into the history rather than hiding the mistake.
- Email the order to your supplier — the products, quantities and prices, sent from your own site.
- Full history — an audit line for every receipt, reversal and adjustment, with the quantity and the stock level before and after; receipts also record the unit cost, adjustments the reason. Deleting an order never destroys it.
- Duplicate an order — next week’s order is usually last week’s order. Copy any purchase order into a fresh draft: same supplier, same lines, same costs, nothing received.
- Bulk actions on the order list — mark a whole page of orders as ordered, move them back to draft, cancel or delete them in one go, with status tabs that carry a count.
- Export your own records — purchase orders, goods received and every stock movement, as CSV, whenever you want. Your records are yours; nothing is held back to sell you an upgrade.
- CSV import with a dry run — bring cost, supplier, supplier SKU, reorder point and default order quantity in from a spreadsheet. You see exactly what will change — row by row, with the numbers already read the way they will be written — before anything is saved.
- Settings — order numbering, whether receiving updates cost, who is allowed to change stock, and how many orders a page shows.
Works with the rest of your stack
Cost is not stored in a private field. PurchaseDesk reads and writes the keys
the WooCommerce ecosystem already uses, and prefers WooCommerce core’s own Cost
of Goods Sold value when that feature is switched on. If you already have costs
from another inventory or cost-of-goods plugin, PurchaseDesk reads them on day
one — nothing to migrate.
PurchaseDesk Pro
A separate paid version is available from the plugin’s home page and adds:
- Weighted-average costing (instead of last-cost) as stock arrives
- Turn the reorder list into draft purchase orders in one click, grouped by supplier
- A purchasing dashboard: stock value at cost, spend versus the previous period, and a receipts trend chart
- Purchase reports over a period you pick (7, 30, 90, 180 or 365 days): spend by supplier with each supplier’s share, receipts over time, and the value still on order
- A full inbound table: everything outstanding per product across every open order on one screen (the free reorder list already subtracts what is on its way, and the free dashboard totals it)
- A printable purchase order to send your supplier (print or save as PDF from your browser)
- Export the spend REPORT as CSV for the period you are looking at (your own records export free, above)
- A purchasing dashboard trend chart and stock value at cost
- Scan barcodes with a phone camera while receiving, where the browser provides the Barcode Detection API: Chrome or Edge on Android, and Chrome on macOS (Windows, Linux and iOS browsers do not offer it today; a USB or Bluetooth scanner works everywhere and is free)
- Email support answered on weekdays by the developer
Screenshots









Installation
- Upload the
purchasedesk-for-woocommercefolder to/wp-content/plugins/. - Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress.
- Open PurchaseDesk Suppliers and add your first supplier.
WooCommerce must be installed and active.
FAQ
-
Does this change how WooCommerce stores stock?
-
No. Stock is written through WooCommerce’s own product API, exactly the way the
product screen does it, so anything that listens for stock changes keeps working. -
Where is the product cost stored?
-
If WooCommerce’s Cost of Goods Sold feature is enabled (WooCommerce Settings
Advanced Features), that is the value PurchaseDesk writes. It also mirrors the
cost to the meta keys that established cost-of-goods plugins read, so reports
elsewhere in your store agree with it. -
Can I receive part of an order?
-
Yes. Receive line by line and in any quantity; the order moves to partially
received” until every line is complete. Receiving the same delivery twice cannot
double-count, because each line records how much has already been posted. -
Does it work with variable products?
-
Yes. Add the specific variation rather than the parent, because a variable
product does not hold stock of its own — PurchaseDesk asks you for the variation
if you pick a parent by mistake. Receipts, adjustments and history record both
the parent product and the variation, so reports line up either way. -
I already track cost with another plugin. Do I have to migrate?
-
No. PurchaseDesk reads the cost keys the WooCommerce ecosystem already uses, and
prefers WooCommerce core’s own Cost of Goods Sold value when that feature is
switched on. Existing costs show up on day one; there is nothing to import. -
Can I bring suppliers, costs and reorder points in from a spreadsheet?
-
Yes. The CSV import covers cost, supplier, supplier SKU, reorder point and
default order quantity, and it runs a dry run first: you see row by row exactly
what will change, with the numbers already read the way they will be written,
before anything is saved. -
I received the wrong quantity. Can I undo it?
-
Yes. Reverse the receipt and both the stock level and the order go back to where
they were. The reversal is written into the history as its own line rather than
quietly editing the original, so the audit trail still shows what happened. -
Does my shop manager need to be an administrator to use it?
-
No. PurchaseDesk checks the standard WooCommerce capability, so any Shop Manager
can work with orders and receipts. A separate setting controls who is allowed to
change stock, if you want receiving to be narrower than that. -
Can I send the purchase order to my supplier?
-
Yes. The order — products, quantities and prices — can be emailed to the supplier
from your own site. Pro also adds a printable version you can save as a PDF from
your browser. -
What happens to my data if I delete the plugin?
-
Deleting PurchaseDesk removes what it created: its tables, its settings and its
supplier records. Export first if you want to keep the history — purchase orders,
goods received and every stock movement export as CSV for free, at any time. If
you have both the free and the paid build on disk, removing one leaves the
other’s data alone. -
Is this what we call goods inwards?
-
Yes. Goods inwards, goods receipt, a goods received note (GRN), booking in a
delivery — the same job under different names. You raise a purchase order for a
supplier, and when the boxes turn up you receive against that order, in full or
a few units at a time. Stock goes up, the product cost is updated where the rest
of your store can read it, and the receipt is logged with who booked it in, when,
and at what price.
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“PurchaseDesk – Suppliers, Purchase Orders & Cost of Goods for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
ContributorsInterested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.4
- The plugin’s home link now opens the PurchaseDesk page instead of the Eren Labs home page.
1.0.3
- Fixed: the stock-movements CSV export produced an empty file. It queried a column the table does not have, so the download contained only its header row.
- Corrected the description of the planning grid, the audit trail, the Pro report period and the phone-camera browser support to match exactly what the plugin does.
1.0.2
- Read only the settings keys the screen owns, one per line, each sanitized with a core WordPress function instead of a helper of our own.
1.0.1
- Sanitize every request value the moment it is read, arrays included, rather than at the point of use.
- Drop load_plugin_textdomain(); WordPress has loaded directory-hosted translations automatically since 4.6.
1.0.0
- First public release: suppliers, purchase orders with catalogue search, bulk actions and one-click duplication, goods receipt in full or a few units at a time, scan-to-receive, receipt reversal, stock adjustments, the planning grid, the reorder list, CSV import with a dry run, cost history, email to supplier, and a dashboard.
