Purchase Orders: Import And Export Every Field An Operator Can Edit

Bulk-editing a purchase order’s dates or status meant opening the orders one at a time, because the importer covered about half the fields on a PO. Every operator-writable field is importable now, and the default export lines up with the import, so a file can be exported, edited in a spreadsheet, and re-imported without remapping.

The importer accepts all ten header dates, Short Description, and PO Status, under the labels the UI uses. PO Status offers every value the status control offers, and a status set through the import records the same history row, timeline event, and log entry as one set by hand. Suppliers resolve by handle rather than legal name — the supplier export and import both carry a Handle column and existing suppliers are filled with a slug from their name, so there is a short value to type instead of reproducing “Acme Widgets & Sons, Incorporated” exactly. A handle that resolves wins over a stale name, and one that does not resolve is a row-level error rather than a silent fall back to a different supplier. A blank cell leaves the stored value alone, and a renamed column errors and names its replacement.

Dates export month-first with a four-digit year, which is what survives a spreadsheet save. One behavior change reaches beyond the importer: a purchase order’s own payment terms and incoterms no longer inherit from the supplier’s defaults when the incoming value is blank, so an update or import that clears the field keeps it clear. A new PO still inherits, having nothing of its own to keep.