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PO Required, Formats and Default Values
PO Required, Formats and Default Values

If you have a customer or user specific requirement on how their PO Numbers must be entered, this is how and a list of ERP Live PO lookup.

Séamus Diamond avatar
Written by Séamus Diamond
Updated over a week ago

There are two ways that you can assist your customers in entering their PO numbers. The first is specifying a Default PO number. This will be automatically populated until you change it. This is helpful when your customer uses the same PO number over many orders. 

The second way is using Custom structured PO numbers. This allows you to create a specific format that will only be accepted as a PO number. For example two letters followed by four numbers. This helps you to comply with your customers accounts departments regulations. 

See the details below on each feature. 

ERP Live Lookup for PO Default and PO Required

If your store is integrated with an ERP Live Lookup, this is done in Step 1 of checkout. This will use the values provided by the ERP unless the EvolutionX Customer Account or User Record has more specific requirements. Note that the EvolutionX Admin record of the customer account and user PO settings will only show the store settings and not the ERP settings. Here are a list of supported ERP integrations:

TIMS by Computers Unlimited

  • Live Lookup of PO Default, PO Value List, and PO required by customer account

Epicore Eclipse using Kourier Integrator by Kore

  • Live lookup of PO required by customer account

DDMSPLUS by ECI

  • Live lookup of PO required by customer account

Spruce by ECI

  • Live Lookup of PO Default, and PO required by customer account

Require a PO on Orders

A PO can be required on orders in one of the following 4 ways:

Note that other sections of this article cover default values and special validation requirements.

Require a User to Enter a PO to Place an Order

Requiring the use of a PO number to place an order must be done at the User level.  Find the Account, then find the user, then select the toggle to require a PO number as seen here:

Require a PO by Customer or for All Store Orders

Requiring an PO value can be done by setting the PO Structure value to the following Regular Expression (Regex):

^([a-zA-Z0-9]+.*)$
  • Customer — To require any PO for a specific customer account, set the format in Accounts → Customer Edit → Account Options → PO Structure

  • Store — To require for all store orders, set the format in Store Settings → Store Preferences → Default PO Structure → PO Structure

Default PO numbers 

The default PO number is very easy to use. Simply specify the PO number that you want to be defaulted and it will be automatically added at checkout. This is available at the account level and user level


Custom structured PO Numbers

You can specify at the account and/or user level (when present a user setup would override the account level instance) a particular structure for their PO Numbers, then using RegEx you can accommodate almost any required format.

Firstly navigate to the customer requiring this feature and click to edit that account (or if it's a user, navigate to the User tab > select the required user and edit). If you scroll down you'll see a section labelled 'Default PO Structure'.

Now you'll need to create the RegEx structure to match the customer PO format, so we'll break this down, using some examples:

  • ^.{1,7}$ max length 7

  • ^.{6,}$ min length 6

  • ^.{6}$ exact length 6

  • ^\w{2}\|\d{5}$ 2 chars and 5 numbers separated by | (e.g. XX|12345)

All the structures will begin with ^ followed with the exact requirements, in its simplest format shown in the examples above is to set a max/min or exact length and this will allow for any combination of characters.
If you need to get more specific, the last example is a great example of requiring a 7 character PO Number with the Characters and numbers separated by a pipe |. To break this down ^ to start the structure, \w{2} \w is for words so alphabetical letters only and the {2} means it is an exact length of 2 letters.
Next is to accommodate the pipe | symbol \| \ starts this element so simply add the required symbol e.g. \| or \- etc.
Finally add in 5 numbers \d{5}$ so again start the element with a \ then a d for digit (numbers only) within {} add how many digits are required and then complete the structure with $

We've included a useful test tool, so once you've created your structure simply type in an example and if it matches your RegEx structure it'll tell you it's valid!

There is also a useful Advance Tester link that breaks down the structure and again tells you if your test PO Number matches your structure

If you would also like to display a message to the user to remind them of their required PO Number structure, there is a free text field to enter a useful reminder!
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This will then show on their checkout screen as a reminder.

Alternative PO number

The Alternative PO setting enables an alternative PO input in the last checkout step.

Go to the EvolutionX Admin and click Store SettingsGeneral and under

Store Preferences scroll to Order Settings section. Enable the Alternative PO and and set the preferred label, for example Gasses PO. Also you can set the alternative PO to be always required.

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