Turn on the items table
In Account and settings, Expenses, turn on Show Items table on expense and purchase forms. Purchase orders are available on QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.
Loading Denize…
Linking a supplier bill to the right purchase order keeps the PO balance honest and the job cost on the right lines. Here are QuickBooks Online’s own steps, the rules that keep a match safe, and what to do with lines the PO never had.
Published October 15, 2026 · Reviewed October 15, 2026
Start a bill for the vendor: QuickBooks Online opens a window with that vendor's open purchase orders, and Add copies the PO's items into the bill. Pick the PO by the number printed on the invoice first, then by vendor and project. If that PO number belongs to another vendor, stop and ask. Code extra lines such as freight on their own instead of adding them to the PO.
In Account and settings, Expenses, turn on Show Items table on expense and purchase forms. Purchase orders are available on QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.
Select + Create, then Bill, and pick the vendor. QuickBooks opens a window with that vendor’s open purchase orders.
Select Add on the correct purchase order. Its items appear in the bill’s Item details.
If the vendor billed only part of the order, change the quantity or amount on each line to what was billed. Several bills can link to one PO.
QuickBooks Online closes the purchase order automatically once all of its quantities have been added to bills, expenses or checks.
Steps from Intuit’s help article on adding purchase orders to bills (Intuit’s purchase order guide, as of October 2026). Menu names can differ slightly by plan.
The PO number printed on the invoice is the best evidence of which order the supplier meant. Two POs to the same supplier on the same job can look alike; the number is what tells them apart. Denize applies the same four rules to QuickBooks purchase orders that it uses for Procore commitments:
Denize reads the PO number printed on the bill, ignores capitals, spaces and punctuation, requires at least four characters, and looks for it among the POs of the project the bill is being approved for.
Without a PO number, the vendor’s open POs on that project are offered to AP as candidates. They are never linked automatically.
With no PO number and no PO chosen, the bill posts without a PO link.
A PO number that belongs to a different vendor is flagged for AP and never linked automatically. It usually means a typo or a mix-up.
Link each invoice line to the right PO line, so its item or account, customer/job and Class carry over. Then deal with what’s left on purpose:
In Denize, extra lines such as freight or a substitution are suggested for coding and flagged for review; they are not silently added to the PO.
A 2-way match compares the invoice with the purchase order. A 3-way match adds a receiving document, such as a packing slip, to confirm the goods arrived.
Denize finds the existing QuickBooks PO from the PO number on the invoice. AP verifies the match and links invoice lines to the right PO lines, and the approved Bill posts to QuickBooks Online or Intuit Enterprise Suite with supported PO links preserved and the original document attached.
Denize matches the POs you already have. QuickBooks PO creation is available on request for teams that need it; it is not part of the standard AP plans. Read how Denize matches invoices to purchase orders, or see Denize for QuickBooks Online.
Facts about third-party products on this page come from this page, as of October 2026. Menus and plans change, so check them against your own company’s setup.
A supplier who never prints the PO number, freight nobody ordered, an order billed in three parts. We’ll show you how Denize handles each one.