Skip to content
Features Pricing Marketplace Free Tools For Suppliers Help Refer & Earn Log In
Start Free Trial

Purchasing

How a purchase moves through Servora

Five documents, each filled from the one before it. Which ones you use depends on how your company is set up.

2 min read · Last reviewed 22 Aug 2026

A purchase leaves a paper trail, and each step in Servora creates the next one rather than asking you to retype it.

A five step flow: Purchase Request, Purchase Order, Delivery Order, Goods Received, Invoice — with notes about approval thresholds, short deliveries and price changes
The full chain. Most companies use a shorter version of it.

The five documents

  1. Purchase Request (PR) — what an outlet says it needs. Raised by a chef or a manager.
  2. Purchase Order (PO) — what the supplier is actually told to send, at agreed prices.
  3. Delivery Order (DO) — what is on the van. Often the supplier's own paperwork.
  4. Goods Received Note (GRN) — what actually arrived, in what condition. This is the one that matters.
  5. Invoice — what you are charged, checked against the GRN.

You probably do not need all five

Under Settings → Procurement your company decides how much of the chain to use:

  • Require PR approval — a request cannot become an order until an approver signs it.
  • Require PO approval — an order cannot be sent until an approver signs it.
  • Auto-generate DO — sending a PO creates the delivery order for you.
  • Direct supplier order — a supplier can send a delivery with no PO behind it, for the sort of buying that happens over the phone.
  • Ordering mode — each outlet orders for itself, or a Central Purchasing Unit consolidates and distributes.

A small single-outlet operation might use only PO and GRN. A group with a central purchasing unit uses all five.

Why the GRN is the important one

The GRN is where reality enters the system. It sets stock on hand, it sets what you actually paid, and it is what the supplier's invoice is checked against. An order that was never received changes nothing; a GRN changes your ingredient costs, and through them every recipe.

Still stuck?

Every screen in Servora has the same shape — a filter strip, a table, and the actions on the right. If a guide is missing or out of date, tell your account manager and it gets fixed in the manual, not just in an email.