How to track purchase orders with a Kanban board

Start with a whiteboard or a spreadsheet. Move to software when the paper stops keeping up.

The short answer

Give every purchase order one card. Put the cards in columns that match what happens next: Requested, Approved, Ordered, Received. Name one owner per card, set a time you expect each step to take, and look at the Ordered column every day. You can do all of that on a wall. QodFlow does the same with a PO number and value on each card, a timer on each stage and a history of who moved what.

The problem: orders live in too many places

A purchase order starts as an email, becomes a line in a spreadsheet, and ends as a delivery nobody remembers ordering. The questions are always the same. Was it approved? Did it go out? When is it due? Who is chasing it? If the answers sit in three inboxes, an order can be late for weeks before anyone notices.

A Kanban board fixes one thing very well: it makes the state of every order visible to everyone at once. That is all. It is not an accounting system and it does not place orders for you.

The manual method, step by step

You need a wall or whiteboard, sticky notes and a marker. Or one spreadsheet tab. It takes about 20 minutes.

Draw four columns. Requested, Approved, Ordered, Received. If your process has a payment step, add Paid. Fewer columns is better.
One card per order. Write the PO number, the supplier, the value and the date you need it. Put the owner's initials in the corner.
One owner per card. The owner is the person who chases it, not the person who asked for the goods. If a card has no owner, it is not moving.
Put every new request in Requested. Nothing starts anywhere else. This stops side deals by email.
Limit the waiting columns. Pick a number for Approved (for example 5). When it is full, nobody orders anything new until something moves. That limit is called a WIP limit; see what a WIP limit is.
Write a time budget on each column. For example: approval in 2 days, supplier confirmation in 3 days, delivery in 10 days. A card that stays longer than its budget is late.
Check the board every day for five minutes. Start from the right: what is in Ordered and past its date? Chase those first.

With a spreadsheet, use the same columns as values in a Status column and sort by status and date. It works, but the picture is harder to see.

Where the manual way breaks

Lost cards and old sheets. A sticky note falls off. Two people keep two copies of the spreadsheet.
No alert. A late order looks exactly like an on-time one until someone checks the date.
No proof. Who approved it, and when? A wall does not remember.
No live view. A colleague working from home cannot see the wall.

The same thing in QodFlow

QodFlow is a Kanban board with stages, timers and history. The steps map straight across:

Columns are stages. The Free plan allows 3 stages, Premium 6 and Diamond 9. Three (Requested, Ordered, Received) is a fine start.
A card is a job. Each card has optional fields for a PO number and a value, and you can search for an order by its PO number. The due date comes from the stage time budgets (Premium and Diamond can give one job its own deadline in days; the API and MCP can set an exact date).
One owner. Assign the job to a person. It shows as an avatar on the card.
A timer per stage. Each stage has a deadline in days. The card shows how many days are left ("5d left"), then "Due" and "Overdue", plus how many days it has been in its current stage. The Free plan uses one global deadline; per-stage deadlines are on Premium and above.
A soft limit on a stage (Premium and above) warns you when a column holds more than your limit. It never blocks a move.
A history. Open a card to see who moved it and when, and add a short note (up to 280 characters) such as "approved by Sam, budget code 4410".
A checklist of up to 20 steps on every card, for things like "quote attached" and "supplier confirmed".
Import. Bring your existing orders in from a CSV file.

On Diamond you can also share a read-only public board. The PO number and value are hidden from it unless you turn them on.

What QodFlow does not do here

It does not create or send purchase orders, read supplier invoices, match receipts or keep a budget. Keep using your accounting or purchasing tool for that. QodFlow answers the other question: where is this order right now, and is it late?

Try it

Set up the four columns above on the Free plan (3 people, 10 active jobs, no card). If you want to see how stages and timers work first, read how to organize tasks with Kanban and how to set times you can keep.

Frequently asked questions

Can I track purchase orders on paper or in a spreadsheet?

Yes, and for a handful of orders a whiteboard is enough. The method in this post works on paper, a whiteboard, sticky notes or a spreadsheet with a Status column. A board in software helps once you have more orders than you can see at a glance, or more than one person updating them.

Does QodFlow replace my accounting or purchasing system?

No. QodFlow does not create or send purchase orders, match invoices or count stock. It tracks each order as a card moving through stages, who owns it and how long it has waited.

How many stages can I have?

The Free plan allows 3 stages, Premium 6 and Diamond 9. Three stages (Requested, Ordered, Received) is enough to start.

Can I import my existing orders?

Yes. You can import jobs from a CSV file with columns for title, description, priority, PO number, value, assignee email and tags (tags need Premium). Up to 500 rows per import.