PO Numbers at Checkout
Procurement teams won't pay an invoice without a purchase order number on it. Trade Account Checkout adds a PO number field to your Shopify Plus checkout — required or optional, validated against your format, saved to the order as a metafield your team and your API can read.
Install on ShopifyRequires Shopify Plus · Free plan available
Quick answer
To capture PO numbers at Shopify checkout: install Trade Account Checkout on your Shopify Plus store, add a "PO number" field with your label and placeholder, mark it required if every B2B order needs one, and set a regex pattern so invalid formats are rejected before the order is placed. The PO is saved as a pinned order metafield, the order is auto-tagged, and the value is readable via the Shopify API. Setup takes about five minutes, no theme code.
The Problem
Your buyer's accounts payable team matches every invoice to a purchase order. When your checkout has nowhere to put the PO, the matching breaks — and so does your cash flow.
In B2B, the purchase order number is how money moves. The buyer's procurement system raises a PO, your invoice quotes it back, and accounts payable matches the two before releasing payment. No PO on the invoice means the invoice sits in a queue while someone emails your customer service asking "which PO was this against?" — days or weeks of delay, multiplied across every order.
Standard Shopify checkout has no PO field. So B2B buyers improvise: they paste the PO into the address line (breaking your shipping labels), put it in order notes (where your accounting export misses it), or email it after the fact (where it gets re-keyed by hand, sometimes wrong). Each workaround pushes the error downstream to the worst possible place: payment time.
The fix is structural, not procedural: a real PO field at checkout, validated at the source. The buyer can't place the order without a well-formed PO if you require one, and the number lands in a dedicated metafield your invoicing pulls from automatically.
Three Controls
Three independent settings — combine them to match exactly how strict your order flow needs to be.
A dedicated PO number field at checkout — your label, placeholder, and helper text. The value is pinned to the order as a metafield, not buried in notes.
Make the field mandatory so no B2B order is placed without a PO — or leave it optional for stores serving both trade and retail buyers.
Enforce the format with regex — a PO- prefix, a digit count, whatever your customers' procurement systems generate — with your own error message.
At Checkout
A well-formed PO sails through. A typo is caught at the source — with your error message — instead of at invoice time.
Order information
Ordering for a business? Add your purchase order number.
PO number
PO number must start with "PO-" — e.g. PO-12345
Example configuration with a required field and a PO- prefix pattern. Label, placeholder, pattern, and error text are all yours to set.
Setup
Four steps, no developer, no theme code.
One-click install from the Shopify App Store on your Plus store. The free plan covers your first trade orders.
Label, placeholder ("e.g. PO-12345"), required or optional, and a regex pattern with your own error message.
Add a Shopify manual payment method ("Purchase order / Net 30") so buyers can order without a card — orders arrive Payment pending.
Every order carries the PO as a pinned metafield, readable via the API — straight into your invoicing or ERP flow.
Worth being precise about: Trade Account Checkout is a field-capture extension, not a payment method. Buyers pay however they normally would — card, PayPal, or a manual payment method you enable for net-terms ordering. The app's job is making sure the PO number is on the order, well-formed, in a place your systems can read.
In Shopify Admin
Pinned metafield on every order, auto-tagged for one-click filtering and export, readable via the Shopify API for ERP and accounting integrations, and ready to trigger Shopify Flow automations.
Tags — auto-applied at checkout
trade-accountMetafields — pinned, visible to your team
FAQ
What B2B merchants ask before switching on a PO field.
On Shopify Plus, install Trade Account Checkout. Label the field "PO number", set a placeholder and helper text, choose required or optional, and optionally add a regex pattern. The field appears at checkout and the value is saved to the order as a pinned metafield. No theme code needed.
Yes. A required PO number must be entered — and pass your validation pattern — before the customer can place the order. That eliminates chasing missing POs after the sale.
Yes. Set a custom regex pattern (for example a PO- prefix followed by digits) and your own error message. Input that doesn't match is rejected before the order is placed.
As an order metafield, pinned so your team sees it on every order in Shopify admin. Orders are auto-tagged at checkout for one-click filtering and export, the metafield is readable via the Shopify API, and you can trigger Shopify Flow automations on trade orders.
Yes, as a workflow: enable a Shopify manual payment method named for your terms ("Purchase order / Net 30"). The buyer selects it, enters their PO, and the order completes without a card as Payment pending. You invoice against the PO and mark the order paid when settled.
Shopify's B2B features include PO numbers in some flows, but for a validated PO field from any customer inside the standard checkout, a checkout UI extension is required. Trade Account Checkout adds that field with custom labels, required/optional control, and regex validation on any Shopify Plus store.
Yes. Checkout UI extensions that add fields inside the checkout are a Shopify Plus capability, so the app requires a Plus plan.
Install Trade Account Checkout, set your PO field and validation, and stop chasing purchase order numbers by email.
Install on Shopify