📦 Supplier Intelligence, Part 3: Active Suppliers & Purchase Orders

How to Track Supplier Purchase Orders Without Turning Your Inbox Into a Filing Cabinet

In Part 1, we found suppliers. In Part 2, we worked the pipeline until they said yes.

Congratulations. You're approved.

Now the real work starts.

Because getting approved by a supplier is like getting a table at a good restaurant in Manhattan. It's nice — but you still have to order, make sure they bring what you asked for, and pay the bill.

For most Amazon wholesale sellers, purchase order tracking looks something like this:

The PO is in a spreadsheet
The confirmation is in an email thread
The invoice is in a downloads folder named "invoice (7).pdf"
The tracking number is in a text from your VA
And whether it's been paid? Let me check and get back to you.

Why Purchase Order Tracking Breaks Down as You Scale

With one or two suppliers, you can keep it all in your head. With a growing roster of active suppliers, that stops working fast.

The common failure points:

Requested isn't what you get. You ask for one quantity and value; the supplier confirms another. If you don't record both, you lose track of what's really coming.
Invoices go missing. And invoices aren't just accounting paperwork in Amazon wholesale. They matter when you need to prove where your inventory came from.
Payment status gets fuzzy. Was that order paid? Partially? Cancelled?
Shipments disappear into the void. Is it at the warehouse? On its way to Amazon? Already checked in?
Nobody knows who placed it. Especially when VAs are involved.

A New York dad keeps every receipt in a shoebox. It's not elegant, but at least he knows where the shoebox is.

Active Suppliers: Every Approved Supplier in One Place

When you mark a supplier as Approved in Supplier Leads, it lands automatically on Astro's Active Suppliers page. You can also add a supplier directly with Add Supplier.

For each active supplier, you see a summary of the relationship:

Ordering Method — Email, Supplier Website, Supplier Portal, Phone, Sales Representative, In Person, or Other
Tier — High, Medium, Low, or Unknown
No. of Orders
Total Requested Value and Total Accepted Value
Last Order Date and Last Order Value
Latest Order Status

Ordering Method and Tier can be edited directly in the table, and every supplier has a notes field for the details you'd otherwise forget.

This view is surprisingly powerful for spotting patterns. Sort by Last Order Date and you'll immediately see approved suppliers you haven't ordered from in a while — relationships that took real effort to win and may be quietly going cold.

New to the page? The built-in Quick Start guide walks you through it in five short steps.

The Supplier Order Page: Every PO, Start to Finish

Click any supplier's name and you get their dedicated order management page. At the top, summary tiles show Total Orders, Total Requested Value, Total Accepted Value, Total Units Ordered, Last Order Date, and Last Order Value.

Below that, every purchase order is tracked in detail:

Order Date and Assigned VA
Requested Value, Requested SKUs, and Requested Qty
Supplier Response Date
Accepted Value, Accepted SKUs, and Accepted Units
Ship Date, ETA, and Tracking Details
Invoice No. and the Invoice file itself
Discrepancy notes
Payment Status and Order Status

The requested vs. accepted columns deserve special attention. Seeing them side by side, order after order, tells you how reliably a supplier actually fills what you ask for — and that's critical for planning inventory and cash flow.

Track the Full Order Lifecycle — Physically and Financially

Every order moves through a clear set of statuses:

Draft Submitted
Awaiting Confirmation
Confirmed – Unpaid
Confirmed – Paid
Awaiting Shipment
Shipped to Warehouse
Arrived at Warehouse
Shipped to Amazon
Arrived at Amazon
Cancelled

Payment Status is tracked separately (Paid, Unpaid, or Cancelled), so you always know both where an order stands physically and where it stands financially.

Use the Order Status and Payment Status filters to answer questions like "what's still unpaid?" or "what's in transit to Amazon right now?" in seconds.

Invoices: Upload Once, Find Forever

Each purchase order lets you upload its invoice directly — PDF, image (PNG, JPG, JPEG), or Excel (XLS, XLSX). Once uploaded, you can preview it with zoom controls, download it, or replace it at any time.

Combined with the Invoice No. and Discrepancy fields, that means the next time you need an invoice, you're not digging through email attachments from six months ago.

And if you've ever had Amazon look at a perfectly legitimate invoice and act like it came from "some guy named Tony," you know why this matters. (We wrote about that here.)

Your Supplier Orders on the Dashboard

Supplier order activity also shows up on your Astro dashboard, with widgets for Supplier Orders Placed, Supplier Orders – Requested Value, and Supplier Orders – Accepted Value.

One thing to note: Supplier Intelligence data is company-wide. It isn't split by marketplace, so you see your supplier activity as a whole.

A Note on Keeping Your Order History Safe

Two details worth knowing:

Deleting a supplier lead doesn't touch your orders. Once a supplier is in Active Suppliers, it's an independent record. Removing it from Supplier Leads won't affect its active status or any purchase orders.
Deleting an active supplier is permanent. It removes the supplier along with all of its purchase orders, order history, and notes — and Astro warns you before it happens.

Measure twice, cut once. Every New York dad's favorite advice, usually right before he cuts it wrong anyway.

How Astro Advanced Analytics Helps You Manage Supplier Purchase Orders

Supplier Intelligence closes the loop on the entire supplier relationship — from first discovery to the moment inventory arrives at Amazon:

Supplier Map to discover suppliers by location and category (Part 1)
Supplier Leads to manage outreach, follow-ups, documents, and approvals (Part 2)
Active Suppliers to track every approved supplier and every purchase order you place

In Active Suppliers specifically, you get:

Supplier-level summaries of orders, requested and accepted values, and latest order status
Detailed PO tracking with requested vs. accepted values, SKUs, and units
Order and payment statuses tracked separately across the full lifecycle
Invoice upload and preview for every purchase order
Assigned VA, ETA, tracking details, and discrepancy notes
Filters, Customize View, and Excel export

Supplier Intelligence is available on Astro's Professional and Elite plans, and there's a tutorial video built right into the Active Suppliers page.

🚀 Explore Supplier Intelligence in Astro

Final Thought

Winning supplier approvals takes weeks of effort. Losing track of what you ordered from them takes about five minutes and one messy inbox.

When every PO, invoice, and payment lives in one place, you stop managing chaos and start managing suppliers.

Or, as a New York dad would say: you worked hard to get in the door. Don't trip on the way to the table.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

How do Amazon wholesale sellers track purchase orders with suppliers?

Record every order with its requested and accepted values, quantities, and SKUs, plus the invoice, payment status, ETA, and tracking details. Tracking order status and payment status separately shows where each order stands physically and financially. Astro's Active Suppliers gives each approved supplier a dedicated order page that holds all of this in one place.

What is the Active Suppliers page in Astro?

Active Suppliers lists every supplier you've approved in Supplier Leads or added directly. For each supplier, it shows details like ordering method, tier, number of orders, total requested and accepted values, last order date and value, and latest order status. Clicking a supplier opens their dedicated purchase order management page.

What purchase order statuses can I track in Astro?

You can track orders through Draft Submitted, Awaiting Confirmation, Confirmed – Unpaid, Confirmed – Paid, Awaiting Shipment, Shipped to Warehouse, Arrived at Warehouse, Shipped to Amazon, Arrived at Amazon, and Cancelled. Payment status is tracked separately as Paid, Unpaid, or Cancelled.

Can I upload invoices for my supplier purchase orders?

Yes. Each purchase order in Astro supports invoice uploads in PDF, PNG, JPG, JPEG, XLS, or XLSX format. You can preview invoices with zoom controls, download them, or replace them at any time, and record the invoice number and any discrepancies alongside the order.

Supplier Intelligence, Part 3: How to Track Supplier Purchase Orders Without Turning Your Inbox Into a Filing Cabinet