Fergus purchase orders and Xero bills for a plumbing and gas business

01The problem

A plumbing and gas business with a handful of vans buys most of its materials from three suppliers. Some orders are phoned in from site, some are picked up at the counter, and the invoices turn up later by email. The office enters them in Xero, and the job in Fergus only learns about some of them.

Owners usually notice it like this:

1. Materials are bought, the job is invoiced, and the supplier's invoice arrives a week later and never gets charged to anyone
2. Nobody can say which purchase order an invoice belongs to, so the supplier statement is checked by eye at month-end
3. Prices creep up on the supplier's side and the job quote does not move with them
4. Xero shows what was spent, but not which job it was spent on

In this sample, over six months (March to August 2026) there were 1,850 purchase orders and 1,920 supplier bills. 260 bills ($40,062 ex GST) had no purchase order: 96 of them were never put on a job at all ($15,482 ex GST), and 164 were put on a job after the customer invoice had already gone out ($24,579 ex GST).

02The outcome

This is what the setup does and delivers:

1. A short purchase order rule for each supplier: when a PO is required, who raises it, how it is sent, and what the supplier must quote on the invoice
2. The supplier price books loaded into Fergus, so the cost on a PO is the supplier's current price
3. Every PO raised from a job, so the materials are always tied to a job from the moment they are ordered
4. Supplier invoices matched to their PO (or "invoice to come") in Fergus, then assigned to the job and sent to Xero with the job ID in the reference
5. A weekly list of exceptions: invoices with no PO, price differences over 3%, and POs still waiting on an invoice
6. An unbilled materials report that shows job costs not yet on a customer invoice
7. A one-page routine for the vans and one for the office

03Scope

Not included: payroll, STP or BAS lodgement.

04Walkthrough

4.1 PO rules per supplier

The rules are short and written per supplier, because each one supplies and invoices differently. The exact route for each supplier is settled in the health check, depending on what each supplier offers and what Fergus supports on the business's plan.

4.2 Price book import

Each supplier's file is cleaned in a spreadsheet first (one row per product code, cost price ex GST, a sell price from a markup rule agreed in M1), then imported into Fergus as a price book from CSV, mapping each column when you upload it. A small example of the import file:

The full example, 22 rows across the three suppliers, is in price_book_import_sample.csv (sell price here is cost plus 30%).

4.3 One job from PO to Xero

Take Blocked drain, Moonee Ponds (job J6050). Every purchase is ordered from the job, so the PO, the packing slip or "invoice to come", and the supplier invoice all end up on the same job.

Materials on this job: $2,451.34 ex GST. The counter purchases at the bottom of the table are the kind of bill that, in the old process, was entered in Xero without a PO and put on a job late or not at all. Under the new rules they get a PO at the time of the sale, or are linked to one the same day and logged on the exceptions list.

The weekly routine for the office has five steps:

1. Open the reconciliation area in Fergus and match each new supplier invoice to its PO, or to the "invoice to come" created when the goods arrived
2. Check the invoice price against the PO and flag anything more than 3% different
3. Assign the invoice to the job and approve it
4. Send approved invoices to Xero (this is a deliberate step, so unchecked invoices do not reach Xero)
5. Update the exceptions list and the unbilled materials report

4.4 Six months, before the new rules

Purchase orders and bills by month:

By supplier:

What the 1,850 purchase orders were:

Of the 1,590 invoiced POs, 70 were delivered in two parts and have two bills, which is why 1,660 bills sit against 1,590 POs. 103 invoiced POs had a bill more than 3% away from the PO value, and in the old process nobody looked.

4.5 Xero settings and the tie-out

Example Xero bill from the test month: bill A-90020 from Plumbing supplier A, reference J6303, $864.81 ex GST, $86.48 GST, $951.29 total, matched to PO-7155.

4.6 A test month under the new rules (September 2026)

One month is run through the new routine before handover. The Fergus and Xero totals are compared by supplier:

All 318 bills carry a PO number. 6 were exceptions: bills where the PO had to be linked after the sale or the invoice. They are on the exceptions list with a reason, for example "counter purchase, PO raised after the sale and linked the same day". 18 bills were more than 3% away from the PO value and were reviewed. The six largest differences are shown first, then the rest as one line:

The full month, with every bill, PO number and Xero reference, is in test_month_sep_2026.csv.

4.7 Unbilled materials report

The report starts from the Fergus Cost Report exported to CSV, filtered to jobs with materials costs and no customer invoice. At 30 September 2026, 46 jobs had materials costs in the test month, and 18 of them had not yet been invoiced to the customer. The eight with the largest materials cost are shown, then the rest as one line:

The office reviews this list every Friday. Anything on it older than 14 days is chased.

05Checks

06Milestones

The fixed quote follows the US$300 health check, so the price is based on what is actually in your files. If the health check changes the plan, I re-quote before M2.

07Handover

1. A one-page PO rule for each supplier
2. Supplier price books in Fergus, with a repeatable refresh routine
3. The weekly matching routine and exceptions list
4. The unbilled materials report workbook
5. A monthly Fergus and Xero tie-out workbook
6. One-page routines for the vans and for the office
7. A recorded walkthrough
8. Prepared by Manaz Afzal

08Files

A screen from the sample workbook, then every file in the work sample. Select the image to open it full size.

fergus-xero-purchase-orders.xlsx › Summary