Purchase order (PO)
A formal document issued by a buyer committing to purchase specified goods or services at agreed quantities and prices, serving as the reference for later validation.
In more detail
A purchase order is the buyer's formal, documented commitment to buy: what is being purchased, how much, at what price, and on what terms. Issuing a PO turns an informal intent to buy into a record both sides can reference, and it becomes the baseline against which the eventual delivery and invoice are checked.
The PO's value as a control shows up later, at invoice time. When the vendor bills, the invoice is matched against the PO and the receipt to confirm the business is paying for what it actually ordered and received, at the agreed price. Without a PO, there is no clean reference to validate the bill against.
Where this shows up at Ceven
Ceven can generate and route purchase orders as part of a procurement workflow and later use them as the reference for validating invoices. The approval to commit spend sits behind a human-approval gate, and the PO and its downstream matching are recorded in the audit trail, while the customer's finance system remains the system of record.