Introduction

Sending a purchase order to your Chinese supplier is a nerve-racking step because in this step an importer needs to spend thousands of dollars. If the purchase order is not well prepared, you may end up not getting the product as expected or have to dispute with the supplier to get your money back. Therefore, the purchase order should not have loopholes, or it will cause huge losses. To prevent it from happening, what should be checked before sending the purchase order to your supplier? You can get the answer from this article.

What Is Purchase Order?

A purchase order, or PO, is a document that a buyer sends to a supplier for a legally valid purchase. A purchase order should outline the quantity, specifications and other requirements of the product the buyer wants to purchase. The purchase order is both proof of the transaction and a basis for judging subsequent disputes. If you want to know more information about purchase order, you can refer to this article: https://sinoinspection.com/things-you-must-know-about-proforma-invoice-and-purchase-order-when-importing-from-china/

Tips for Sending Purchase Order to Your Supplier

For the first product, you may need to place two purchase orders . One order is for the customized tool and the other order is for the product. Following, I will give you some tips respectively when you send the two purchase orders to your supplier.

Tooling Purchase Order

If you want to buy customized products from your supplier which requires a specific tool designed specifically for your product, then your supplier will ask you to send a purchase order for this customized tool. When sending a tooling purchase order, please keep the following tips in mind.

Payment Term

In most cases, when the supplier designs a customized tool especially for your product, they would require you to prepay for it. Should you agree with it? Never do that. The most you could agree with is to pay 50% down to get the tooling started . After the production sample is approved by you, you can pay them the remaining money. In general, the supplier will need to modify the tool several times to meet your requirements. But if you have paid your supplier in full in advance, you have no room to negotiate with the supplier. After a few months, what should you do if your supplier still can’t make a satisfactory sample and has no patience to deal with you? It is very likely that you will have to bear all the losses on this order and will need to change suppliers because it is clear that this supplier is not capable of producing the products you want. Thus, never make a full payment ahead.

Ownership

You paid for this tool, thus you should own the tool. In no condition,the supplier can share your tool to produce other people’s products. You need to clearly specify your ownership of the tool in your tooling purchase order.

Product Purchase Order

When sending your product purchase order, you need to consider the following aspects.

IP Protection

The most important thing is to protect your own design. You have put a lot of effort into the design of your custom product, so be sure to protect yourself from IP theft. You should sign a non-disclosure agreement with your supplier before sending the purchase order. Of course, the safest way to protect your Intellectual property is to register the patent or trademark in the manufacturing country and your target markets.

Product Specification

Many quality issues arise from misunderstanding, and a well written product specification could clearly explain the final product you want to your manufacturer. By the time you’re ready to send a purchase order, you may have received many versions of the product depending on how many changes you’ve made to the sample product you received from the very beginning. The final product specification should be attached and accompanied with your purchase order. This is the standard the supplier is going to produce against. If the product quality doesn’t meet your specification, this is your reference point. However, it will irresponsible of you if you send a purchase order without clear specification. Want to know how to make a clear product specification, please refer to this article: https://sinoinspection.com/import-from-china-tutorial-01-why-and-how-to-write-a-product-specification/

Physical Sample/ Golden Sample

In addition to product specification, if you have a physical sample, also can be called as golden sample, which is both approved by you and your supplier, you can keep one sample in your side and one deplicate sample in your supplier, both are signed with date and your supplier’s and your singantures. When you want to conduct product quality inspection, you can send the sample to the third-party agent or ask them to follow the golden sample from your supplier. In fact, a physical sample is the most strict and clear criterion for product quality inspection as will as a better guarantee that you can receive the products as expected . If possible, try to keep a psychical sample with your purchase order.

Summary

There are many other terms and conditions need to be specified on the purchase order, such as late delivery penalty, failed inspection solution and so on. You can add these terms to your purchase order based on your own requirements. What I have mentioned above are the most important and unignorable points, you’d better keep the mentioned tips in mind. If you still have problems with purchasing orders, you can contact us for help.