Wholesale buyers email purchase orders as PDF or spreadsheet attachments. Shopify’s documented B2B path is to create draft orders manually from those emails. An app like POinbox reads the emailed or uploaded PO, matches the customer and catalog, flags uncertain lines and price differences, and opens a draft order for review. You cannot forward a PO into Shopify drafts with nothing in between.
How emailed POs show up
After a trade show, the inbox is the order book. Sales forwards a thread, and the buyer’s system has attached a PDF, an Excel sheet, a Word file, or a CSV with a useless name. Work from that file, not from the one-line note above it.
A few orders arrive as plain text in the email body, with no attachment. POinbox reads that body as the purchase order, in HTML or plain text. You can upload an HTML or TXT file the same way. When a PO file is already attached, the lines come from the file and the message is saved with the order as notes.
Shopify’s default: a manual draft from the email
Open the email, open Drafts, and rebuild the order. Shopify Help points B2B teams at that for phone and email orders, and it works. The cost is the switching: the PDF on one screen, admin on the other, and after a show the backlog sits with whoever is still entering orders at the end of the day.
Draft orders are still the right destination. The email is not a checkout. See Shopify draft orders for B2B purchase orders.
What to capture from every emailed PO
- Who is buying. Customer, B2B company, and company location. Bill-to and ship-to are not always the same record. Companies and locations on drafts.
- Lines. SKU or the buyer’s code, quantity, and the variant you actually sell. Match SKUs from the purchase order.
- Their PO number. Accounts payable will not search your Shopify order name. PO number on the draft.
- Prices. The PDF price and your catalog price drift apart. Flag the mismatch instead of copying the PDF.
Processing with POinbox
Forward the purchase order to the address in Settings, or upload the file. Review the matched company and location, fix uncertain lines, decide price flags, then create the draft.
The PDF steps are in turn a PDF purchase order into a draft. POinbox starts free (5 successful drafts). Paid plans from $29/mo. Run one of your own emails before you trust a busy week to it. The product description is on the POinbox page.
That address is yours. Mail sent to it is read as a purchase order, the same as a file you upload from the desktop. When sales forwards a buyer’s thread, the order is tied to the original sender, so the match follows the account and not the person who hit forward.
Email PO vs asking the buyer for a CSV
A clean CSV imports well. Many buyers will not produce one. Their system prints a PDF, and “can you export our template?” is a favor you spend political capital on. Keep CSV import for partners who already comply. Keep a file-to-draft path for everyone else. PDF and email vs CSV and POinbox vs Matrixify.
Email vs a portal or EDI
A portal is better when buyers will log in. EDI is better when a partner mandates it. Neither removes the accounts that still email a PDF. You can run those projects and still accept email. Portal vs emailed POs and EDI vs emailed PDFs.
What the inbox actually contains
A wholesale inbox is a stack of files with a one-line instruction on top. Sales forwards a thread: “use the second one.” The first file is last month’s PO. The second is the revision. The third is a packing photo.
Upload the file you mean, and that document is the one in review. Forward the whole email to your shop’s address, and each structured attachment, whether a PDF, a spreadsheet, or a Word file, opens as its own PO. A repeated PO number is flagged, so the revision sits beside the earlier one.
An email with quantities in the body and no attachment is still read. The message is extracted as HTML or plain text. When a PO file is attached, the lines come from that file and the message stays on the order as notes.
After it lands
Check four things before the draft exists. The company and location, especially when the email signature is a person and the PDF header is a warehouse. The lines that did not match a SKU. Any unit price that disagrees with the catalog. The buyer’s PO number, which the draft carries from the file when one was extracted.
Then create the draft and leave payment to Shopify. A busy afternoon is a run of forwards and uploads, each one sitting as its own PO until you review it.