PO - Offline Payment | kartrisimport

17.13. PO - Offline Payment

This is a built-in payment method that can handle situations where you wish to accept orders without payment. We commonly refer to this as 'payment by PO' (purchase order); essentially a customer can check out from the site and instead of providing credit card details, you invoice them for subsequent payment (which might be by cheque, or bank transfer, or even cash).

Many companies require invoices to them include a purchase order number, so there is a field to receive this during checkout.

17.13.1. AuthorizedOnly

All payment systems have this setting, but typically it is most commonly used with the 'PO - Offline payment' system. If checked, only users who have pre-approved will see this option at checkout and hence be able to use it. This way, you can accept orders for payment later by customers who you have granted credit terms to, but new customers and others that are unapproved must make payment by credit card or another online payment system.

We would advise that even if not using the PO option on your store, you keep it set to ON but then set it as AuthorizedOnly, which will prevent the public from using it unless you specifically allow them to. This is because orders of zero value (which can occur either if some items are free, or if a coupon is used for the full value of the order) will use the PO checkout route. If you turn the PO option off, you will effectively prevent the store bypassing the payment system for zero value orders.