QuickBooks Desktop Keeps the Requested Date on Open PO Lines
Open purchase orders in QuickBooks Desktop keep the date you asked for. Here is why supplier-confirmed dates never land in the record, and what to do.
An open purchase order in QuickBooks Desktop keeps the date you asked for, not the date the supplier promised. We see the pattern often in Desktop Enterprise files with multi-line orders. A supplier confirms part of an order, moves a line to a later month, and never mentions another line at all. The record still shows the original expected date on every open line.
The purchase order holds only the request
In Desktop, the expected date you enter serves the order as a whole. The software has no way to know the supplier moved anything, because the reply arrives as email and email does not touch the company file. Lines do not carry their own promised dates. So when a supplier confirms a different date for each of three lines, the answer has nowhere structured to live.
The request and the confirmation are two different facts. One sits in the company file; the other sits in a mailbox.
Where does the stale date distort the books?
The expected date quietly drives period cutoff assumptions. If a line slips into next month but the record still says this month, the accrual lands in the wrong period. Inventory valuation leans on the same assumption: a half-shipped line with no date for the balance leaves the number uncertain, and the cash forecast inherits the error.
Worst of all is the line the supplier never mentioned. On the open purchase orders report, late and forgotten look identical. Month-end reconciliation is where that difference finally surfaces.
How do you keep confirmed dates in the record?
Close the gap with a routine rather than a new system. Run the Open Purchase Orders report on the same day each week. Match every supplier reply against it line by line, and record what came back the same day. An answer is only useful once it sits where finance can see it.
Editing the expected date is the direct fix, though it overwrites the request. If your edition supports custom transaction fields, a promised-date field lets both facts coexist. Some teams write the confirmed date into the line description instead. Receive partial shipments against the order so a line stays open only for its balance. Attach the supplier’s reply to the transaction as well, so the confirmation survives staff changes.
The pass to run before the next close
Take your ten oldest open purchase orders and compare each expected date with the supplier’s most recent reply. Record every difference the same day. That single pass tells you how wide the gap is in your own file, and it usually finds at least one line nobody has chased in weeks.