How to Create Purchase Orders with AI in Business Central

Creating a purchase order in Business Central takes at least 10 clicks: navigate to Purchase Orders, click New, select the vendor, add lines, enter item numbers, quantities, prices, confirm. For teams processing 20+ POs per week, that's hours of repetitive navigation.

With an AI agent, you type one sentence and the PO is created. Here's how it works.

The traditional way: 10+ fields, 3 pages

To create a purchase order in BC today, you need to:

1. Navigate to Purchase Orders list
2. Click “New”
3. Select the vendor (search by name or number)
4. Wait for the vendor card data to populate
5. Go to the Lines section
6. Select line type (Item, G/L Account, etc.)
7. Enter item number
8. Enter quantity
9. Verify unit price
10. Repeat for each line
11. Set expected receipt date
12. Review and release

Average time: 8-15 minutes depending on the number of lines and whether you need to look up item numbers.

The AI way: one sentence

With Zentriq Agent, you type:

“Create a purchase order for 500 units of item 1001 and 200 units of item 1928-S to vendor 10000, delivery next Friday.”

The Agent:

1. Resolves the vendor — Looks up vendor 10000, confirms name and currency.
2. Resolves items — Validates item 1001 and 1928-S exist, gets descriptions and unit prices.
3. Calculates the delivery date — Converts “next Friday” to an actual date.
4. Shows you a preview — Vendor, lines, quantities, prices, total, delivery date.
5. Waits for your approval — Nothing is created until you confirm.
6. Creates the PO — One API call, PO created with all lines.

Average time: under 30 seconds.

What you can say

The AI understands natural language, so you don't need to follow a rigid syntax. Here are examples that all work:

• “Order 100 units of item 1000 from Fabrikam”
• “Create PO: vendor 20000, item 1928-S qty 50, item 1001 qty 300”
• “Purchase order for 1000 ATHENS desks from vendor Contoso”
• “I need to order 200 of the BERLIN guest chairs from our usual supplier”

The Agent matches vendor names and item descriptions even if you don't use exact numbers.

Multi-line purchase orders

You can create POs with multiple lines in a single message:

“Create a PO for vendor 10000:
- 500 x item 1001
- 200 x item 1928-S
- 100 x item 1896-S
Delivery March 28.”

The Agent creates all three lines in one PO with the specified delivery date.

Safety: approval before creation

The Agent never creates a PO without your explicit approval. Before executing, it shows:

• Vendor name and number
• Each line: item, description, quantity, unit price, line total
• PO total amount
• Expected receipt date

You review the preview and type “Yes” to confirm, or ask the Agent to modify before creating.

From PunchOut cart to PO

The AI purchase order creation also works with PunchOut cart capture. Browse a supplier website, add items to your cart, and Zentriq captures the cart data and creates a PO in BC — with real-time prices from the supplier's website.

Time savings

Getting started

PO creation is available on all paid plans. The free plan includes read access so you can test data queries before upgrading.

1. Install the Zentriq extension in BC
2. Sign in with your Microsoft account
3. Type: “Create a purchase order for...”