How to Build a PO Tracker in Google Sheets & Excel

At first, tracking purchase orders feels simple. A quick spreadsheet here, a few email threads there. But as order volume grows, the mental overhead quietly explodes. The good news: you can start with lightweight manual methods in Google Sheets and Excel, then gradually hand the repetitive work to an AI computer agent so the tracker runs itself.

1. Manual Tracking in Google Sheets

Google Sheets is perfect when you want a shared, always online PO tracker for a small team.

Step by step:

• Create a new sheet and add core columns: PO ID, Vendor, Item or description, Quantity, Unit cost, Total, Currency, Requester, Approver, Order date, Expected delivery, Status, Invoice number, Amount paid.
• Turn the range into a filterable table using the Data menu so you can quickly slice by vendor, status, or due date.
• Add data validation to the Status column with values like Draft, Approved, Ordered, Partially received, Received, Invoiced, Paid, Cancelled. This keeps your status language consistent.
• Use simple formulas for Total and aging. For example, multiply quantity by unit cost, and calculate days overdue by comparing expected delivery to today.
• Share the sheet with procurement, finance, and operations, giving edit access only to the people who truly need it.

Pros: real time collaboration, easy sharing with agencies or remote teammates, lightweight and cheap. Cons: easy to break formulas, no offline robustness, and still a lot of manual typing and status chasing.

2. Manual Tracking in Excel

Excel shines when your team prefers desktop speed and heavier analysis.

Step by step:

• Start from a purchase order tracking template or build a similar table structure to your Sheets version.
• Format the data as a table so you can sort and filter by status, vendor, or date.
• Use conditional formatting to highlight overdue POs in red, upcoming deliveries in yellow, and fully paid orders in gray.
• Build a simple summary sheet with pivot tables: total spend by vendor, count of open POs, average days from PO to payment.
• Save the file in a shared drive or cloud storage, and agree on ownership so only one person maintains the structure.

Pros: powerful analysis, offline use, mature features for finance workflows. Cons: version control headaches, limited real time collaboration, and still very manual updates.

3. Semi Automated Workflows With Form Inputs

Before jumping to full AI agents, you can reduce friction by standardizing how POs enter your tracker.

Ideas:

• Create a Google Form or Microsoft Form that feeds new PO requests directly into your sheet, with required fields for vendor, items, budget, and approver.
• Use lookup tables for vendors and cost centers so requesters choose from a list instead of typing free text.
• Add simple rules to flag requests above a certain amount for extra approval.

This step does not remove updates or reconciliations, but it dramatically reduces the messy, inconsistent front door of your PO process.

4. Fully Automated Tracking With a Simular AI Computer Agent

Manual systems break down once you are handling dozens or hundreds of POs a month. At that scale, the real time sink is not the spreadsheet structure; it is the endless clicking between email, supplier portals, PDFs, and your Google Sheets or Excel file.

A Simular AI computer agent changes the game by acting like a digital operations assistant that lives on your desktop and browser.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

• The agent opens your email, reads supplier confirmations and shipping notices, and identifies which PO each message belongs to.
• It jumps into your Google Sheet or Excel tracker, finds the correct row by PO number, and updates status, expected delivery dates, and tracking links.
• When invoices arrive, it records invoice numbers and amounts, flags mismatches between PO and invoice, and highlights anything over tolerance.
• On a schedule, it sweeps vendor portals, downloads CSV or PDF reports, and reconciles them back into your tracker so you have a near real time view of open orders.

Because Simular Pro is built to automate full computer workflows, you do not have to redesign your process around rigid integrations. The agent simply uses the apps you already use, from browsers to spreadsheets to shared drives, and runs the same steps a trained coordinator would run.

5. Pros and Cons: Manual vs AI Agent

Manual Google Sheets and Excel workflows are great for:

• Early stage teams with low PO volume
• Simple approval paths and a handful of vendors
• Owners who want to feel every transaction in the business

Their downsides appear as you scale:

• Human error in copy paste and status changes
• Lost emails and missed delivery slips
• Hours of month end reconciliation

A Simular AI computer agent is ideal when:

• You process many POs per week or work with many suppliers
• Your team is spread across time zones and tools
• You need reliable, transparent execution that scales without extra headcount

The tradeoff is that you invest a bit of time up front to define clear operating instructions and edge cases. In return, you get a purchase order tracker that updates itself, with every click logged and inspectable, so you can finally step out of the spreadsheet and back into running the business.