Simple is the right ambition for most organisations buying purchase order software, and it is worth being precise about which simplifications are safe. Dropping sourcing, contracts, catalogues and supplier portals costs most organisations nothing. Dropping line-level receipt tracking looks like a similar simplification and quietly removes the reason to have the system at all.
Safe to drop
Sourcing and tendering, contract management, punch-out catalogues, supplier portals and spend analytics. These matter where somebody's job is buying and are configuration burdens everywhere else. A product without them is not a lesser product for a small finance team; it is a better-fitting one.
Not safe to drop
Line-level quantities for ordered, received and invoiced, and revisions kept with their dates. Without these, partial deliveries cannot be tracked, the accrual has to be rebuilt by hand and invoices cannot be matched properly. A product missing them is a document generator, which is a legitimate thing to buy but should be bought knowingly.
The other thing simple should not mean
No export. Simple products sometimes make it hard to get data out, on the reasonable-sounding basis that small customers do not need it. Small customers change systems more often than large ones, because they outgrow them, so the export question deserves the same attention here as anywhere.
Questions people ask about simple purchase order software
How do we test line-level receipting?
Order ten of something, receive four, then invoice for four, and see whether the order shows six outstanding. It takes five minutes in a trial and settles the question.
Is simpler cheaper to run?
Usually, because configuration and training scale with surface area. That is often a larger saving than the licence difference.
Will we outgrow it?
Possibly, and that is fine if your data comes out cleanly. Design for leaving and the decision is low risk.