Some of our Stitch customers sell online, wholesale, retail AND consignment. Whew! That's a lot. Thankfully, consignment accounts are easily managed through Stitch. Just follow the below steps:
Create Contact
First, create a contact in Stitch for the company you are selling on consignment to.
Create Order
Next, create an order that consists of all of the products you gave to your consignment account. These products will no longer be counted toward your "Available Stock" meaning that the items will not be available for sale through another channel. (The products will still be included in "Total Stock".)
"Invoice" Sold Items
Create an invoice in the order for products when they sell. As the merchandise is sold from the consignment account, you can invoice the specific products that the retailer has sold as paid, leaving the items that haven’t sold as open in the order. You can add as many invoices as you’d like to an order.
You don’t necessarily have to give the invoice to the retailer, but it’s a best practice so they know what they’ve sold and been billed for. This is just another way to keep good records. You can see that you’ve only created an invoice for the items that have actually sold, leaving the rest on “open order.”
Now you have the ability to create a payment for the invoice you’ve created.
Now you have the ability to create a payment for the invoice you’ve created.
Repeat the invoicing process over and over until you have either sold everything or you want to close the order and start a new one.
Management
You will want to mark a consignment order complete from time to time and open a new order with your account based on what it still outstanding. This is definitely a best practice as you close out a fiscal year and want to get a true picture of where your inventory stands.
We recommend uploading your operating agreement from the consignment retailer in the files within the contact. We hear stories all the time about some consignment retailers “misplacing products” or not paying their vendors on time. These may be honest mistakes, but you should protect yourself by understanding the retailers’ policies on lost or stolen goods and payment procedures. Get some type of written document that lays out their policies. You can keep that document or operating agreement right within Stitch in the files tab of your contact.
Finally, you can see how your business is doing and where it’s going with detailed reports generated from Stitch. This will really help you stay on top of your business and focus your limited resources where it makes the most sense.
Check out our blog post on consignment to see some how-to images.