In this month's newsletter, we're going over the new Consignment features coming in ThunderPOS 22.11.1

Consignment items are items that you are selling on behalf of the owner, and that you agree to pay a commission to. The key difference between this and a normal item is that you don't ever have a cost on these items - the commission is considered a selling expense, instead. As such, these items are not added to the value of your inventory.

You'll need a unique ID for each different consignor you want to add to the system, as well as the first and last name of the contact person for that consignor (who may just be that individual, or may be a company). You can optionally collect additional information about the consignor, as shown above. You can also set whether by default items from this consignor give a fixed amount per item or they give a percentage of the selling price. The amount or percentage is the portion that will be given to the consignor, not the portion that the store will be keeping.

The balance currently owed to the consignor based on their sales will be recorded here and can be paid out using the selected account button. You can edit the consignor by using the edit button. The stock for a consignor's items can also be managed here, either by receiving or returning them, and this is where the history may be viewed as well.

All functions other than selling the consignment items can be done from either the windows client or, for our cloud users, from the ThunderPOS.Net backoffice site. Pictured above, for instance, is the backoffice version of the payout and adjustments screen. From here, you can record the payouts you've given and otherwise manage your consignors' balances.

Within items, to mark that an item is consignment, check the consignment item box. A consignment item has 0 costs and cannot be traded in, and will not have any vendors attached. In the space where vendors would otherwise appear, you'll be able to select the consignor and set whether this specific item uses a percentage based or amount based calculation. The default value from consignors will only be used to set the initial values upon selecting that consignor.

To receive or return consignment items into stock, you will utilize a different screen from the standard purchase order or vendor return screen, as these items do not have costs associated with them. Instead, you can reach the receive and return screens from consignor management, allowing you to quickly add the items to inventory without worrying about costs getting in the way.

A full suite of reports is available on consignment items, including sales by consignors, reports on the items sold for particular consignors, the history of orders and returns, the payouts and adjustments that have been done to the consignors, and everything else you need for keeping track of your consignment inventory. You can easily run both consignment and normal items now this set of features, without needing to worry about workarounds. These reports, like the other functions described here, are available in forms both through the Windows client and through ThunderPOS.Net.