Using Square for Consignment Sales

[VBBGallery]

I'd like to be able to track sales by vendor for a consignment shop.  Has anyone used Square to do this?  Maybe create a category which is a specific vendor?  

Any suggestions on how anyone has done it will be a big help.

[Spenser]

Apologies for the delay, @ML2. I moved your post to the existing thread on this topic. Check out the responses here!

[alexandriak]

Best advice is to get inventory software designed for consignmnet. 

I use this software (cloud version) http://www.ontargetsolutions.biz/?product=consignment-3-0-pro-v13-mac

Every morning I just print out a list of what items sold the prior day, enter them in as sold thru an invoice in my system and then I can print a report at the end of each month telling me what to pay the consignors. 

[donnasky2007]

I cant seem to open the messages. How does this program compare to https://www.bestconsignmentshopsoftware.com as mentioned in one of your threads? I am looking for something that will integrate with square and take care of my basic accounting needs

[LocavoreStore]

You should get familiar with Excel. Once you have your vendors setup as individual catagories within Square, you just download monthly, weekly, or daily sales reports. Then you can filter the data down to an individual vendor/catagory. I have a seperate spreadsheet with all my inventory, it's wholsale price, and it's retail price, then Excel can do complicated lookup calculations to find the wholesale price for each item, and tell me exactly how much I owe the vendor for a desired timeframe. That's essentially all a consignment program is going to do for you.

[SilverLinings]

Did you find your answer...? I'm looking for the same.

[refashionwaK]

Rose is a cloud based sytem and it communicates with square.

[Reichard318]

Please help!!!!

[Spenser]

Hi @Reichard318, I moved your post to another thread on this topic. Check out the responses here, thanks!

[paigecm2525]

I am really wanting to keep square as my POS system however I have a vintage store in which 90% off our inventory is from consignors. I need a way to log all of the consignors inventory, track their sales, and potentially do exchanges for other merchandise. I am currently hand writing it all and the labor for this porces is killng me. Anyone out there able to pull this off? I tried calling supoort line but they had no answers for me.

Thanks, Paige

[LocavoreStore]

90% of our shop used to be consignment. It's more like 30% nowadays. Tracking consignment sales are the bane of our existence. In short, it's no small task. I can only tell you how we have done it, I'm sure other people do it other ways (I'm sure some of them are better). To start... I do not really keep track of inventory. 90% of our sales are for grocery items, whose quantities fluctuate on an hourly basis, and whose units are sold by weight (not individually)... Inventory tracking??? I'm not there. 

At any rate,
I created a spreadsheet where I input any new item/product... There are some crazy formulas that look at the item name, vendor ID, wholesale price and retail price, then generates a numerical 12 digit code (which I use as the SKU). Now I have my barcode for the item which contains all of the information I need to extrapolate who's item sold, and how much I owe them...At the end of the week, I'll download a transaction report from Square and paste it into a spreadsheet that then deconstructs that SKU into all the information that I need (ie. Date, Vendor Name, Item Name, Wholesale price, Retail Price, and my store's profit margin). There is another sheet which selects only the transactions for a specified vendor for a specified date range and creates a pdf which is emailed to said, vendor.

It sounds kinda simple, but really, it's more complicated than I could ever coherently explain in a few paragraphs. I've tweaked it here and there over the years making the whole process more simple and faster to use, but it's definitely still a process, with a lot of room for error. But it has saved me miles of work compared to the way we started out doing it.

You might start by assigning the item category as your store vendors... That way when you download a sales report, you can filter it down to category and you're part way there. I would definitely get away from paper, and start using spreadsheets to track data.

[Kpay]

@alexandriak - do you have anything to add here? @paigecm2525 you can check out more details about @alexandriak's store in this thread. 

@LocavoreStore thanks for your response, always interesting to hear what your workflow is like, especially for our product team to better understand what you need. 👍

[alexandriak]

I feel your pain. I'm 95% consignment. I use a software created for consignment stores to track payouts and what not. I make it work with Square and it's nice to print a report out each month that already did all the work for you. 

This software is really affordable and you can make it work with square. If you talk to Vaughn (software creator) let him know I sent you. http://www.ontargetsolutions.biz/?s=consignment

[plaidwalleye]

@alexandriak when you say make it work with Square does that mean that you can upload the sales information from the Square POS to this software package?  I looked at the page you gave and it looks very much like what we need but I do not want to be manually (double entering) the sales.

[alexandriak]

 You can but I no longer use that software since the developer was having some health issues. I use ricochet now and just recreate my entire days sales as one big sale.

[Altered-Decor]

@alexandriak Did you switch your payment processing when you switched to Ricochet. I am not understanding your use of Square with Ricochet?

[alexandriak]

No I didn't. I still use Square as my POS system. When I enter new items into ricochet I export the new items into a CSV file, and then upload that into square. Every morning I just go to ricochet then and ring up all of the items from the prior day into a giant receipt so it marks them all as sold. Probably not the best way, but until Square starts to integrate with some of these systems it's what I do. 

I'll never switch after hearing so many horror stories from people who don't use Square. I think almost daily I hear about terrible customer service, extra or hidden fees, etc from other companies. 

[scb]

I have a question regarding this. I am looking to be a vendor at a consignment shop. I currently use shopify for my sales but can move my inventory and POS to square which is what the consignment shop uses. My issue is, my online shop will still be attached to my inventory. How can i keep track of it with the consignment shop and still have access to my inventory through square for not overselling. 

[katieand]

Hi @scb - There's currently no way to sync inventory across Square and Shopify so you'd probably have to track it manually. Does anyone on this thread have a better way of doing this? 

[Slsilvas]

We are in the same boat, are there any updates regarding consignment stores using the square to track vendor sales? 

[alexandriak]

I would highly recommend having a specific software to track your consigned items and use square to process your credit card sales. 

[RetailLover]

This is what we do.  We currently use ReSale World for our consignment and POS processing and then switch to square for payment entry.  It’s fairly simple yet do wish they ontergrated as I love the reporting my POS comp has and the low fees Square has for CC payments