Stores handle expired inventory in different ways. Common approaches include running clearance sales, donating items, or notifying consignors to pick up their items. Some stores, however, have a policy that expired items automatically become store property at the end of an item's consignment period.
While ConsignCloud supports this approach to inventory management, our system does not automatically convert expired items into store property. Instead, the method outlined below can be used. Stores that choose this approach will need to incorporate it into their regular daily or weekly workflow.
NOTE: ConsignCloud recommends keeping inventory moving rather than stockpiling outdated or poor-performing items. Studies show that successful consignment stores keep fresh products on the shelves, giving customers a reason to return and browse new arrivals.
Making Items Store Property
In order to make items store property, users will run a Bulk Edit to change three item fields. Once these fields are changed, the item effectively belongs to the store. If you are not familiar with the basics of running a Bulk Edit, click on the button below to learn the basics!
Isolating your Items
To begin, stores need to isolate the items they want to make store property. The easiest way to do this is to just isolate all currently expired items. You can do this a few ways, but the easiest is to just click on the Expired Items button on your Dashboard. This button takes you to the Inventory Table, automatically setting a filter to only look for items which are expired. See screenshots below:
NOTE: If you have a pick-up window during which items are expired, but consignors can come pick up their items, then you will want to isolate items which have expired + the pickup period. (For example, if today is August 1 and you have a seven-day pickup window, you should set your expired filter to "is less than or equal to July 25"). This will ensure that you only edit items which are past the pick-up window. The rest of this edit is the same.
Running your Bulk Edit
Once you have isolated all the items which you need to change over to store property, click the "Actions" button in the top right hand corner to start a Bulk Edit on all items.
In order to make consignment items store property, you need to add these three edits (the fourth is optional):
Change the Inventory Type from Consignment to Retail
Change the Split to 0%
Toggle "OFF" the Expiration Date
OPTIONAL: Move all of the items to a Store Account (read below for why this is optional)
After you have added these edits, your Bulk Edit will look similar to this:
What Each Edit Does
Each line of this Bulk Edit does something slightly different—and it's important to understand what you are doing to your inventory (especially down the road so you can pull accurate reports, etc.)
Inventory Type
The Inventory Type edit changes the item from a Consignment item (an item with a split, owned by an account and sold by your store), to a Retail item (an item with no split, which is owned and sold by your store). Retail items are owned by your store and have no cost associated with them—no account is credited, no one gets any money from a Retail Item sale except the store.
This edit is the singular most important part of this Bulk Edit.
Split
The Split edit changes the Split from the previous percentage to 0%. This means that the store gets 100% of the sale.
In the future, this step of the edit will be superfluous—as Retail items have a 0% split anyways. This edit just ensures that the item has the expected behavior in ConsignCloud.
Expires
The Expires edit removes the expiration date on the item, causing it to disappear from your list of expired items.
Some stores may not want to remove the expiration date, but instead move it to a day far in the future—at which point they may choose to donate or toss the item.
In order to remove the expiration date, simply toggle "OFF" the Expiration Toggle. While you will still see a date on the right, this date is inactive if the toggle is off.
Account (OPTIONAL)
The Account edit moves all items into a Store Account (which you will need to set up) for easy tracking of all store items. The reason this edit is optional and superfluous is because ConsignCloud considers all Retail Items to be store property. If you want to isolate all your store's items, you can put them in a Store Account, but you can also just sort your items by "Inventory Type = Retail".
One reason it could be helpful to not add items to a Store Account is because you want to be able to see who an item used to belong to. Once an item switches accounts, you cannot see who it previously belonged to. For this reason, it can be helpful to just keep the items associated with the old consignor account. While on paper the item is associated with the old Account, everything related to the transaction will be correct based upon the other fields edited in this Bulk Edit.
Another way of saying this is that even if an item's account is set to Johnny, if the Inventory Type is Retail, Johnny will get $0 from the sale of that item.
What if I use the Consignor Portal? Will my consignors see the Retail items in their portal?
If you use the Consignor Portal add-on, ConsignCloud suggests also adding the fourth "Account" edit and moving items to a store account. If an item is linked to an account, that account can see the item and the corresponding details in the Consignor Portal. The Consignor Portal does not currently distinguish between Inventory Types in the visibility settings of the portal. In short, your consignors will be able to see the Retail items even if they are associated with their account. For stores that do not want consignors to be able to see their former items in the portal, the fourth optional edit would be a required step.