One of the more complicated pieces of managing a resale store is juggling account balances. Accepting and selling inventory can both trigger a lot of additional overhead — Buy Outright stores juggle account balances for suppliers, and consignment stores owe consignors a cut of nearly every item they sell. In an average store, all of this work adds up to dozens of hours a month without the help of software.

Every account has a balance, which can be found on the left side of their Account Detail screen just below the account information. ConsignCloud automatically adjusts balances based off of the activity in your store.

When a Consignment item sells, ConsignCloud looks at the Split assigned to the item and adds the right amount to the account balance based on the item's price and any surcharges or inclusive taxes. In contrast, when a Buy Outright items is entered into inventory, ConsignCloud credits its Cost to the account, while Retail items don't affect the account balance at all.

Often times, you will want to manually add or subtract some money from an account's balance on a case-by-case basis.

Balance adjustments can be used for antique stores and collectives looking to charge rent, or other cases ConsignCloud doesn't have built-in. They can also be used for special situations, like reimbursing accounts for items which are lost or sold at the wrong split.

Accounts may be settled one at a time from their detail page. To do that, just hit the Settle Account button, which can be found on the left side of the screen just above the account balance.

If you pay out balances as of a certain date, if for example you cut checks on the 15th for all items sold in the previous month, select the Payout Date for the correct day, and the Payout Amount will adjust automatically. This field defaults to today, so if you'd like to pay out the entire balance and bring the account to $0, just leave this field alone.

Next select the Payout Type — permitted options can be configured in the Policy section of your store's settings. if you chose to pay out by check, you may also optionally include a check number. If you've configured check printing, you'll also be given the option to print out checks. ConsignCloud will automatically generate a payout receipt for the settlement.

If you'd like to automatically pay out your consignors via bank transfer or digital check, please check out our integration with Checkbook!

You can save time by settling balances in bulk. There are fewer options, however — for instance, you cannot record check numbers. To pay out balances in bulk:

Sometimes, mistakes are made. Whether an item was sold with the wrong split, an incorrect adjustment was made, or an account was settled prematurely, it's important to be able to correct these mistakes to ensure smooth communication with your consignors.

With certain limitations, ConsignCloud allows you to delete, restore, and edit account balance entries from the account's detail page. To do that, click on the edit icon at the right-hand side of the balance entry:

This will open up a dialog where you can backdate the entry, edit its amount, title, or memo, and delete/restore it using the menu popover at the top-right.

This feature is meant to be used sparingly, in most cases, ConsignCloud will do the right thing when populating account balances.