Does Shopify do consignment?

What Shopify already does for a consignment shop

Most of what a consignment shop needs from a store, Shopify already has. Consigned items are ordinary products, so you list, photograph and sell them the same way as anything else.

• One inventory for your online store and Shopify POS, so an item sold at the counter disappears from the website.
• Products with a quantity of one, which sell out and stop showing when they're gone.
• Variants for sizes and colours, each with its own SKU and barcode.
• A Vendor field on every product, which many shops use for the consignor's name or code.
• A Total sales by vendor report that adds up sales by that field.
• Discounts, refunds and gift cards, online and on POS.

What Shopify doesn't do

Shopify treats every sale as the shop's money. Nothing in it knows that part of a sale belongs to someone else, so these jobs fall to you:

• Applying each consignor's split, such as 40% to the consignor and 60% to the shop.
• Working out the split from what the customer actually paid, after discounts.
• Holding money back until your return window has passed.
• Taking a refund back from a consignor you've already paid.
• Keeping a record of each payout and what it covered.
• Ending agreements, marking items down as they age and handing back what didn't sell.
• Showing consignors their own items, sales and balance.

Shopify Payments also pays every sale into your bank account. It can't split a payment between you and a consignor, so you always pay consignors yourself.

Three ways to run consignment on Shopify

1. Use the Vendor field and a spreadsheet. Put the consignor in the Vendor field, export your sales each month and work out payouts in a sheet. It costs nothing, and it works while you have a handful of consignors.
2. Add a consignment app inside Shopify. The app links products to consignors, splits each sale as it happens and keeps balances and payouts, while Shopify stays your store and point of sale.
3. Run a separate consignment system connected to Shopify. Some consignment point-of-sale systems sync items and sales with a Shopify store. They do more, but you work in two systems, and they usually cost more.

Setting up consignment in Shopify with Consignment Hub

Consignment Hub is the second approach: an app that runs inside your Shopify admin. Setting it up takes an afternoon.

1. Install the app and set your defaults in Settings: the consignor's share, the return window before a sale can be paid, and how long agreements last.
2. Add your consignors, or import them from a CSV with what you already owe each one as an opening balance.
3. Create products for a consignor with Quick add, or link products you already sell, in bulk from the Shopify product list.
4. Sell as usual. Each sale, online or on POS, is split by what the customer paid, and Home shows who is ready to be paid.

Questions

Keep reading

• Consignment spreadsheet
• Consignment on Shopify POS
• Shop types