This article covers where samples and consignment goods typically go, how our client's sister company now records every move, what to settle about billing and returns, and which reports to ask for. It follows what software for a flooring or rug wholesaler has to handle. Facts about the two companies come from how a flooring wholesaler left 15 years of Zoho patches in one month. Anything described as typical is general practice, not a client fact.

Illustration titled Where is this piece? Five cards in a loop read Warehouse, Showroom, Designer, Customer store and Back home. A bar at the bottom reads: Every move records where, who and when.
Figure 1. A sample or consigned piece leaves the warehouse, moves between places and comes back. Each move needs a record.

Where samples and consignment goods go

Samples typically go to showroom displays, sales reps, designers, architects and trade shows. Each one is expected to come back, and many are lent out again and again.

Consignment goods are typically placed at a retailer's or customer's location and still belong to the wholesaler until they sell. The wholesaler is paid when the customer reports the sale or when the stock is counted.

For every one of these pieces, you need three answers at any time:

  • Where is it now?
  • Who moved it last, and on what date?
  • Where does it belong when it comes back?

One record per piece, with a home

In CommerceServer every piece has its own record, its own barcode and a current location. Customer consignment is one of the location types, alongside warehouse, hold and in transit. When a salesperson builds an order, a piece at a consignment location is labelled as consignment and cannot be picked for that order, so goods out with one customer are not sold to another by mistake.

At our client's sister company, a piece can also have a home: the location and display where it belongs. Lending a sample to a designer does not change its home. Returning it sends it back there.

How the sister company records a move

Staff at the sister company used to report moves in emails. Now they use one Move Inventory page:

  1. Scan or paste the barcodes. One batch can hold up to 500 pieces.
  2. Choose one destination, or choose Return Home.
  3. Choose the display, if there is one. Tick Make Home to make that display the piece's new home.
  4. Choose who physically moved the pieces from the staff list, and the date of the move. The date cannot be in the future.
  5. Add a location detail and a comment.

The page protects the record in three ways. The whole batch is saved, or none of it is. Submitting the same batch twice moves the pieces only once. If someone else changed one of the pieces after the batch was loaded, the batch is rejected and staff reload it. The system also records which user entered each move.

Illustration titled Recording a move. Four cards joined by arrows read Scan barcodes, Choose where, Who and when, and Save the batch. A bar at the bottom reads: The whole batch saves, or none of it.
Figure 2. Recording a move at the sister company. The batch is saved as a whole, or not at all.

Goods sent by a carrier get shipping information: the carrier and the tracking number. Samples are recorded only as moves, and a staff member delivering something is a move, not a shipment.

The sister company's migration came right after our client's. What was learned moving the first company became the tools for the second: the import method and the checks run before and after each load. The second migration was the easy one tells that story. Source files rarely arrive in one layout. When a file arrives in a layout the agents have not seen, Buffaly writes a new reader for it and uses it in the same session. We consider this key to how Buffaly works. Buffaly Builds Its Own Tools describes the behavior.

Billing and returns

Billing rules for samples and consignment vary by business. Typical choices:

  • A consigned piece that comes back returns to sellable stock, unless it is damaged.

Settle these before you choose software: when a consigned piece is invoiced, who confirms the sale, what happens to a damaged return and how long a sample can stay out. Then ask any vendor to show each rule working.

At the sister company, Return Home sends a piece back to its home location and display, and the piece keeps its record.

Reports to ask for

At a minimum, ask for these:

  • Every sample and consigned piece, grouped by location and by customer.
  • Pieces that have been out longer than your limit.
  • The move history of a single piece.
  • Consigned pieces that have sold but have not been invoiced.
  • Pieces that came back, and where they went.

At the sister company, each piece shows its latest move: location, display, who moved it, the date and the comments. Reports beyond that are built for each business. Our client now runs its own custom workflow, custom business rules and custom reporting, all supported in CommerceServer. It never had that in 15 years on Zoho. Every feature and report it asked for was built, plus the B2B portal.

Check your current system

Pick five samples from your showroom and three consigned pieces. For each one, ask your system:

  • Where is it right now?
  • Who moved it last, and on what date?
  • Where does it go when it comes back?
  • Could a salesperson sell it to another customer by mistake?
  • If it is consigned and has sold, has it been invoiced?

If an answer comes from someone's memory or an old email thread, that piece is not really tracked.

Show us where your samples are

CommerceServer is built, run and continually improved by one accountable team, with the improvement capacity agreed for each engagement. Tell us about your current system, or read how full service works.