Features

End of financial year is looming for Australian consignment stores. If you dread the bookkeeping catch-up — unpicking marketplace payouts, calculating GST on consignor commissions, reconciling bank deposits with eBay statements — you’re not alone. Consignment accounting is uniquely messy. Most small business software treats every dollar the same. But in consignment, not all dollars are equal: the full sale price includes GST, while the consignor payout is a cost of sale — not taxable. ...

Running a consignment store means making hundreds of inventory decisions a month: what to price this handbag at, how long to wait before marking it down, which consignors to take more stock from, which categories to focus on. Most store owners make these decisions on gut feel. “This brand usually sells fast.” “That colour never moves.” Sometimes gut feel is right. Sometimes it costs you weeks of dead stock. A sales analytics dashboard replaces guesses with numbers. ...

If you’re listing the same item on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, Depop, and Trade Me — each one individually, typing the same description five times — you already know how much time that burns. Five to ten hours a week, depending on how many items you’re moving. Now add the cost of a double-sell: an item sells on eBay while your Facebook listing is still live. A buyer puts in an order, you have to cancel, apologise, refund. It erodes trust, and it costs time and fees. ...

If you manage ten or more consignors, you already know the monthly scramble: pulling sales data from every platform, calculating commissions, formatting individual reports, emailing each one. For a store with 15 consignors, that’s easily two to three hours of admin time every month. More if someone wants a resend or asks “how did you calculate this?” It doesn’t need to be this way. Automated consignor statements turn a full day’s work into a button click. ...