I sometimes sell items outright, but frequently place them on consignment with my customers. I would love to have a second sales invoice template for these consignment “sales”, but there is no option for a second template.
Is there a work-around?
Might I be going about this the wrong way? I’ve created a “consignment inventory” account under assets, that is subtracted from when I issue sales receipts once I’m paid for them.
Consignment is not an actual sale. It’s just moving stock from one location to another so no invoice should be issued. If you issue invoice for consignments, it will affect your accounts receivable and basically all your financial statements. That’s bad.
What you really need is ability to track inventory among multiple warehouses where “warehouses” are also customer retail stores. You invoice them for what they actually sell, rather than what stock you send them. Correct?
Thank you for that, lubos, I’m sure that makes sense, but meanwhile I do want to
“invoice” them for products received, regardless of whether they ultimately sell, just so that this is kept track of (for both parties). I later send them a second invoice marked “paid” once items do sell and I receive payment.
I don’t see a mechanism for setting up “warehouses” within Manager (again, I’m using the current desktop), so how would I be able to accomplish what you suggest, please?
Warehouses haven’t been implemented yet but it’s coming, especially to handle these consignments.
Back to sales invoice templates. This feature has been removed for new businesses. The new way to handle invoice customizations is through View Templates under Settings. You can have one for regular sales and one for consignments (even though I don’t agree with this).
See: Guides | Manager
You will need to know a little bit of HTML to make adjustments to default template but if it’s something simple that you need, just ask what specific aspect you need to change on default template and I’ll tell you what line in HTML to edit.
Okay, the template approach actually seems to work just fine for my purposes. I’ll keep an eye out for your warehouse implementation and then switch to that more proper approach (assuming it’s relatively easy to select customers as “warehouses”.)
Thanks so much for this, lubos. You rock, man!
@Metalsmith, please understand that if you send a sales invoice to a consignee, your Accounts Receivable and income account to which you allocate the non-existent sale will both be wrong. That means your balance sheet and profit & loss statement will also be in error. You will be violating a multitude of accounting principles. You will have trouble defending yourself in any audit. And if the items you sell on consignment are taxable in your jurisdiction, you will be creating false tax records. I urge you strongly not to do this.
Let me give you an analogy. Suppose your company made money from sending tow trucks out onto nearby highways looking for broken-down cars to tow. You would not issue anyone an invoice just because your income-generating asset was out in public where it could be seen by someone potentially needing a tow. Likewise, you should not invoice anyone because your consigned items are out in public where they could be seen by someone potentially needing to buy them.
In the case of the tow truck, you would send an invoice after you towed someone’s car, that is, after the economic activity took place. In the case of a consignment, you should not send the invoice until the economic activity has taken place, that is, after someone has purchased the item from the consignee. In actual fact, most consignment sales and the associated receipts are initiated by the consignee, not the consignor (you).
The fact that your consignment item is at someone else’s location is financially no different than advertising it for sale in a newspaper, magazine, or online. Placing the item with the consignee is a marketing technique, not a financial transaction.
Thank you for that further elucidation, “Tut”!
I guess I thought that the sales wouldn’t be recorded as such until I actually entered the receipt of payment, but not so, I see. So this does potentially cause problems.
It would be nice if there were a way to use Manager to simply email my customers, with my template/logo, etc., to send them acknowledgements of inventory placed with them, but I don’t believe this is possible.
So I guess I’ll have to go outside the system to do this 
Thank you!
Yeah you are right, it’s not possible now. It will be possible once warehousing module is in Manager.