It's the last Saturday of the month, the shop is closed, and you're still at the counter with the shoebox. A month of little price tags sits in it, each one with a maker's initials and a split penciled on the back. Next to it is your sales report, which knows exactly what sold and for how much, and has no idea whose work any of it was.
So you start matching. Tag to sale, figure the 60/40 or the 70/30, tally each maker's share, write out who gets paid what. Four hours if nothing's wrong, and a whole Saturday when a tag's gone missing or two potters both make speckled mugs and you honestly can't tell whose one sold.
The reconciling isn't slow because the math is hard. It's slow because the one fact you need, which maker gets this sale, never got captured when the piece rang up. Catch that at the register and the shoebox quietly disappears.
Capture the maker the moment it rings up
Every piece you take on consignment belongs to someone and carries a split. The whole trick is tying those two facts to the item before it ever sells, not reconstructing them after.
Give each maker a short code and put it on every tag, ideally as a barcode your point-of-sale system (the software your register runs on) can scan. When the piece sells, the sale line already carries the artist and the split. Nothing to look up later, nothing to remember.
Most POS systems let you do this with a vendor or supplier field on each product. If yours does, you're halfway there already. A drawer and a calculator can't, and that's the real reason to move to something that tracks it.
What you want recorded on every item:
- The maker, by a code that's unique even when two of them share a first name.
- The split, so the system knows your share and theirs.
- The piece itself, with a price and a short description, so a maker can see exactly which one sold.
Let the split live on the item, not in your head
Consignment splits are rarely one number. One maker's at 60/40, the newer one you took a chance on is at 70/30, the established name who brings her own crowd talked you into 50/50. Keeping all that in your head is exactly how a payout comes out wrong.
Store the split on each maker's record, once. From then on every piece they bring in inherits it, and the math runs the same way whether they sold one thing this month or thirty. When you renegotiate, you change the one number and next month reflects it.
The statement that builds itself
Once the maker and the split ride along with each sale, the month-end report stops being a chore and becomes a button. For each artist you can pull a plain statement that lists every piece that sold, the date, the price it fetched, their percentage, and what they're owed, with a total at the bottom.
No art-speak, no mystery deductions. A maker should be able to read it on their phone in the parking lot and know you counted right. That plain clarity is most of what keeps them handing you their best work instead of carting it to the co-op two towns over.
On your side, the same data gives you a single payout list: every maker with a balance this month, the amount, and how they like to get paid. That's the sheet you actually work from on payout day.
Getting makers paid right and on time
Pick a payout date and hold it. "Paid by the 10th for the month before" is a promise makers can plan around, and money they can plan around is a big part of why they trust a shop with their inventory.
- Run the statements and the payout list on the 1st.
- Pay by your set date, the same way each time (check, direct deposit, whatever you both like).
- Send each maker their statement with the payment, not after. The number and the reason for it should arrive together.
Say you already send a "your piece sold" note the day something goes, which is a good habit and a different job from this one. The monthly statement is the settle-up that follows. One tells them the news, the other proves you got the money part right.
Where you still need a human
Automating the tally doesn't mean nobody looks. A few things still need your eye every month.
- Returns and damage. If a sold piece comes back, the maker's balance has to come back with it. Catch these before you pay, not after.
- Discounts. If you ran a sale and marked a piece down, decide up front whether the maker shares the discount or you eat it, and tell them which. Don't let the software settle it quietly.
- Cash sales and the farmers-market table. Anything that rings up somewhere other than your main register still has to find its way onto the right maker's line. Build a habit for that, or it becomes next month's missing tag.
A computer is good at the arithmetic and relentless about doing it the same way twice. It's not good at judgment calls. Keep those for yourself.
Worth doing this week
- Give every current maker a unique code and write it on this month's tags, even if you're still reconciling by hand for now.
- Write each maker's split down in one place, so it's a record and not a memory.
- Check whether your register software has a vendor or supplier field per item, and if it does, start filling it in.
- Set a payout date and tell your makers what it is.
- Next month, pull one maker's statement straight from the system and see how close it lands. Fix the gap, then do the rest.
Get the maker's name onto the sale at the register, and the Saturday you used to lose to the shoebox turns into a ten-minute print job. If you want a hand wiring your point-of-sale to your makers and their statements, that's the kind of back-office plumbing we set up for Massachusetts shops at MA AI Agency.