Preferred Retail Systems

FAQ: How do I handle Wholesale Transactions between other Z-coil Dealers or Stores?

The first thing to remember is that all transactions that affect your inventory or money flowing into your store need to go through POS. Trying to do this in Quickbooks (or other accounting software) is a duplication of effort and will introduce errors in your inventory.

The basic assumption is that transactions can take any of the forms of a retail customer; i.e., sale, exchange, return, etc. Furthermore, the transaction can be tendered using any tender type configured, although Store Account is suggested.

The only real difference between this and a regular transaction is that other dealers are (presumably) buying at wholesale. This is your option but appears to be the common courtesy extended to other Z-coiL stores.

Accordingly, I suggest the following steps (before you conduct dealer to dealer sales) to make this as painless as possible:

1. Customer Record: Create customer accounts for each of the Z-coil dealer with whom you expect to do business. They can be created on the fly, but at least set up a few so you can follow me through on the process. And use a naming convention that will keep them all gathered together in the customer list. I suggest setting all the dealers last name to Z-coiL and set the first name to the City, i.e. Z-coiL Tyler. When you sort by name this will help you find dealers quickly.
2. Shipping Preferences: On the shipping tab, enter any additional addresses used for shipping and select a primary address if more than one address is entered. This  address might be different that the normal store address.
3. Store Credit: On the Account Information tab, select a Revolving Account (or other type you might have set up earlier) and input a credit limit amount that you wish to extend to this dealer. Using store account for tendering these transactions is generally the simplest way to keep this all straight.
4. Customer Options: On the Customer Options tab, you will want to check the Sales Tax exempt box (don’t forget to get a tax ID number if in your home state) and set the pricing you wish to use. You can set the price level by % off retail, Price Level (A,B,C) or you can simply discount the item at the POS when checking out the items.
5. Reason Codes: Create a discount code title ZDEAL on the Database > Reason Codes dialogue using Customer Discount for the discount type.
6. Shipping Carriers: Set up two or three shipping carriers on the Database > Shipping Carriers dialogue. I suggest as a minimum, USPS, UPS, & Fedex. Take the time to calculate the shipping costs and enter them on the Shipping Carriers schedule.  You might just use the flate rate USPS Priority Mail for shipping

Now with this investment of a few minutes, you are prepared to conduct business with other Z-coil Dealers painlessly and efficiently.

When you receive a call for a shoe that you have in stock and you agree to provide it, simply conduct the sale, right then and there. Select the dealer (or add), scan in the shoe, verify price (it should auto-select to cost), add the shipping cost (more on this later), and tell them the total. If agreed, then tender the sale using Store Account and ship the item as promised.

Tendering Gotcha!

You might be wondering why I do not suggest simply taking a credit card over the phone, which I commonly observe. While you may wish to continue this practice, it is not the best course if you are really paying attention to the bottom line. Instead using store credit is the most economical way to do this. Assuming you feel the other dealers are a good credit risk.

 If you use a credit card, then you are essentially selling the shoe below cost by about 2% - 3% depending upon the terms of your Credit Card provider. Remember that your best CC rate assumes the card is presented in person at the POS and swiped through the card reader. Manual CC entries will cost you more in almost every case.

If you tender using store account, then you have the advantage of doing a month-end reconciliation, this is especially useful if you are doing multiple two way transactions with a given dealer. By using store credit, you can simply run an Accounts Receivable report at the end of the month and reconcile who owes what.

Otherwise the dealer will simply send you a check within the agreed upon time and you can then enter the check in the “Receive Payment” dialogue SHIFT-CTRL-F4.

Once again, I contend that as you expand your knowledge of RMS, you will find additional ways that it will track information, automate tasks, and provide you periodic reporting on a number of processes you have previously tracked manually. This  will be especially useful in situations where you own multiple stores.

For multiple items, or movement of larger quantities you should still choose Transfer In & Transfer Out, but for one item at a time, or for quick, on the fly movement of one or two items this will save you a good deal of time. Furthermore, it is something that your cashiers at the POS can do, Transfers In & Out can only be conducted in Manager.

CAUTION: In certain circumstances where you have made manual adjustments to your inventory, or improperly committed items to your inventory without correct cost information, you may have item costs that are lower than your actual cost. Obviously, you don’t want to sell things below cost, even if it is to another Z-coil dealer