11. Consignment and dealer handling
- Owner
- You (solo operation)
- Trigger
- A stone is physically given to a dealer, show, or third party to sell on your behalf, rather than sold directly.
- Approval
- You approve any consignment arrangement and its terms before the stone leaves your custody.
Needs input — reporting cadence, maximum consignment period before a stone must be returned or the arrangement renewed, and the payment deadline after a consignment sale have no default yet: there are no active dealer relationships to base one on. Set these before the first consignment, not during it.
Procedure
- Record who holds each consigned stone: name/business, contact, date it left your custody, and the agreed terms (commission %, minimum acceptable price).
- Reserve the stone for the duration of the consignment by logging a Reserved movement — and, once Shopify is live, also set its Shopify inventory to 0 — so it can't also sell online. Log the physical handover too (Sent to jeweller names the dealer in the "Jeweller / lab / vendor" field), with the tracking reference, so custody is recorded and not just the reservation.
- Define and record reporting cadence, maximum consignment period, and payment deadline for this specific arrangement (see note above).
- On a consignment sale, follow Procedure 6 (sale outside Shopify) to record the sale itself, noting the dealer as the channel and the commission owed.
- On return of an unsold consigned stone, log Returned from jeweller and then Reservation released (and set Shopify inventory to 1, once live) only after confirming the physical stone is back and undamaged — the same inspection principle as Procedure 7.
Required evidence
- Consignment record: holder, date, terms.
- Dealer sale or return confirmation.