We are offering a new way to do trade ins with the release of version 25.9.1, based on feedback received from our stores on a common scenario they are facing. This feature is intended to address the situation in which at the time of the transaction, you offer a customer a fixed amount for a bulk lot (such as a box of loose games or of vinyl records) with the intent to later itemize at a more convenient time rather than while the customer waits, possibly even several days later.
While there are ways to do this currently, they don’t necessarily tie the individual items back to the original trade. The new trade containers feature will allow you to do a trade, fill it out later, and then go back and associate the individual items with the original transaction. This is going to be available through both the windows client and through the web register, though as the windows client is the most common I will be showing it below.
At the register, to use this feature you’ll need to put the trade container on the transaction. You can either use the trade container button, now included on the all features template and of course addable through the register designer, or you can scan the new system item for this feature, TRADECO.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be presented with the option for the price you want to give the customer and notes that you want to record about the container. We would suggest using this to make it easier to track the specific container later, especially if this is a feature you are regularly utilizing. You may also, optionally, have these notes appear on the receipt – if you choose to do this, you’ll want to put in notes that you’re okay with the customer seeing, of course.
When you’re ready to fill in the details of the container, you can see a list of all of your open trade containers through the activities menu and then trade containers.
You can also view the closed past containers (and print labels for them) by changing the status you’re filtering by. Select the one that you want to fill and then hit edit, and you’ll be presented with a screen like the one below:
This screen works a lot like the purchase orders screen. You can add items in three ways: scanning them in the box in the top left, searching through the lookup button, or hitting import from device and bringing in a batch scanner’s data to mass import. Like with the purchase order screen, you can directly edit the quantity and cost on the grid.
In order to fill a container, the total cost of all items on the container must add up to the value you gave the customer originally. The system will not let you finalize a container until this matches, and nothing about the transaction or your inventory will be altered until the container is finalized.
Once you’ve finalized, though, the original transaction will be modified – the trade container’s value will be reduced to $0, and all of the items you’ve taken in the container will be added to the original transaction. This will cause them to show that transaction in item history. A reprint of the receipt will contain the individual items as well as a marker that there was a trade container and the date and time that it was filled. We hope you find this new feature helpful, it not, you can just continue with the process you have been using as this is just an alternate method.