FAQ

1. How does Consignify work?

You assign a consignor to products. When a product with an associated consignor sells, Consignify tracks the order line item and its lifecycle:

• Unfulfilled — not eligible for payout.
• Pending — fulfilled but still within the holding period and not yet eligible.
• Eligible — holding period passed and the item can be included in a payout.
• Unpaid — included in an unpaid payout that hasn't been marked as paid yet.
• Paid — once included in a payout and marked as paid, the line item is marked as paid.
• Orders prior to the chosen tracking start date are considered settled and are not eligible for payouts.

Consignify computes the commission due to each consignor in real time. You can record a payout at any time. See the payout guide for the steps.

2. How are returns handled?

Before a sale is included in a saved payout, Consignify adjusts commission when Shopify reduces the item’s remaining quantity after a return or refund. A fully returned item no longer earns commission. Changes follow item quantities, rather than the exact cash refunded, so a partial-value refund does not necessarily reduce commission by the same percentage.

A saved payout keeps the quantities and amounts recorded when it was created. Later returns or refunds do not automatically recover money from the consignor or change that payout. Review any agreed correction yourself, for example as an adjustment on a later payout.

3. How are discounts handled?

By default, commission is calculated on the net sale price (after discounts). You can elect to have commission calculated based on the listed price (the price you have set for the product variant -- not the "compare at" price) by selecting the option in your shop settings.

Discounts can be applied to an overall order and to individual line-items. Line-item discounts fully apply to that line; order-level discounts are apportioned proportionately across items by Shopify.

4. What happens if I change the consignor for a product?

Each sale stores its consignor. The Sale attribution setting decides what happens when you reassign a product. With Follow the product (the default), its sales that aren't in a payout move to the new consignor. With Fixed at time of sale, each sale keeps the consignor it had when it was sold, even if the product is later reassigned or deleted. A sale in a payout always stays with that payout's consignor.

To change one sale's consignor, open the menu at the end of its row on the Sales page and choose Change consignor. You can also choose No consignor there to remove it. This works for any sale that isn't in a payout. The Sales page lists sales with a consignor by default; set the Consignor filter to No consignor or All sales to see sales without one, which can't be paid until you assign a consignor. With Follow the product, the change lasts until the product is next reassigned. Switching the setting back to Follow the product moves every sale that isn't in a payout to its product's current consignor, including sales you changed by hand. Custom sales and sales of deleted products can be given a consignor the same way. They have no product, so they keep that consignor, even when you switch back to Follow the product.

If a product legitimately needs separate accounting for different consignors, duplicate the product and assign each duplicate to the relevant consignor.

5. What happens if I change the commission for a product?

Unpaid commissions are calculated using your current commission policy. If your policy depends on cost and a variant is missing Shopify Cost per item, Consignify falls back to the standard percentage-of-sale calculation for that sale.

Once a payout is created (either paid or unpaid), commission is fixed for all sales in the payout, so historical amounts do not change.

6. Can I import or migrate my products into Consignify?

Not directly. Consignify products are Shopify products: every product Consignify tracks must exist in your Shopify store, and Consignify links it to a consignor. Consignify doesn’t import products from a file or another system.

To move products from another system, import them into Shopify first. Shopify’s help on importing products explains its CSV format, and apps in the Shopify App Store can import or migrate products from other platforms. Once the products are in Shopify, link them to consignors, for example with a product assignment CSV.