Once memo or consignments arrive in our store, we are responsible for them. It can be very upsetting to customers or dealers when they have entrusted us with their goods, if they call and we don’t know what is happening with their goods. The internal confusion that is caused wastes time and money. Proper routing will prevent these upsets.
This means that the Shipping clerk MUST give the items to Inventory, NOT to the salesperson or anyone else. This means the salesperson or anyone else MAY NOT take items from Shipping. Any memo dropped off by a dealer must be routed directly to Inventory as well.
When Inventory receives the memo or consignment, he or she will let the salesperson know that the item is here to show and will price and tag the item as needed. Memo items for a specific customer will be kept in the Inventory memo box for safekeeping until ready to be shown. Inventory is to keep track of memo slips and in what time frame unsold items need to be returned, and see that they are returned on time if not sold.
The Inventory Manager will run a memos sold report every Friday morning to see what memos have sold in the last sales week that need to be paid.
Inventory will notify the dealer that the item is sold and request an invoice. Once the invoice arrives, Inventory will approve, note on the invoice that it’s for a “sold memo”, and route the invoice directly to Accounting so the invoice can be paid. If a customer consignment sells, Inventory will route a copy of the consignment slip to Accounting with written approval for payment directly to the customer.
Our return policy allows the customer to return any merchandise within 10 days, and we don’t want to be stuck with a memo that we already paid for. Note that this does not apply to Michel or House of Diamonds, since they will allow us to return memos and credit us back. Others, including HOF, shouldn’t be paid for 10 days so that we don’t lose the cash flow.
Memos and customer consignments need to be handled with care and returns and payments on sold items should be done in a timely manner (but after the 10 day return policy period) to ensure continued business with our dealers and customers.