A guide for consignment and resale shops

How to pay consignors in store credit on Shopify

Some consignors would rather shop than cash out, and store credit keeps the money in your shop. Shopify has store credit built in, on each customer account. This guide covers how to issue it to a consignor in plain Shopify, how a bonus for taking credit works, where they can spend it, and how to keep a record that matches what you owe. The last part shows how Still Works Consignment does the payout and the record in one step.

1. Put the offer in your agreement

Store credit works best when the consignor knows the terms before the first payout. Write down in your consignment agreement whether you offer credit, whether there is a bonus for taking it, whether credit ever expires, and whether credit can be turned back into cash later. Then ask at intake which they prefer, and note it next to their consignor number.

Ask for the email address they shop with, too. Shopify keeps store credit on a customer account, and the email is how that account is found. Credit issued to an address they never use is credit they cannot find.

2. Issue store credit in plain Shopify

Go to Customers and open the consignor's customer record. If they do not have one, choose Add customer and enter at least their name and email.
On their page, find the Store credit section and issue credit for the amount you are paying. In most admins you can also set an expiry date; leave it empty unless your agreement says credit expires.
Save. From then on, the customer's page shows their store credit balance.

Where they can spend it matters. Store credit can be used at Shopify POS, and online when the customer signs in with Shopify's newer customer accounts. If your store still uses the legacy customer accounts, they cannot spend it on your website. You can check which one you have under Settings, then Customer accounts.

Check Shopify's current terms for your plan before you make credit the default. On some stores, the part of an order paid with store credit carries a Shopify transaction fee.

3. How a bonus works

Many shops give a little extra when a consignor takes credit instead of cash, because the money is spent in the shop. If you do this, pick a single bonus percent, put it in the agreement, and give it to everyone, so no one wonders why a friend got more.

The bonus is the part people get wrong in their records. Issue the payout and the bonus together as one credit in Shopify if you like, but write them down as two amounts. The payout comes off what you owe the consignor. The bonus does not, because it was never owed. If you take the bonus off the balance too, the consignor ends up short on their next statement and you spend a payout day explaining why.

4. Keep a record that matches

Shopify knows how much credit you issued. It does not know what you owed, so the record of the payout still lives in your payout sheet. For each store credit payout, add one row with:

the date and the consignor number;
the amount that comes off their balance;
the bonus, in its own column;
"store credit" as how they were paid.

Once a month, compare the credit you issued in Shopify with the store credit rows on your sheet. If you issued credit by mistake, take it off in Shopify and add a correction row that says why. Do not edit the old row; the history should always explain the balance.

5. Honest limits

Plain Shopify never connects the credit to a consignor balance. That link is your sheet, kept by hand.
If the consignor shops under a second email, the credit sits on the account they do not use.
Unspent credit stays on the customer account until it is used or expires. Give your accountant the store credit totals along with cash and checks, and let them decide how to treat it.

The same steps in Still Works Consignment

In the app, open the consignor's page and go to Pay out. The amount starts at what they are owed, and the app will not pay more than that. Under How, pick Store credit. The app adds the credit in Shopify to the consignor's customer account, found by their email. If no customer has that email, the app makes one, with a note saying which consignor it belongs to. The consignor needs an email on their page first.

The bonus is set once in Settings, as the store credit bonus percent (from 0 to 50, and 0 means none). It is added on top of the payout and is not taken off the balance. The payout list shows both, like the amount plus the bonus.

If Shopify refuses the credit, nothing is paid and the amount is still owed. If Shopify does not answer clearly, the payout is held as waiting. After a few minutes, look at their store credit in Shopify, then press It is there: mark done or It is not there: undo.

Once it goes through, the consignor gets a receipt email with what they were paid, the bonus, where to spend the credit, what is still owed, and a link to their own page. A payout recorded by mistake can be voided: the amount is owed again and it leaves the year-end totals, while the credit stays in Shopify until you take it off there. The year-end spreadsheet in Settings lists store credit and its bonus in their own columns. The app is free for up to 15 active consignors. It is on the Shopify App Store.

Where to go from here

The Still Works Consignment page has the plain description of what the app does and does not do. If something here does not match what you see, email the studio and it gets fixed the same business day.