A guide for consignment and resale shops

How to total consignor payouts for the year

At year end, your accountant will ask what you paid each consignor. Shopify knows what sold, but most payouts happen outside it: cash from the drawer, a check, a transfer. This guide covers what to total, how to build the file from a payout sheet, where Shopify helps, and what to hand over. It does not say what to file; that is a question for your accountant. The last part shows how Still Works Consignment makes the file for you.

1. Paid is not the same as earned

What a consignor earned in a year and what you paid them in that year are different numbers. A December sale paid out in January earns in one year and is paid in the next. A refund after a payout lowers what they earned without changing what you paid.

Ask your accountant which one they want, or both, before you start. A payout counts in the year of the day you paid it, so the date on each payout row matters.

2. What the file should hold

One row per consignor, for one calendar year:

Column	What goes in it
Consignor number	The number on their tags, so two people with the same name never mix.
Name and contact	Name, email and phone. Ask your accountant what else they need from you.
Cash	The total paid in cash during the year.
Check	The total paid by check.
Store credit	The total paid as store credit, with any bonus in its own column.
Other	Transfers and anything else.
Total paid	The sum of the columns above.

Leave out payouts you recorded by mistake and reversed. Keep the reason for each reversal in your sheet, so the file and the sheet agree if anyone asks.

3. Build it from your payout sheet

If you keep one row per sale, refund and payout, as in the monthly payout guide, the year-end file is a filter and a pivot table:

Filter the sheet to payout rows dated from January 1 to December 31.
Make a pivot table with the consignor number as rows, how paid as columns, and the sum of the amount as values.
If you track a store credit bonus separately, add it as its own column.
Look up each consignor's name and contact details from your consignor list by number.
Check the totals against your bank statements, your check register, and the store credit you issued in Shopify.
Save the result as a CSV with the year in the file name, and keep it with the sheet it came from.

4. Where Shopify helps

Shopify does not record cash or check payouts to consignors, so it cannot total them. Two parts do help. Store credit you issued shows on each consignor's customer page. And for the earned side, an Orders export with line items for the year, or the sales by vendor report under Analytics, then Reports if your plan has it, shows what each consignor's items sold for, as long as the vendor field holds their number.

5. Before you hand it over

Check that every consignor number in the file has a name and current contact details.
Write down how you treated store credit and its bonus, so your accountant does not have to guess.
Note any balance still owed at year end, if your accountant asked for the earned side too.
Questions about forms, amounts or deadlines go to your accountant, with the file in hand.

The same steps in Still Works Consignment

In the app, go to Settings, then Year-end totals. Pick the year (this year or one of the two before it) and press Download. You get a spreadsheet named for the year, with one row per consignor who was paid in it, in consignor number order. The columns are consignor number, name, email, phone, cash, check, store credit, store credit bonus, other, and the total paid for the year.

Only payouts that went through count. A store credit payout still waiting on Shopify, undone, or voided as a mistake is left out. Store credit and its bonus are both counted in the total. A starting balance you brought over from a spreadsheet counts once you pay it out. The year follows your store's time zone.

The last column, at_or_over_2000, says yes or no for whether that consignor's total for the year reached $2,000. The app gives the numbers, not tax advice; ask your accountant whether that mark matters for your shop.

For what is still owed at year end, Download balances in Settings gives every consignor's number, contact details, share, what you owe them today, and how many items they have in the store. 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.