DHES

I run a small mummy-and-baby store where we sell cloth diapers and nursing bras and do prenatal classes and yoga and mum-and-baby groups. We've been using DHPOS for 2 years now, since we opened, and we are VERY happy with it. I have a question though.

We do not give refunds for returned goods, but rather exhange or give a store credit. We've been processing these transactions though POS in a haphazard way, re-inventing the wheel every time the issue comes up. We usually do a return, do NOT process the amount through the credit card terminal, and then deduct the return amount from the next sale. But this means that the POS statement and the credit/debit terminal statements don't match at the end of the day.

Do those of you out there using DHPOS have any good ways of doing this?

What I would love to be able to do, is as I ring up a sale, enter the returned item as a negative amount.

Dale, If I sent you a cheque in Canadian dollars, would you be able to cash it? I would love to make a donation to your cause.

Thanks,

Eva

Here's a thought......I borrow this from our good friends at the Goodwill. Issue a "credit memo".....works like this. Let's say I bring back a <insert item here>. You ring up the refund through your normal method and cash the order out. Take my reciept and stamp/write "Credit Memo" across it. Then you hand me the reciept. It's then my responibility to keep up with it, and treat it as cash. When I come to purchase <insert new item here> with my credit memo. You ring it up, and use the total from my credit memo as cash. If I loose the memo, it's not your fault....just like if you were to refund me cash and I loose it.

If you're a track-a-holic you can even create a form for tracking the issue and return of credit memo's in Excel. The headers might look something like this:

Date | Transaction # | Amount | Associate | Date redeemed | Associate

With plenty of lines after so you can keep a log of your memo's. That way you can track when it was issued, and who issued it, then when it was returned and who accepted it back. (but isn't truely necessary)

Yeah, it would throw your cash report off slightly....but you don't give cash refunds so at worst all you'd do is throw off your cash total slightly.....easier to fix than your credit/debit total not matching. Just take your "Cash in Register" and add the "Cash Refunds" back into it. If nothing else it sounds like you just need one common method used by all for handling refunds.

-Ryan

We don't accept pure returns either, but will do "even" exchanges for customers for a couple weeks after the sale. We manage it like this:

1. Return the item to inventory through the "Return" function in POS, but change the price to "zero" before subtotal and closing the transaction.

2. "Purchase" a new item (whatever they are exchanging it for) and also change the price on this to zero as well.

3. The old and new receipts are stapled together and kept for updating in our accounting software later.

4. we print a duplicate "zero value" receipt for the customer, which is a tip-off for the staff that should this product come back as well, that it has already been exchanged for once and not to honor it a second time. (I can be really petty, but jeez, make up your mind, ya know?"

for better or worse, that's what we do.