Every sale you record carries a channel: where the sale happened. Your reports use it to show how much you sell at the shop counter, at book fairs, on consignment, on your website and on each marketplace.
The channels you start with
Every shop has these ready to use:
- Point of Sale: the default for a sale rung up on the register.
- Book Fair, Library Sale, Consignment.
- Direct / Invoice and Manual / Other.
- Website, eBay, Amazon, AbeBooks, Biblio and Alibris. Website and marketplace sales get their channel automatically, so you rarely pick these by hand.
Adding your own channel
Selling at a particular fair every year, or through a partner shop? Give it its own channel, so its sales can be picked out in your reports.
On the register
- In Point of Sale (or Create Invoice), find the Channel menu in the payment panel.
- Click Add a channel underneath it, type the name (for example "Boston Book Fair") and click Add.
- The new channel is selected for this sale. Complete the sale as usual.
The channel joins your list once the sale is recorded, and the register and the Sell window offer it from then on. If you add a channel and then do not complete the sale, it is not saved.
In the Sell window
When you record a sale with Sell Item on an item's page, click the + beside the Channel menu, type the new name and record the sale. It is added to the same list.
Channel names can use letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens and underscores. Other characters (apostrophes, full stops, ampersands) are left out, so "St. Paul's Fair" is saved as "St Pauls Fair". Keep names short: the list is easiest to use when each name fits on one line.
Where channels show up
- The Sales report breaks your sales down by channel and lets you filter by one. See The Sales report.
- All Sales has a channel filter. See All Sales.
- Each receipt and invoice keeps the channel it was made with.
Changing a sale's channel later
A sale you recorded by hand can be edited on All Sales or on the item's Sales tab, channel included. The channel of a receipt or invoice is set when it is made. To rename or remove one of your channels, contact Bibliopolis support.
Marketplace sales appear in your reports once multi-channel sales is switched on under Settings › Selling Options › Sales Channels. That page holds the reporting switches; the list of channel names is managed from the register and the Sell window as described above.