Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Our Goal Is Your Success!
Founder Girls with Goals

First, I agree 100% with the suggestions that Erin made and believe you should implement one of these ideas in the future.  However, that obviously will not help you with the past, so here goes...

If you knew what your inventory was before anything sold (say item A, B and C) and you know what you have now (only item C didn`t sell), you should be able to figure out exactly what was sold (item A and B) and thus be able to trace that back to your cost for the items sold.  You may not be able to get a gross profit per item sold, but you will be able to know your gross profit for all items sold.

Hope that helps.



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Gina L. Gwozdz, CPA
http://GLGcpa.com
http://TaxTreasures.com

If you want that level of detail as to what you`re selling, you likely won`t be able to do it with someone else selling your items in a mall. One solution, if you were selling them yourself or in a controlled store, would be to bar-code each item. Then use a scanner connected to your cash register, then to a database. Each transaction would automatically give you the item number and description.

There are trade-offs when you`re using contractors to sell your merchandise in their stores. One of them is the type of detail you`re wanting. Sale people aren`t interested in paperwork to that level without there being an incentive.

A workaround might be to take the time to group your inventory into "lots," then associate each lot with a particular outlet. So you could take 100 postcards of a smilar value, join them together in your own inventory system, and designate the entire lot to "Jackson Malls." When that lot is sold, you assign the money in your database maybe on a group distribution, an average per card.