Bob Nicholson on thu 1 may 03
Hi Deb,
Please send me the name and contact info (and website if you have one) for
your new Guild, and I will add you to our Guild directory at
http://www.ovcag.org/guilds
Now, on to your question. We have a central-checkout sale that has run for
over 15 Years (the sale is actually much older than our guild). This system
works very well for us:
1) Each artist is assigned a unique letter code.
2) Artists are required to use Avery 3/4" round REMOVABLE stickers for
pricing. Each sticker must contain the artists code and the
price. Some
artists also put an inventory number on each sticker, but this
is optional.
3) When customers bring their purchases to the checkout, we remove the
price stickers and temporarily stick them to a pie tin. While the pieces
are being wrapped, the checker totals up the stickers from the pie tin
and handles the sale transaction. The checker also writes up a receipt
using a duplicate receipt book. Each line item includes the artists code
and the price.
4) The pie tins are collected. We have a "book" with a page for each artists
code. The stickers are pealed off the pie tin, and placed on
the appropriate
pages. The pages have a printed grid with rows and columns, so it's
easy to total up the stickers, and to cross-check the total by
adding both
horizontally and vertically.
At the end of the sales, each artist page is totalled. We double-check sales
against the duplicate receipt book. We make photocopies of the artist pages,
and give the copy to the artist along with their check. The copy not only
serves to verify the total, but is also important for people who put
inventory codes on their stickers, so they can see which pieces sold.
This system has worked very well for us.
One more bit of advice: we require all prices to be in dollar amount
($25, rather than $24.95). There are two reason for this. The price
stickers are small, and they get hard to read if you have to fit a lot on them.
Plus, inexperienced checkers make mistakes. It's easier to add up even
dollar amounts, even with a calculator.
Hope this helps - good luck with your sale.
- Bob Nicholson
Orchard Valley Ceramic Arts Guild
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