A consignment unit is a customer-owned unit that the dealership has been authorised to sell on the owner's behalf. This article explains how to set up a consignment unit in Blackpurl and walk through the full process of selling it, including accounting integration behaviour and reporting options.
What Is a Consignment Unit
A consignment unit is a Customer Owned Unit (COU) whose owner has agreed to let the dealership sell it on their behalf. The dealership and the owner agree on a payout figure — the amount payable to the owner once the unit sells.
Key point: the dealership never owns the unit at any stage. Consignment units do not enter stock inventory or affect unit inventory valuation. They are tracked separately using the Customer Owned Unit record in Blackpurl.
Before You Start
Before marking a unit as consignment, confirm the following prerequisites are in place.
Customer and Unit Records
Both the customer and the Customer Owned Unit must already exist in Blackpurl:
If the customer is not yet in Blackpurl, add them first. See How to Create / Add a New Customer (no longer available).
If the Customer Owned Unit is not yet on the customer record, add it before continuing. See Add a Customer Owned Unit.
Accounting Integration Setup
If your dealership uses accounting integration, a Consignment Clearing control account must be assigned a General Ledger before you begin. This is a clearing account only — it should return to zero after transactions are processed.
If you don't already have a suitable clearing account, create a new General Ledger in your accounting package called BP Consignment Clearing (Other Current Liability), then resync your Chart of Accounts before assigning it to the Consignment Clearing control account in Blackpurl.
Scenario
The steps below use the following example: Jaxon Price has a unit he wants the dealership to sell on consignment. The agreed payout figure is $10,000 — this is the amount Jaxon Price will receive once the unit sells.
Part 1: Mark the Unit as Consignment
1. Navigate to the Customer Owned Unit record for the relevant unit and click Edit.
2. On the Edit Customer Owned Unit screen, locate the Consignment field and toggle it on to mark the unit as consignment.
3. Once the toggle is enabled, complete the additional fields that appear:
Suggested Price — the price the dealership would like to sell the unit for.
Agreed Price — the amount agreed to be paid to the owner when the unit sells.
Category — the accounting category to use (relevant for accounting integration).
4. Click Save to apply the changes.
The Customer Owned Unit record will now show that the unit is on consignment, along with all the consignment details.
Part 2: Sell the Consignment Unit
1. Create or open a Customer Order and add a Unit Deal. When searching for the unit, the consignment unit will appear in results and will be labelled as consignment.
2. Select the consignment unit. Note the following on the Unit Deal:
The Base Unit Price defaults to the Suggested Price set on the Customer Owned Unit record.
The unit is identified by a COU number (Customer Owned Unit number), not a stock number — because consignment units never enter stock inventory.
3. Finalise the Unit Deal as normal.
While the Customer Order Unit Deal is active, the Customer Owned Unit record will display the relevant Customer Order (CO) number as a reference.
Accounting Integration Behaviour
When a Customer Order Unit Deal containing a consignment unit is invoiced, Blackpurl automatically generates a Credit Memo in your accounting package. The Credit Memo behaviour works as follows:
The Credit Memo is created under the consignment owner's name in the accounting package.
The Credit Memo amount equals the Agreed Payout figure set on the Customer Owned Unit record.
You apply the Credit Memo as payment to the owner when required.
Blackpurl uses the Consignment Clearing Account configured under Accounting Integration > Control Accounts for these transactions. Because it is a clearing account, the balance should return to zero after each transaction is processed.
Reporting on Consignment Units
Consignment units can be included in Unit Inventory reports even though they never become part of stock inventory. This lets you see what consignment units are available to sell alongside your stocked inventory.
To include consignment units in a Stock Unit or Stock Valuation report:
1. Run the relevant Unit Inventory report from the Reports menu.
2. Change the filter parameters to Include Consignment.
3. Add the Consignment column to your report output to see consignment details alongside standard stock data.
