Consignment and free-issue — stock on your shelf that is not yours
Supplier stock you pay for as you use it, and customer material you make their job from: both live on your shelf, neither is yours. Brytebuild keeps them out of your valuation, prices every consignment withdrawal at the agreed price for settlement, and fences a customer's material to their own orders.
Section 01
Stock on your shelf that is not yours
1 minute
Two everyday arrangements put someone else's stock in your warehouse. A supplier leaves a pallet of fasteners on consignment: you only pay for what you use, when you use it. A customer sends in their own hinges for the doors you are making them — free-issue (customer-supplied) material. In both cases the goods are physically here, get picked and consumed like anything else, and yet they are not yours: they must not be valued in your books, and the customer's material must never end up in someone else's job.
Brytebuild records an owner on every container — own, supplier or customer — and stamps it onto every stock movement. That one fact drives everything on this page: the valuation only counts what is yours, consuming consignment stock creates a withdrawal you owe the supplier for, and a customer's material can only be used on that customer's orders. This is the shape the established systems use (Odoo and SAP both model consignment as stock you hold but do not own, with the liability arising on consumption), and the accounting standard behind it: inventory is an asset only when the risks and rewards of ownership have passed to you.
- On an item's General tab the Total Stock figure gains chips — Own 108 · Consignment 20 · Free-issue 30 — whenever any of it is not yours. The Barcode tab shows an Owner column per container.
- The Cost & valuation tab and every stock value report count own stock only. Consignment and free-issue containers add to the quantity on the shelf, never to the value.
- MRP still sees all of it as available supply — planning cares whether the part is there to use, not whose it is.
Section 02
Bringing consignment stock in
2 minutes
Consignment starts as an ordinary purchase order with one extra choice. Under Delivery details set Stock ownership to Consignment — supplier keeps title until we use it. Line prices on a consignment order are the agreed withdrawal prices, not an amount you owe on receipt; the order and its PDF say so (BASIS: CONSIGNMENT — title remains with the supplier until withdrawal, and a footer asking the supplier to invoice withdrawals against your statement rather than the order).
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Start and receive the order | Exactly as any other purchase order. Every container the receipt creates is marked supplier-owned; the receipt line shows a Consignment · supplier-owned chip and the container carries the supplier's name in its Owner column. |
| Nothing is valued | Your stock value does not move on receipt. The goods are the supplier's; you are storing them. |
| Ownership is fixed once goods arrive | You can change Stock ownership while the order is Not Started. After Start the choice is locked, because the containers already carry it. |
| Where the price comes from | Withdrawals are priced from the supplier's agreed price for the item (the item's Suppliers tab), converted into your books currency at the day's rate if it is quoted in another currency. Keep that price current — it is what you will be invoiced. |
The same supplier can sell you some things outright and leave others on consignment. Pick the ownership on each order; mixing the two on one order is not allowed.
Section 03
Withdrawals and settlement
3 minutes
The moment a job, a delivery or a scrap entry consumes supplier-owned stock, a withdrawal is recorded: quantity, agreed unit price, lot, reason (consumed, scrapped or taken into stock) and when. The job is costed at that agreed price — so a work order using consignment fasteners carries their true cost even though you have not been invoiced yet. That is the point at which you owe the supplier, and the Consignment page is where you keep score.
| On the page | What it shows / does |
|---|---|
| Held on consignment | Per supplier and product: how much of theirs is on your shelf right now, the agreed price and what it would be worth at that price. Useful for the supplier's periodic stock check. |
| Withdrawals | Every consumption, filterable by supplier and by Not yet settled / Settled / All, with a running total in your books currency. CSV downloads the current view. |
| Settle open withdrawals | Choose the supplier, type the statement reference (yours or theirs) and press Settle. Every open withdrawal for that supplier is stamped with the reference and date, and a statement box appears with the count, total and a CSV to send them — their invoice should quote it. |
| Unpriced withdrawals | If the item has no agreed price for that supplier the withdrawal is still recorded but flagged unpriced, and settlement refuses until you set the price on the item's Suppliers tab. Nothing is silently costed at zero. |
| Take into own stock | On an item's Barcode tab a consignment container offers take into own stock. The whole lot becomes yours at the agreed price — it enters your valuation, and a taken into stock withdrawal for the full quantity appears to settle. |
Settling stamps the withdrawals and gives you the statement to reconcile against; it does not raise a bill. When the supplier's invoice arrives, record it as you do today (on the purchase order's Supplier's invoice box or in your accounts package) and check it against the statement. A withdrawal is never deleted or re-priced after the fact — if a price was wrong, fix the agreed price for next time and agree the difference with the supplier.
Section 04
Customer-supplied (free-issue) material
3 minutes
When a customer sends material in for their job, book it on their sales order: press Receive material, choose the product, enter the quantity and their lot or batch reference (up to 30 characters), and Book in. A tracked container is created that is customer-owned, linked to that sales order, at zero value. The panel then reconciles the lot for the life of the order:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Received | Everything the customer has sent in for this order, per product. |
| Used | What their work orders and deliveries have consumed — costed at nothing, so their job is not charged for their own material. |
| Returned | What you have sent back. Each lot has a return link; enter the quantity and the container is reduced with a return movement. |
| On hand · Lots | What is still on the shelf, per lot, with their reference — the number to quote when they ask what is left. |
Picking and packing enforce the fence. Scan a free-issue lot for another customer's work order or delivery and the confirmation is refused with the reason — Lot THN-WIRE-01 is Thornton Shopfitting Ltd's free-issue material and can only be used on their orders, not works order WO-2026-0006 — and nothing moves. Scan it for one of their orders and it is consumed normally. Availability behaves the same way: their material is excluded from every other customer's available to promise, and counted for theirs.
A purchase order would imply you bought it and would price it. Booking it on the order it was sent for ties the material to the customer and the job in one step, keeps it out of your valuation automatically, and gives the customer a reconciliation you can hand over when the order is complete. Once the order is completed or cancelled the panel goes read-only; anything still on hand should be returned first.
Section 05
The rules the system enforces
1 minute
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Owner is stamped on every movement | The ledger says who owned each unit when it moved, so valuation, withdrawals and audits replay from the record rather than from today's container flags. |
| Valuation counts own stock only | Consignment and free-issue quantities are on the shelf but never in the stock value, average cost or FIFO layers. |
| Consuming consignment stock costs the agreed price | The job carries the true material cost from the moment of use, and the same figure becomes the withdrawal you settle. |
| Consuming free-issue costs nothing | It was never yours; charging the customer's job for it would double-count their own material. |
| Free-issue is fenced to its customer | Picking, packing and available-to-promise all refuse it for anyone else. Mixing customers' material is the mistake that costs a relationship. |
| Purchase-order ownership locks on Start | Flipping an order after its containers exist would leave stock and paperwork disagreeing. |
This page is about other people's stock in your warehouse. The reverse — consignment sales, where your goods sit at a customer's premises and are invoiced as they use them — needs a customer-site location and is not modelled yet. Deliver and invoice as normal for now.