How cash and store credit work
Cash and store credit are first-class payment methods in ResaleOS — same status as card and invoice. You can take them alone, split them with anything else, refund to either, and (for store credit) issue them three different ways: as a manual adjustment, as a refund, or as a consignor payout with an optional bonus. This guide walks through how the balances live on the customer record, how they flow through a sale, and where they show up afterwards on receipts, the consignor portal, and reports.
Three balances, one account
Every customer and every consignor in ResaleOS lives on the same record — an Account. The same person can drop off items to consign and buy from your shelf the next day, all on one profile. That account carries three independent running balances:
Money you owe the account from items they sold. Paid out via check, ACH, Zelle, cash — or converted to store credit.
A spendable wallet they can apply at POS. Funded by adjustments, refunds, or store-credit payouts.
What they owe you from partially-paid or pending sales. Settled with cash, card, or by deducting from their consignor balance.
Keeping these separate is what lets a long-time consignor earn $80, get $88 of store credit (with a 10% bonus), spend $40 of it on a piece of furniture, owe $30 on a layaway, and still have a clean ledger you can read at a glance.
Taking cash
Cash is one of the five payment-method tiles on the POS checkout pad. There's no integration to set up — type the amount the buyer hands you, hit Complete sale, and ResaleOS records it in the same payment ledger as everything else. Cash also works as a recorded method on consignor payouts, on consignor collections (paying down what they owe you), and on refunds.
Split it with anything else
The payment-method selector accepts as many tenders as you want on a single sale. Cash plus card, cash plus store credit, cash plus invoice for a layaway — every combination works. ResaleOS caps each input at the remaining amount due, so you can't accidentally overshoot.
Each tender lands on the sale as its own row, so the receipt, the activity log, and your payment-type report all show the breakdown — not a lumped total.
A few things cash does not do today
- No drawer pop or change calculator. You enter the amount due — change owed back to the customer is yours to count out. Most stores find a $1 tip jar and a cheat-sheet on the wall is faster than tap-tap-tap on a screen.
- No expected-vs-actual cash count. The End of Day report tells you how much cash should be in the till — reconciliation is on you.
- Cash refunds are physical.When the original tender was cash, the refund button records a refund row in the ledger and tells you to hand the money back at the counter — there's no bank transfer to reverse.
How store credit works
Store credit is a per-account wallet — a single dollar balance on the customer's record. There are three ways money lands in it, and one way it leaves: getting spent on a sale. Every movement (in or out) is logged with a description, a balance-after snapshot, and a link back to the sale, payout, or staff member that triggered it. The activity is visible to staff on the account page and to the customer on the consignor portal.
Issue it manually — make-good gestures, gift cards, opening balances
From any account's sidebar (Accounts → pick a customer, or the customer card at POS), open Adjust store credit. Pick Credit or Debit, type a dollar amount, and optionally drop in a reason. The new-balance preview updates live, and on save the change posts to the ledger as Store credit issued (or removed) with your reason.
Common uses: a $10 make-good after a damage complaint, a $50 holiday gift card, transferring an opening balance from your old POS during migration, or correcting a typo on a previous credit. Debits can't take the balance below zero — the modal blocks the submit and the API returns a clear error if you try.
Issue it from a refund — keep the dollars in your store
On any sale's Payments card, click Refund. The refund modal asks how to return the money: Refund to original payment (Stripe / Square card auto-refund, or cash returned at the counter) or Issue store credit. Pick the second option, restock the items if you want, and the customer's wallet goes up by the refund amount the moment you confirm — no cash movement, no card-network round-trip.
The sale needs to have a customer attached for store-credit refunds to work — otherwise there's no wallet to top up, and the API blocks the refund with a clear message. For sales without a customer (most walk-up POS transactions), attach a customer on the sale page first, then issue the refund as credit.
Pay out a consignor in store credit (with an optional bonus)
Open a consignor's account → Record payout → set Method to Store Credit. A bonus percentage field appears: enter (say) 10%, and ResaleOS issues the consignor 110% of their balance as wallet credit they have to spend in your store. Their consignor balance drops by the original amount, their store-credit balance rises by amount + bonus. You've effectively turned a $100 ACH payout into $110 of in-store sales.
Bonus % is bounded between 0 and 100, applies only when method is store credit, and is shown on the consignor's payout history (and email receipt, if they have one) as a line item.
Apply it at POS — automatically capped at the wallet balance
When a customer with a positive store-credit balance is attached to a sale, the Store Credit tile appears on the payment-method pad with their available balance shown. Type how much to apply — the field caps at min(wallet balance, remaining due) — and split the rest across cash, card, or invoice. The server re-checks the balance with a database guard when the sale posts, so two cashiers can't spend the same $20 twice.
The wallet only shows when there's a customer attached — guest checkout has no balance to spend. If you sell a lot of store credit you might consider making the customer search the first step of every checkout; the consignor portal also lets self-checkout customers apply their own credit on storefront orders.
Receipts, portal & reports
- Sale receipt (PDF or thermal). Each tender prints as its own row in the payment summary — Store Credit · $15.00 alongside Payment · $20.00 for the cash leg. Refunded sales show a separate Refunded block with the method.
- Sale detail page. The Payments card lists every payment and refund row, with the issuing method and timestamp. If anything is unpaid, an amber Balance unpaid banner offers Collect or Send invoice.
- Consignor portal. Customers with a login see two separate cards on their dashboard — Balance (consignor proceeds) and Store credit (the wallet). The store-credit card only appears when the balance is greater than zero.
- Reports → Payment Types. Cash and store credit each get their own row alongside Card, Invoice and Manual; split-tender sales contribute to multiple rows. The same breakdown drives the End-of-Day modal and its CSV export.
- Activity log on Home. Events fire for Store credit issued, Store credit applied, store-credit payouts, and adjustments — so you can see who did what without digging into a customer's timeline.
Common workflows
Returns, kept in-store
Refund as store credit instead of to the original card. The dollars stay with you, the customer is more likely to come back, and there's no Stripe/Square refund fee.
Make-good gestures
A damage complaint, a missed pickup, a friend you want to comp — issue $10–$50 from the Adjust store credit modal in two clicks. Reason field doubles as your audit trail.
Consignor reinvestment
Pay consignors in store credit instead of cash with a 5% or 10% bonus. They get more buying power, you keep the money in the store.
Loyalty programs
Roll your own — top up store credit on each $X spent, on birthdays, after a referral. Every adjustment writes a ledger row tied to the staff member who issued it.
Migration opening balances
When you move from another POS, seed each customer's existing store credit with a one-time credit adjustment — same line item the migration runs use.
Gift cards
Sell a $50 gift card as a non-inventory line item, then issue $50 of store credit to the recipient's account. Two clicks, no separate gift-card system.
Frequently asked
Does store credit expire?
No — there's no automatic expiry. If you want to sunset old balances, debit them with the Adjust store credit modal and a clear reason; the audit log keeps the history.
Can a balance go negative?
Manual debits and POS spends are blocked from going below zero. The one edge case to watch for: cancelling a store-credit payout reverses the full credit even if the customer already spent some — handle that with a manual credit if needed.
Can guests use store credit?
No — store credit lives on a customer record, so the sale needs a customer attached for the Store Credit tile to appear. Walk-up cash + card sales still work fine without one.
Are there fees on store credit?
None. It's an internal ledger movement — no Stripe fee, no Square fee, no per-transaction charge from ResaleOS. That's a real margin difference vs. refunding $100 to a card and absorbing the 2.9%.
How is it reported?
The Reports → Payment Types breakdown shows store-credit redemptions as their own bucket. Issuance (refunds, adjustments, store-credit payouts) appears in the payouts & activity report so you can see net store credit issued vs. spent in any window.
What if a refund was originally store credit?
Process it as Issue store credit— the wallet goes back up by the refund amount. Refund-to-original on a store-credit sale doesn't auto-credit the wallet, because store_creditisn't a refundable payment processor.
Does the customer get notified?
Store-credit payouts can fire a payout-receipt email if the consignor has one and the setting is on. Manual adjustments and refund-to-credit don't auto-email — tell the customer, or rely on them seeing it next time they log into the portal.
How does it interact with consignor balance?
Consignor balance and store credit are two separate wallets on the same account. The only bridge is Record payout → Method: Store Credit, which decrements one and increments the other. Spending store credit at POS does not touch consignor balance.
Can I do change-due math at POS?
Not yet — type the cash you actually collected and the sale closes. Most stores keep a denomination chart at the register. If this is a hard blocker for you, drop it on the roadmap board.
One ledger, two wallets, zero spreadsheets
On most consignment systems, store credit is a separate gift-card module bolted onto the POS — different ledger, different report, no link to consignor proceeds. ResaleOS unifies it: the same Account record holds proceeds, store credit, and what the customer owes you, so a refund-to-credit on Tuesday and a payout-as-credit on Friday show up in one tidy timeline. That's why the bonus-payout play actually works — there's no double-entry mess, just one wallet that goes up.
Issue your first store credit in under a minute
Spin up a free trial, attach a customer, and try a refund-to-credit and a bonus payout on a test sale. Or book a 15-minute call and we'll walk through your specific layaway / loyalty / consignor-payout workflow.