How to Track Commissions in an Art Gallery

DistrictArts · ‎01-13-2018

We are a small start-up art gallery. Participating artists agree to a 65 (artist)/35 (gallery) split on sales. I've seen discussions about employee commissions but not this particular situation. There are non-Square POS solutions that handle this but I would prefer to stay with Square as we have used it for our own art sales for years. Are there any apps that permit commission tracking from within the POS? (Artists are not employees and they are not contractors.)

(Also, any progress on getting items assigned to multiple categories? e.g. - A given work assigned to Artist XYZ and Painting)

rsklar · ‎02-02-2018

How many different artists do you have or, for that matter, how many categories.

You might think about using categories for the type of art and locations for the artist?

DistrictArts · ‎02-02-2018

Thanks for the reply. The number of artists exhibiting at any one time might be 10-15 but there might be a roster of 25-30 artists that have been seleced to exhibit at some point. The number of categories will be about 10.

As noted in the original question, it would be fantastic to be able to assign an item to multiple categories but there doesn't seem to be much traction in that regard. I think it was first brought up a couple ofyears ago.

I think Square is losing out by not dealing with the consignment marketplace (galleries, thrift shops, antique stores etc.) I'm surprised Shopkeep has lept ahead of Square on this one.

rsklar · ‎02-02-2018

I agree. Square tends to fix only what they think people need. The one thing square lacks is actual input, at the development stage and testing, by actual business owners. Nearly none of their employees have any actual business experience and it shows when you try to discuss these nuances with them. They also have no mechanism for letting people know what they are working on, reported concerns and status etc. We just bindly believe that the concerns are actually given to the teams that work on these fixes.

Ever notice how not a single idea that has been presented on this forum has ever been followed up with an implementation despite their promises to do so?

Google -> Shopkeep -> hmmm

Bonnie · ‎12-01-2020

I agree with this. I am involved with two non-profits that have art shows and this would be helpful if we could assign multiple categories (artist & product type/medium) and also track the commission paid to the artist. Square has paid attention to standard retail and not consignment/commission type sales.

germars · ‎01-09-2020

Did you figure out how to do this? Or how did you work this out? A local coffee shop sells a few artists' works but currently doesn't take any commission. I wouldn't be adverse to them taking some, but they aren't sure about how to calculate it in square. They currently buy a few items as wholesale, but if they have more artists this isn't really their area of expertise and they aren't a gallery so can't have lots of stock on hand.

DistrictArts · ‎01-09-2020

@germars I ended up using ROSE by Consignor Connect. This is a 3rd party Square app written primarily for the consignment shop market. It works well enough for our gallery but there are some frustrations. It won't let you duplicate items that are identical except for one feature or set some defaults for things that never change. It's a subscription app. Info here: https://www.consignorconnect.com/

germars · ‎12-02-2020

Thank you @DistrictArts . I don't know why, but I just got notified about your post today. But i will check out that plugin. If enough of us request these features, either company may think it's worth developing something. And what a drag to not have the ability to copy an item.

RS_Artspace · ‎04-14-2023

Hello Districtarts, I am about to start an art gallery and searching for a POS solution that would allow not only create an inventory but also add gallery commissions to the artwork prices. I was wondering about your experience with Square and Rose. Would you still recommend Rose? Your reply and advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

DistrictArts · ‎04-14-2023

We've been using Rose for over four years. While it's not perfect, it has made our lives much easier.

We currently have 35 artists under contract. In any given month, 15-20 of them will sell and therefore need a check at the end of the month. Gallery commission rate is entered as part of inventory creation (in our gallery, commission percent varies by artist and Rose easily accommodates that.). Rose tracks who gets a payout and how much. You can write checks from within Rose but since we use Quickbooks, we write checks in that platform.

Overall, it has worked well. Annoyances - 1. Can't duplicate items (two paintings, same media, same artist, same price, same size, only difference is the title. Have to enter them in full individually. 2. We split credit card processing fees with the artist at the commission rate. We have to manually adjust the payout for that. 3. We have only one location. Every payout requires that you specify the location of the sales. Can't set a default.

We are willing to put up with the annoyances because it does a great job tracking sales, commissions, inventory, and payout. The owner (Michael) is very easy to work with and help out if there are issues.