Swap deals

A customer walks into your phone shop with a used phone and wants a newer one. You look the old one over, agree what it's worth, and she pays the difference. That's a swap, and phone and gadget shops do it every day.

On paper it's two things at once, a sale and a purchase, and it's easy to record only one of them. The new phone leaves your stock and the old one never enters it. Or the sales book shows the full price when you only took part of it in money.

A swap deal in Tabs records both sides on one order: what went out, what came in, the credit you gave for it, and what the customer still owes.

The words Tabs uses

• Going out is what you're selling, from your own stock.
• Coming in is what the customer is handing over. Each item is a trade-in.
• Trade-in credit is what you agreed to knock off for it. Tabs treats it as a payment, and marks it as "not money", so your cash never looks bigger than it is.
• Balance due is the sale total less the credit and anything else paid.

Starting a swap

Go to Orders and press New swap deal, beside Create order. The page has two tabs.

Going out is the same catalogue as the till. Tap, search or scan the items the customer is taking.

Coming in has a slip for each item the customer is handing over. Fill in:

Press Another item coming in if the customer is trading more than one thing.

The ticket on the right keeps the sum in front of you: the sale total, the trade-in credit, and the balance due, with a bar showing how much of the sale the credit covers.

A swap always needs a saved customer, picked or added on the ticket the same way as on an ordinary order. There's no walk-in on a swap, because you're taking an item off somebody and should know who.

A worked example

Mrs Okafor wants a phone you sell at ₦185,000. She's trading in her old one. You check it: the screen is fine, the battery is tired, there's a scratch on the back. You agree ₦60,000.

Going out: the new phone, ₦185,000. Coming in: one slip. What it is: "Tecno Camon 19, 128GB". Condition: "Screen good, battery weak, scratch on back". IMEI typed in. Credit agreed: ₦60,000. Goes into stock as: your "Used Tecno Camon 19" product. Three photos.

The ticket reads: sale total ₦185,000, trade-in credit ₦60,000, balance due ₦125,000. You confirm the swap, she pays ₦125,000 by transfer, you record the payment and hand her the new phone.

Save a draft, or confirm

A swap takes longer than a sale. The customer may go to the ATM, or want to think about your offer.

Save draft keeps everything you've entered. A draft moves no stock and records no payment. It gets a number, shows on the Orders page marked Draft, and you can come back to it with Carry on with the swap. Once it's saved, the store it's sold from can't be changed.

Review and confirm is the moment the deal happens. Tabs shows both sides once more, with the four figures apart: the sale total, the trade-in credit, any other payments, and the balance due. When you confirm, all of this happens together:

• the items going out come off your stock
• each item coming in is added to the stock of the product you chose
• the credit is recorded against the order as a payment that is not money
• the order becomes an ordinary open order, with a balance due

Because it happens in one step, you can't end up with half a swap: stock gone and no trade-in, or a credit with nothing received.

Before you can confirm, every slip must say what it goes into stock as. If the product doesn't exist yet, choose Save this as a draft and add the product, add it, then open the draft again from Orders and pick it on the slip.

If a price changed between saving the draft and confirming it, Tabs stops and shows you the new figures, so you never agree one number with the customer and record another.

The credit can't be more than the sale. Tabs doesn't pay the difference out to the customer. If her old phone is worth more than what she's buying, agree a credit no higher than the sale, or have her choose something more.

After it's confirmed

Take the balance. Open the order and record the payment as you would for any sale: cash, transfer or POS. See payments, receipts and returns.

Hand over the goods. Confirming takes the new item off your stock count. Recording that the customer has it in her hand is a separate step, the same Hand over items as on any order.

The order's page shows a Coming in section under the items: each trade-in marked Received, with its serial, its value, what it went into stock as, and its photos. Click a photo to see it full size.

The receipt lists the trade-in credit on its own line, so the customer can see how the total was reached.

On the Orders page, a swap is marked in the Type column. That column is off to begin with; turn it on from View. To see only swaps, open the Sale details filter and tick Swap.

On the dashboard, the How people paid card shows trade-in credit as its own row, marked "not money". Your cash, transfer and POS figures are unaffected.

The used item in your stock

A trade-in adds one to the product you chose, and from then on it's stock like any other. Two things follow from that.

Keep used items as their own products. "Used Tecno Camon 19" is not the same thing as a new one in a box, and it shouldn't share a price or a count with it.

Tabs keeps the serial and the agreed value on the swap's record, as history. It doesn't follow that one phone through to the day you sell it. If you hold three used phones under one product, a later sale takes one off the count without saying which. If you need to know exactly which handset went to which buyer, write the serial in the note on the order when you sell it.

Reversing a swap

Sometimes a deal has to be undone. The customer changes her mind the same afternoon, or the phone she traded in turns out to be locked.

Open the order and choose Reverse swap. Tabs asks for a reason. A reversal puts both sides back: what went out returns to stock, what came in leaves it, and the credit is cancelled. The order is marked cancelled and the slips read "Given back".

Tabs only reverses a swap when it can do so cleanly. For a deal that was paid and handed over, that means working backwards, in this order:

1. If the order is completed, reopen it.
2. Record the return of the item the customer took. That's Start a return on the order.
3. Void each payment on the order, and give the money back yourself.
4. Choose Reverse swap and give the reason.
5. Hand the customer's old item back.

If you skip a step, Tabs refuses and tells you which one is in the way:

• Money has been paid. Void those payments first, and give the money back. Tabs won't do a refund for you as part of a reversal.
• The new item has been handed over. Record its return first.
• The traded-in item has already been sold. It's no longer there to give back.
• The order is completed. Reopen it first.

A confirmed swap can't be cancelled or deleted the ordinary way. Reversing is the only way to undo it, so one side of a deal can never be undone without the other.

A draft is different. Nothing has happened yet, so you just Discard draft.

Who can do what

Someone who can only save drafts sees a line on the page saying who finishes the deal. That's a reasonable way to run it: a junior attendant enters the details, and a senior one checks the item and confirms.

Set this under roles.

Doing swaps well

• Photograph the item before you agree a price. The photos stay on the swap. When there's an argument next week about a crack, you have the picture from the day.
• Write the condition as you'd say it to the next buyer. "Battery weak" today is the thing you'll need to tell whoever buys it.
• Take the serial every time. It's the only thing that ties this handset to this customer.
• Decide your credit from what you can resell it for. The credit is what you paid for that item. If you can't sell it for more, you've lost money on a deal that looked like a sale.
• Let one person inspect and another confirm, where you have the staff for it.

What swap deals don't do yet

• A delivery address can't be entered on a swap until it's confirmed. You can set the delivery fee. Add the address on the order afterwards.
• No quotes from a distance. A swap is for an item you have in your hand, in the shop.
• Tax on the item coming in isn't worked out. VAT is charged on what you sell, exactly as on an ordinary order, and the credit doesn't change it. How a trade-in should be treated for tax is a question for your accountant. This is general information, not tax advice.

If something goes wrong

Review is switched off. The credit is more than the sale total, or a slip hasn't been told what it goes into stock as.

There's no Review button at all. Your role can save a draft but not confirm. Ask the person named on the page.

You can't change the store. A saved draft is tied to the store it was started in. Discard it and start again from the right store.

Reverse swap is refused. The message says what to do first: void the payments, record the return, or reopen the order.