Month end with six concessions
Your centre has six concessions: an aquatics business, a country clothing brand, a farm shop, a garden furniture specialist, a sweet shop and a pet food counter. Most take payment through your tills using their own departments. At month end, your accounts assistant exports sales by department, removes refunds that belong to the wrong month, applies each concession's commission rate, deducts card fees where the agreement allows it, and subtracts any recharges.
The furniture concession has a different rate for sale items. The farm shop's agreement includes a minimum monthly fee. The sweet shop moved to a new rate in March. The spreadsheet has grown formulas nobody fully trusts, and each concession gets a slightly different style of statement.
Where the settlement gets complicated
Concession agreements are negotiated individually, and each one has its quirks. The EPOS knows the sales. The agreements live in a folder. The link between them is a person with a spreadsheet.
- Commission rates differ per concession, and sometimes per product type.
- Refunds, voids and exchanges cross months and departments.
- Card fees, minimum fees and service charges are handled differently per agreement.
- Some concession products are rung through the wrong department at the till.
- Gift cards redeemed against concession goods need allocating correctly.
What a manual settlement costs
Mistakes in settlements damage relationships with businesses that help bring people to your site. Overpayments are hard to claw back and underpayments lead to difficult conversations. Late statements mean concessions chase you, and some may start doubting the figures in general.
Timing makes it harder. Concessions want paying promptly, and they plan their own cash around your settlement date. When the statement is late because the person who does it is on holiday or busy with the Christmas trade, it is the concession who feels it, and they tend to remember.
The time is real too. A careful monthly settlement for several concessions can take the best part of a few days of someone's month, and that person becomes the only one who can do it.
Concession statements built from the till data
- We record each concession agreement as rules: commission rates by product type, fees, minimums, card fee treatment, and the dates each rule applies from.
- Daily sales, refunds and gift card redemptions are pulled from your EPOS for each concession's departments.
- Transactions that look like they may be in the wrong department, such as a concession product rung under your own code, are flagged for review.
- At month end the system calculates the settlement for each concession and produces a statement showing sales, refunds, commission and deductions.
- Your accounts team reviews and approves each statement, and the approved totals can be posted to Xero, Sage or QuickBooks as bills or journals.
- Concessions receive their statements by email, and can see daily sales in a simple portal if you want to share that.
| Item | Manual spreadsheet | Automated statement |
|---|---|---|
| Commission rates | Formulas per tab | Rules per agreement, dated |
| Refunds across months | Adjusted by hand | Handled by rule |
| Misrung sales | Found by chance | Flagged for review |
| Statement format | Varies by concession | Consistent for all |
| Posting to accounts | Retyped | Posted after approval |
The rules follow your agreements. We do not interpret the contracts. Where an agreement is ambiguous, we ask you how it has been applied, and build to that.
Month end afterwards
On the first working day of the month, statements for every concession are waiting for review. The accounts assistant checks the flagged transactions, approves the statements and sends them. The totals go into the accounts without retyping.
Concession owners get a clear breakdown they can check, in the same format each month. Questions become specific and quick to answer, and the settlement no longer depends on one person's spreadsheet.
Does your concession settlement take days?
- Concession settlements are calculated in a spreadsheet each month.
- Different concessions have different rates and fees.
- Refunds and gift card redemptions are allocated by hand.
- Concessions sometimes query their statements.
- Only one person knows how the calculation works.