Shopify for consignment shops works on one condition: Shopify runs the catalog, the checkout and the register, and something else runs the consignor ledger and the markdown schedule. Shopify’s own documentation describes a vendor field, compare-at prices, inventory tracking and point-of-sale discounts. It does not describe consignor accounts, payout splits, contract periods, or prices that fall on a timer. Those four things are most of what makes a consignment shop different from any other shop.
Almost every guide that ranks for this topic is written by a consignment-software vendor selling a full back office: intake, consignor portal, payouts, labels. That software is necessary, and we name five options below with the prices and ratings on their live App Store listings. What none of those guides explain is the markdown schedule itself as a pricing decision: how long an item should sit at full price, how deep each step should cut, which clock the steps run on, who absorbs the reduction, and where the price has to stop.
We build Shopify apps, including Auto Markdown, which automates progressive price drops and whose App Store listing names consignment shops as a use case. It does not do consignor accounts, payouts, intake or labels, so in this guide it is one row in a stack table and nothing more. The rest is about the schedule.
Key takeaways
- Shopify’s documentation covers the vendor field, compare-at pricing, inventory tracking and POS discounts. It does not describe consignor accounts, payout splits or time-triggered price changes, so a consignment shop needs at least one app, and usually two.
- The most commonly published schedule is full price for 30 days, 25% off for days 31–60 and 50% off for days 61–90, per PuppetVendors’ commission guide. Treat it as a default to adjust by category, not a rule.
- For one-of-a-kind items, “days since intake” and “days without a sale” are the same clock. For multi-unit SKUs they diverge, and the consignor agreement decides which one governs.
- On a shared split, a markdown cuts both parties in proportion. In our illustrative example a $120 item at 60/40 pays the consignor $72.00 at full price and $36.00 at 50% off.
- A consignment floor price is the higher of two numbers: the consignor’s contractual minimum, and your handling cost per item divided by your share of the sale.
How consignment differs from normal retail on Shopify
Shopify is built around a product you bought, hold in quantity, and restock. Consignment breaks each of those assumptions, and the breakage explains every tool decision that follows.
Every item is its own SKU
A regular store has one product record with 40 units behind it. A consignment shop has 40 product records with one unit behind each. Catalog size grows with intake rather than with assortment, and product creation becomes the bottleneck; Circle-Hand’s Shopify POS guide names the handling of unique items as the first of Shopify’s limitations for second-hand sellers. Sell-through also has no velocity: an item sells once or not at all.
Single-unit inventory also makes overselling a real risk when you sell online and in store at once. Shopify’s inventory tracking documentation carries a caution worth reading twice: the setting that stops sales at zero stock does not apply to Shopify POS, where staff are warned but can still complete the sale. With a quantity of one, that warning is the only thing standing between you and selling the same jacket to two people.
The consignor is the vendor
The item belongs to someone else until it sells. Shopify’s guide to starting a consignment shop lists ownership and agency as the first term of a consignor agreement: the consignor keeps legal title and the shop acts as sales agent. In the admin, the nearest native home for that relationship is the vendor field, which Shopify’s product details documentation defines as the manufacturer, wholesaler or other vendor for the product, and which can be used to filter the product list. PuppetVendors’ setup guide recommends exactly that: put the consignor’s name in the vendor field on every product.
It is a label, not an account. The same documentation page says nothing about consignors, commissions or payouts. A vendor value tells you whose item it is. It does not tell you what you owe them.
Revenue is split, not earned
In normal retail the sale price minus cost is yours. In consignment the sale price is divided. Shopify’s guide puts commission structures anywhere from 20% to 60% and says most shops pay the consignor 40% to 60% of the final sale price. PuppetVendors’ guide describes 60/40 in the consignor’s favor as the most common arrangement, with 50/50 frequent on lower-priced goods. By the convention that guide sets out, the first number is the consignor’s share, and we follow that convention throughout.
The phrase that matters is “final sale price”. Every markdown you take reduces a number that two parties are paid from. That is why a markdown in a consignment shop is a contractual event and not only a merchandising one.
Every item has a contract clock
A consignment agreement has a term. Shopify’s guide tells shop owners to state the exact length of the consignment period and what happens to unsold items at the end of it, and to state the shop’s authority to apply markdowns over time. PuppetVendors’ setup guide says items that have not sold in 60 to 90 days should be returned, donated with the consignor’s permission, or marked down.
So each item carries a start date, a series of dates on which its price may fall, and an end date. Shopify’s product documentation describes no field for any of them. The schedule has to live in an app, in tags you maintain by hand, or in a spreadsheet.
What Shopify handles natively and what needs an app
We checked each job below against Shopify’s help center on 28 September 2026. Where the documentation is silent we say so and link the page we checked, because a third-party guide is not evidence of what the admin does.
| Job | What Shopify’s documentation describes | The gap for consignment |
|---|---|---|
| Record whose item it is | A vendor field on every product, usable as a product-list filter (product details page) | No consignor account, contract, split or balance is described |
| Group items by consignor, category or price | Smart collection conditions on title, type, vendor, category, tags, status, price, compare-at price, weight, inventory stock and metafield values (collection conditions) | The page lists no condition based on creation date or age, so “everything older than 30 days” is not a collection you can build without tagging |
| Show a was/now price | Set compare-at price to the original price and lower the price (setting sale prices) | The page describes a manual edit. It does not describe a price that changes on a date or after a period |
| Change many prices at once | The bulk editor exposes price and compare-at price as columns (bulk editing) | The page does not describe scheduling a bulk edit or triggering one by rule |
| Discount without editing prices | Automatic discounts apply in the cart and at checkout, with a maximum of 25 active (automatic discounts); amount-off discounts can target a product, a collection or an order (discount types) | No age or no-sale trigger is described. The sale-pricing page says strikethrough savings from discounts on product and collection pages need a third-party app or custom work |
| Discount at the register | Staff with the right permission can apply custom discounts or discount codes in Shopify POS (POS discount overview) | Manual and per transaction. The cashier has to know the item’s age |
| Print price labels | The Retail Barcode Labels app prints to supported Dymo, Avery and Zebra label formats (Retail Barcode Labels) | The page does not describe reprinting when a price changes, or printing a future price |
| Split the sale and pay the consignor | Not described on any page we checked | Needs a consignment app or a spreadsheet |
Shopify is a good place to sell a consigned item and an incomplete place to manage one. The consequence is a two-layer stack: a consignment app for the ledger, and a decision about where the markdown schedule runs.
The native workaround, and why it stops scaling
You can run a schedule with nothing but tags and the bulk editor. Tag every item at intake with its intake week, build one smart collection per tag, and on the first of each period open the bulk editor, filter to the collection that has just turned 30 days old, copy price into compare-at price and cut the price. Repeat for the 60-day collection.
It works at a few dozen items a week. It fails in a predictable way: the edit happens when someone remembers, not when the agreement says, and every manual pass is a chance to mark down something that was exempt. Past a few hundred active items, the schedule should be automated by something.
The common consignment markdown schedule
Two published schedules are worth knowing, because consignors who have sold elsewhere will expect something like them.
- PuppetVendors’ commission guide describes many shops using full price for the first 30 days, 25% off for days 31–60, 50% off for days 61–90, and donation or return after 90 days.
- ConsignCloud’s article on automatic discounts uses a two-phase example: 20% off after 30 days, then 50% off after 60 days, with the second phase replacing the first rather than stacking on it. It also gives a category example in which slower items reach 50% off by day 45.
Both are vendor examples, not industry surveys, and neither source publishes data on how the schedules perform. What they share is a structure: a full-price window, two or three steps at fixed intervals, a deepest step at or near half price, and a hard end to the term. That structure is sound. The specific numbers are a starting point.
Why the schedule exists at all
A consignment shop’s scarce resource is display space, not capital. You did not pay for the item, so an unsold item costs nothing in cash and a great deal in opportunity: rail space, photography and staff time spent on something the market has so far declined. The schedule is a mechanism for finding the price at which a specific object sells before its term runs out. The consignor wants the same thing, which is why a schedule explained at intake is usually accepted and one discovered at payout is resented. Shopify’s guide lists markdown management and consignor expectations among the drawbacks of the model and advises writing markdown rights into the terms up front.
Percent off the original, or percent off the current price?
Consignment schedules are written as percentages off the original price: 20%, then 35%, then 50%. Progressive markdown tools often work in steps, and a step can be calculated from the original price or from the price as it stands. The difference is large. As an illustrative example, take a $120 item and a contract that reads 20%, 35% and 50% off the original:
| Step | Contract says | Price if each percent is taken from the original | Price if the same percents are applied to the current price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 20% off | $96.00 | $96.00 |
| 2 | 35% off | $78.00 | $62.40 |
| 3 | 50% off | $60.00 | $31.20 |
Applied to the running price, the same three numbers take the item to 74% off, not 50%. If the tool you use compounds, the steps that reproduce the contract are 20%, then 18.75%, then 23.08% of the current price ($120 to $96, $96 to $78, $78 to $60). Whatever runs your schedule, ours included, configure one test product, let it step, and read the log before you switch the rule on for a consignor’s goods.
Choosing interval and depth by category
A single schedule across the whole shop is the simplest setup and the least defensible. Three variables should move the numbers, and they differ by category.
- How fast the item’s value decays. A linen dress taken in July is worth less in October whatever you do. A mid-century sideboard is worth the same in October as in July. Fast decay argues for a short full-price window and short intervals.
- What the item costs you to display. PuppetVendors’ guide notes that moving, storing and staging furniture costs far more than hanging a dress. An item that occupies floor space should step in larger increments, because each week unsold is expensive.
- How thin the buyer pool is. A $1,800 handbag has few potential buyers on any given day. A deep early cut does not create buyers; it only reduces what the eventual buyer pays. Thin markets argue for long windows and shallow steps.
The table below is our starting point for each category. It is judgment, not measurement, and the right response to it is to run it for one term, look at which step your items actually sold at, and adjust.
| Category | Full-price window | Steps (off original price) | Term | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seasonal and mid-range apparel | 30 days | 20%, 35%, 50% at 15–30 day intervals | 60–90 days | Value is tied to the season; the published default fits this category best |
| Children’s clothing and gear | 21–30 days | 25%, then 50% | 60 days | Low price points make small steps meaningless in dollars, and PuppetVendors’ guide notes short shelf lives |
| Designer handbags, watches, fine jewelry | 45–60 days | 10%, 20%, 30% | 120 days or more | Thin buyer pool, slow value decay, and consignors who often set a minimum |
| Furniture and large home goods | 30 days | 15%, 30%, 45% at 30-day intervals | 90 days | Floor space is the cost; steps need to be large enough in dollars to change a decision |
| Vintage, collectibles and art | 60 days or more | 10–15% steps, or no automatic schedule | By agreement | Value does not decay with time, so a timer is the wrong trigger for much of this stock |
| Sporting and outdoor equipment | 30 days | 20%, 35%, 50% | To the end of the season | Tie the last step to the season’s end rather than to intake date alone |
Two notes. The luxury row stops at 30% because the floor, discussed below, usually arrives before a deeper step would. And the vintage row is a real recommendation: for stock whose value is not tied to a season, a timer measures your patience and nothing else. If the right buyer for a 1960s concert poster walks in every four months, a 30-day clock cuts the price three times before they arrive.
Whatever runs the schedule has to be able to apply one rule to apparel and another to furniture, and to exempt a consignor whose agreement has different terms. In Shopify’s data model that means rules scoped by collection, product type or vendor. We cover rule design for ordinary retail, including trigger windows and step sizes, in our pricing-rules playbook for automated markdowns.
Days since intake versus days without a sale
This is the distinction the vendor guides skip, and it determines whether a given tool can honor a given contract.
A consignment agreement specifies days since intake. The clock starts when the shop accepts the item and it never resets. ConsignCloud’s article describes this directly: its schedule attaches a start date to each item, defaulting to the date the item was created, which the shop can move if the item was entered late.
Velocity-based markdown tools measure days without a sale. The clock runs while nothing sells and resets when something does. That is the correct design for ordinary retail, where a sale is evidence that the current price works and the next unit should not be discounted further.
For single-unit items, the two clocks are the same clock
An item with a quantity of one cannot sell and remain in stock. It has therefore been without a sale for exactly as long as it has been listed. If the product is created at intake, days without a sale and days since intake are the same number, and a velocity-based tool will step the price on the same days the contract names. The reset-on-sale behavior never fires, because the sale ends the item’s life in the catalog.
There are two places the clocks can drift apart even with single units, and both are worth checking before you rely on the equivalence:
- Intake lag. If an item is accepted on the 1st and photographed and listed on the 9th, a tool counting from product creation is eight days behind the contract. Either write the agreement so the term starts at listing, or create the product at drop-off and publish it later.
- Items that pre-date the tool. Stock already in the catalog when you install a markdown app has a history the app may not count the way your contracts do. Check what date it is counting from on a handful of older items before trusting it across the catalog.
For multi-unit SKUs, they are different clocks
Many consignment shops also carry multi-unit consigned goods: a local maker’s candles, a jeweler’s run of identical earrings, a small label’s overstock. Here the clocks separate. As an illustrative example, a maker consigns 12 identical candles on a 90-day term with a step at day 30. One sells on day 26.
| Clock | Day 30 | Day 56 | What it is measuring |
|---|---|---|---|
| Days since intake | Step fires: 11 candles drop in price | Second interval is running | The contract’s calendar |
| Days without a sale | No step: the clock reset on day 26 | Step fires, if nothing has sold since day 26 | Whether the current price is working |
Neither is wrong. The velocity clock is the better pricing logic, because a sale four days before the deadline is evidence against cutting the price. The intake clock is what the consignor signed.
Our recommendation is to make the agreement follow the better logic. For multi-unit consigned lines, write the term as “price reduces after 30 days without a sale” instead of “after 30 days”; it protects the maker’s price while the product is moving. If an existing agreement specifies days since intake and cannot be changed, run those SKUs on a tool with a fixed per-item start date, and keep the velocity rule for everything else.
Returns are the last edge case. A consigned item that is sold, returned and put back on the rail has a contract clock that never stopped and a no-sale clock that reset. Decide in the agreement which one governs a returned item, and whether the return period is excluded from the term.
How markdowns change consignor payouts
The table below is an illustrative example, not data from any store. It follows one item with an original price of $120.00 through a three-step schedule of 20%, 35% and 50% off the original price, on a 90-day term, under a 60/40 split and a 50/50 split. The first number in each split is the consignor’s share. The split is applied to the price the item actually sells at, with no fees deducted.
| Stage | Selling price | Consignor at 60/40 | Shop at 60/40 | Consignor at 50/50 | Shop at 50/50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Days 1–30, full price | $120.00 | $72.00 | $48.00 | $60.00 | $60.00 |
| Step 1, from day 31: 20% off | $96.00 | $57.60 | $38.40 | $48.00 | $48.00 |
| Step 2, from day 61: 35% off | $78.00 | $46.80 | $31.20 | $39.00 | $39.00 |
| Step 3, from day 76: 50% off | $60.00 | $36.00 | $24.00 | $30.00 | $30.00 |
Three things to take from it.
- The consignor’s payout halves when the price halves. That sounds obvious written down. It is not obvious to a consignor who was told “you get 60%” at intake and remembers $72. Put the four payout figures on the intake receipt, not only the percentage.
- The split matters less as the price falls. The gap between a 60/40 and a 50/50 consignor payout is $12.00 at full price and $6.00 at step 3. Negotiating the split is worth more to a consignor than negotiating the schedule only if the item sells early.
- The shop’s dollars fall at the same rate as the consignor’s. At step 3 on a 60/40 split the shop earns $24.00 for an item that has used 76 or more days of display space. Whether that covers the cost of handling it is the floor-price question below.
Who absorbs the markdown
The table assumes the markdown is shared in proportion. That is a choice. ConsignCloud’s article describes three discount types in its own software: a store discount that comes entirely out of the shop’s share, a consignor discount that comes out of the consignor’s share, and a shared discount that splits in proportion, which it calls common for long-term markdown policies. The same three options exist in any agreement, whatever software you use. Illustrative example, same $120.00 item on a 60/40 split, sold at 25% off for $90.00:
| Who absorbs the $30.00 reduction | Consignor receives | Shop receives |
|---|---|---|
| Shared in proportion | $54.00 | $36.00 |
| Shop absorbs it (consignor paid on the original price) | $72.00 | $18.00 |
| Consignor absorbs it (shop paid on the original price) | $42.00 | $48.00 |
Shop-absorbed discounts are right for promotions the shop chooses to run, such as a weekend event, because the consignor did not agree to fund your marketing. They cannot be used for a deep scheduled markdown. At 50% off, paying the consignor $72.00 on a $60.00 sale leaves the shop $12.00 out of pocket. Scheduled markdowns should be shared, and the agreement should say so in a sentence.
This matters for tooling too. A price-edit markdown lowers the product’s price, so the order records the lower figure and a consignment app that pays the split on the sold price will produce the shared outcome without further setup. If your agreement uses one of the other two arrangements, ask your consignment app’s support how it treats a product whose price changed after intake before you automate anything.
Changing the split at depth
PuppetVendors’ guide describes a further variation: some stores raise their commission on heavily marked-down items so that their dollar take does not collapse. Its example is a $100 item at a 40% commission earning the store $40; after a 50% markdown to $50, the store moves to a 50% commission and earns $25 rather than $20.
We would use this sparingly. It is defensible on low-priced goods where handling cost is a large fraction of the sale, and it has to be in the agreement from the start. Applied as a surprise, it costs more in consignor goodwill than the $5 it recovers.
Fees come off before the split, or they do not
The payout table ignores payment processing. PuppetVendors’ guide recommends deducting processing fees from the gross sale before calculating the split, on the reasoning that neither party controls them. Shopify’s consignment guide quotes an in-person Shopify Payments rate of 2.6% plus 10¢ per transaction. As an illustrative example on the step 1 price: $96.00 less a $2.60 fee leaves $93.40 to divide, which at 60/40 is $56.04 to the consignor and $37.36 to the shop, against $57.60 and $38.40 with no deduction. The amounts are small per item and add up across a payout run. Pick one method, write it down, and apply it to every sale.
Floor prices and minimums in consignor agreements
Every automated schedule needs a price it will not go below. In ordinary retail the floor is built from cost, and we have a full method for that in our guide to setting a clearance floor price. Consignment is different because the shop has no purchase cost. Two other numbers set the floor instead.
The consignor’s minimum
Some consignors, particularly of higher-value pieces, will only consign with a minimum price or a minimum payout. If the agreement guarantees a minimum payout rather than a minimum price, convert it: minimum price equals minimum payout divided by the consignor’s share. A consignor on a 60/40 split who must receive at least $150 needs a floor of $250, because $150 ÷ 0.60 = $250.
The shop’s minimum
The shop’s floor comes from handling cost. PuppetVendors’ guide estimates the cost of processing a consignment item through a Shopify-based store at between $5 and $25 depending on complexity, and makes the point that a $10 handling cost on a $50 sale needs a 20% commission simply to break even on that item. Turn that around and it becomes a floor formula.
floor price = handling cost per item ÷ shop share of the saleAs an illustrative example, a shop that spends $10 of labor and materials on each item and keeps 40% breaks even on handling at $25.00, because $10 ÷ 0.40 = $25. At a 50% share the same item breaks even at $20.00. Below that price the shop is paying to sell the item, and donation or return is the better outcome for the shop.
The working floor for any item is the higher of the two numbers. For most everyday stock only the shop’s minimum applies, which means a single fixed floor per category is usually enough: one for apparel, a higher one for furniture.
Which floor type to use in a markdown tool
Markdown tools typically offer a floor as a fixed amount, as a percentage of the original price, or as a function of the cost field. For consigned goods, use fixed or percentage. Shopify’s product details documentation defines cost per item as what the product cost you, and a consigned item cost you nothing at intake. Some shops enter the expected consignor payout as the cost, which makes margin reports more readable but makes a cost-based floor circular, since the payout itself falls with every markdown.
A percentage floor has one useful property for consignment: it can be stated in the agreement in the same terms as the schedule. “Your item will never be priced below 50% of its original price” is a sentence a consignor understands and a rule a tool can enforce.
Communicating the schedule to customers without training them to wait
A published markdown schedule tells customers exactly when an item gets cheaper. In ordinary retail that is a reason not to publish one. In consignment the calculation is different, and the reason is inventory depth.
When there is one of an item, waiting has a real cost. ConsignCloud’s article makes this argument for printing upcoming price drops on the tag, and concedes that some customers will wait. We think the argument is right for one-of-a-kind stock, wrong for anything with depth, and stronger in store than online. Our recommendations:
- Publish the policy, not the dates. A sign or a policy page that says prices reduce on a schedule is honest and creates no specific incentive to wait. A product page that says “drops to $60 on October 14” creates a specific one. Online, a customer can set a reminder and come back; nothing about the experience reminds them someone else may buy it first.
- In store, dated tags are reasonable for single units. The customer is holding the item and can see there is no second one. If your labels show the intake date or a color code for the intake month, regulars will learn the system. That is acceptable: regulars who understand your schedule are also the ones who buy at full price when they want something.
- Show the original price honestly. On Shopify a marked-down item shows its original price through the compare-at field. A consigned item that sat at $120 for 30 days has a real former price. The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing treat a former-price comparison as legitimate when the item was genuinely offered at that price to the public for a reasonably substantial period. The thing to avoid is setting an intake price you never expected to achieve in order to show a larger reduction later.
- Never mark down multi-unit consigned lines on a published calendar. With twelve candles on the shelf, a customer who waits loses nothing. Use the no-sale clock for these and keep the dates to yourself.
- Keep new arrivals louder than reductions. If the most prominent collection on the site is the sale collection, you are teaching customers where to look first. Lead with what arrived this week.
The physical label is the weak point in any automated schedule. Software can change the catalog price overnight; it cannot change the tag on the garment. Shops handle this by reprinting labels for items that stepped, by printing the whole schedule on the original label so it never goes stale, or by using color-coded tags with a sign that maps color to current reduction. The third is the cheapest to run. Whichever you choose, staff should know that the catalog price is the authority when the tag disagrees.
End-of-term handling
The schedule ends somewhere. Shopify’s guide tells shop owners to specify what happens to unsold items at the end of the term and names three outcomes: the consignor collects the item, it is donated, or it becomes store property. PuppetVendors’ commission guide adds that most agreements charge no commission on unsold items, though some shops charge a small listing or processing fee of a few dollars per item to cover intake work.
Each outcome has a different set of tasks in Shopify.
| Outcome | What to do in the catalog | What to do in the ledger |
|---|---|---|
| Returned to consignor | Take the listing off sale, set its quantity to zero and remove the item from the floor, since POS warns at zero stock but does not block the sale | Record the return against the consignor’s account with the date collected |
| Donated | Same as a return | Record the donation and, if the agreement requires consent, the consent |
| Becomes store property | Change the vendor to your house vendor and move the item under your own clearance rules | Close the consignor’s interest in the item; from here the full sale price is the shop’s |
| Term renewed | Reset the price and restart the schedule only if the agreement says so | Record the new term’s start date |
The third outcome is where the schedule logic changes. Once an item is yours there is no contract clock and no split. It has become ordinary clearance stock, and everything in our guide to clearing excess inventory on Shopify applies, including the option of clearing it somewhere other than your own storefront.
Two operational rules make end-of-term manageable. Send the consignor a notice before the term ends, not after; Circle-Hand’s App Store listing includes automatic emails to vendors on sales and expirations, and the other consignment apps have their own notification features. And set a collection deadline in the agreement, after which uncollected items follow the donation or store-property route. Without a deadline, the back room fills with other people’s property.
The consignment stack on Shopify: job to tool
Here is the stack as we would assemble it, by job.
| Job | Tool | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Consignor accounts, agreements, splits and payouts | A consignment app (five listed below) | The only non-negotiable purchase. Shopify’s documentation describes none of this |
| Intake and product creation | The consignment app | Products are pushed into Shopify’s catalog with the consignor attached |
| Selling in store | Shopify POS | Shopify’s guide budgets POS Pro at $89 per month; Circle-Hand’s guide argues the Lite version on a Basic plan is enough for most shops |
| Selling online | Shopify online store | From $29 per month billed annually, per Shopify’s guide |
| Was/now price display | Compare-at price | Native |
| Markdown schedule | The consignment app’s own schedule if it has one and it reaches your Shopify prices; otherwise a markdown app | See the two options below |
| Labels | Shopify’s Retail Barcode Labels app, or the consignment app’s own labels | Decide how labels stay in step with price changes before you automate |
| Floor enforcement | Whatever runs the markdown schedule | A floor that lives in a spreadsheet is not enforced |
Consignment apps on the Shopify App Store
These are the five consignment apps whose live listings we fetched on 28 September 2026. Prices, ratings and review counts are as shown on each listing that day. We have not run these apps on live inventory; the descriptions are from the listings.
| App | Listed price | Rating (reviews) | What the listing emphasizes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visceral Consignment | Basic $9.99/month for 3 consignors; Standard $39.99/month for unlimited consignors; Premium $59.99/month. 14-day trial | 4.6 (31) | Consignor tracking at product or variant level, payout and commission rules, consignor portal from Standard |
| ConsignCloud | Basic $139/month; Pro $189/month. 14-day trial | 5.0 (9) | A full consignment system with its own in-person payments, ACH payouts, consignor portal on Pro |
| Multi Vendor ‑ Puppet Vendors | Launch $49/month for up to 25 vendors and 5,000 products; Growth $119; Scale $249; Enterprise from $599. 14-day trial | 4.8 (125) | Commission rules, automated payouts via PayPal and Stripe, vendor dashboards; lists Shopify POS under “works with” |
| Circle Hand for Consignment | Free to install; requires a Circle-Hand plan billed outside Shopify | 4.7 (33) | Vendor and payout management, AI-assisted item creation, vendor portal, expiry emails |
| ConsignR | Free to install | 4.3 (6) | Seller portal with item submission, barcode generation, payout tracking. Launched August 2025 |
Two things to check when choosing. First, plan limits: Visceral’s Basic plan caps at three consignors, so a working shop starts at its Standard tier, and PuppetVendors’ plans are limited by vendor and product count, which matters when each item is a product. Second, read the recent reviews rather than the rating alone; with review counts this small, one detailed review tells you more than the average.
Where the markdown schedule should run
There are two reasonable answers.
Option 1: in the consignment app. If your consignment software has a schedule tied to each item’s start date, and the resulting prices reach Shopify, use it. The contract date, the payout calculation and the price change then live in one system. ConsignCloud’s article describes such a feature as part of its own register; it does not say whether scheduled discounts are written to a connected Shopify store’s prices, so confirm that with the vendor. Circle-Hand’s guide mentions automatic markdowns among the scenarios its sync handles, without describing how the schedule is configured.
Option 2: in a markdown app alongside the consignment app. If your consignment app handles the ledger well but has no schedule, or has one that does not reach your Shopify storefront, a separate markdown app fills the gap. This is where our own app is a candidate.
Where Auto Markdown fits, and where it does not
We built Auto Markdown, so weigh this section accordingly. Its App Store listing shows no reviews yet.
What it does: it lowers a product’s price when the product has gone a set number of days without a sale, in progressive steps, until the item sells or reaches a floor you set. Rules can be scoped by collection, product type or vendor according to the listing, which maps onto the three ways a consignment shop needs to vary its schedule: by category, by kind of goods, and by consignor. Floors can be a fixed amount, a percentage or cost-based. It keeps a log of every price change. The listing’s plan cards show product-level targeting on Free and collection and tag targeting from Growth, so rules that cover a whole category start on a paid plan.
What it does not do: consignor accounts, agreements, payout splits, payouts, intake, or labels. It must be paired with consignment software, and it is of no use as a first purchase.
How it meets the clock problem described above: it measures days without a sale. For single-unit items created at intake that is the contract clock. For multi-unit consigned SKUs it is the velocity clock, which suits agreements written in those terms and does not suit agreements that specify days since intake.
The plan limits matter more for consignment than for ordinary retail, because every item is a product. The limits below are from the listing.
| Plan | Tracked products | Rules and steps | Price checks | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 50 | 2 rules, 3 steps each | Every 24 hours | A trial on one rail or one consignor. Too small for a working consignment catalog |
| Growth, $9/month | 500 | 10 rules, 5 steps each | Every 6 hours | A small shop or a booth, with a rule per category |
| Pro, $19/month | 5,000 | Unlimited | Every hour | Most single-location shops selling online and in store |
| Enterprise, $39/month | Unlimited | Unlimited | Every hour | Multi-location or high-intake resale |
The Free plan’s 50 tracked products is the number to notice. A shop that takes in 30 items a week passes it in two weeks. Use Free to confirm that the steps, the floor and your consignment app’s payout figures behave as expected on a few real items, then size the paid plan to your peak count of active items. A three-step schedule fits inside one rule on any plan, and a daily check is frequent enough for a schedule measured in weeks.
If you want to compare it with other markdown tools before deciding, we keep a side-by-side in our comparison of Shopify markdown apps.
Putting the schedule into Shopify: a working sequence
The order matters more than the tools.
- Write the schedule into the agreement first. Full-price window, step dates, percentages stated as off the original price, who absorbs scheduled markdowns, the floor, the term and the end-of-term outcome.
- Decide what starts the clock. Drop-off, acceptance or listing. Create the product on that day so its age in Shopify matches the contract.
- Make category and consignor machine-readable. Product type for category, vendor for consignor, and a tag for anything exempt. Every rule depends on these being filled in consistently at intake.
- Set one floor and one rule per category. Start with the category that holds the most stock.
- Test on a handful of items. Check the price and compare-at price on the product, what the register rings, and what the consignment app says the consignor is owed.
- Review after one full term. Count how many items sold at each step. If most sales happen at the last step, intake prices are too high. ConsignCloud’s article makes the same recommendation.
Common mistakes
- Using one schedule for the whole shop. A handbag and a child’s snowsuit do not lose value at the same rate or sell to the same number of people. Set interval and depth by category, and exempt stock whose value does not decay.
- Quoting the split without the schedule. A consignor told “you get 60%” hears 60% of the intake price. Show the payout at every step on the intake receipt.
- Applying contract percentages to the running price. 20%, 35% and 50% off the original is a 50% reduction. The same three numbers compounded are a 74% reduction. Test one item before trusting any tool’s step logic.
- Running a schedule with no floor. Below handling cost divided by your share, you are paying to sell someone else’s item. Below the consignor’s minimum, you are in breach of the agreement.
- Using the intake clock on multi-unit lines without thinking. If the candles are selling, the price is working. Write those agreements around days without a sale.
- Letting the shop absorb scheduled markdowns. Paying the consignor on the original price is affordable at 10% off and a loss at 50% off. Shop-absorbed discounts are for promotions you choose to run, not for the schedule.
- Publishing drop dates online. A policy is fine. A date on a product page is an instruction to come back later.
- Buying the markdown tool before the consignment tool. The ledger is the part you cannot run without. Choose the consignment app, find out whether it has a schedule that reaches Shopify, and only then decide whether you need anything else.
FAQ
Can you use Shopify for a consignment shop?
Yes, with at least one app. Shopify’s documentation covers the catalog, inventory tracking, compare-at pricing and point-of-sale discounts, and describes a vendor field that can hold the consignor’s name. It does not describe consignor accounts, commission splits or payouts, so those come from a consignment app such as Visceral Consignment, ConsignCloud, PuppetVendors, Circle-Hand or ConsignR, and the markdown schedule comes either from that app or from a separate markdown app.
Does Shopify POS support consignment?
Shopify POS sells consigned items like any other product, and Shopify’s POS documentation describes custom discounts and discount codes that permitted staff can apply at the register. It does not describe consignor tracking or payout splits. Consignment apps add that layer by recording each sale against the consignor after Shopify reports it, which is how Circle-Hand’s guide describes its own integration.
What is a typical consignment markdown schedule?
The most commonly published version is full price for the first 30 days, 25% off for days 31 to 60, 50% off for days 61 to 90, and return or donation after 90 days, as described in PuppetVendors’ commission guide. ConsignCloud’s example uses 20% after 30 days and 50% after 60 days. Both are vendor examples rather than survey data, so treat them as a default and adjust interval and depth by category.
Who pays for a markdown, the shop or the consignor?
It depends on the agreement, and there are three options: the reduction is shared in proportion to the split, the shop absorbs it and pays the consignor on the original price, or the consignor absorbs it. Scheduled markdowns should be shared, because a shop that pays 60% of the original price on an item sold at half price loses money on the sale. Shop-absorbed discounts are appropriate for promotions the shop chooses to run on its own initiative.
What is the consignment pricing formula?
There are two. The payout formula is consignor payout = selling price × consignor share, calculated on the price the item actually sold at, after any fees the agreement deducts first. The floor formula is floor price = handling cost per item ÷ shop share, the lowest price at which the shop’s portion still covers the work of processing the item. Where a consignor has a guaranteed minimum payout, divide it by the consignor’s share and use whichever floor is higher.
What is a fair consignment split?
Shopify’s consignment guide says most shops pay the consignor 40% to 60% of the final sale price, and PuppetVendors’ guide describes 60/40 in the consignor’s favor as the most common arrangement, with 50/50 common on lower-priced items. A fair split is one where the shop’s share, at the price the item is likely to sell at after markdowns, still exceeds what it costs to take in, list and sell the item.
How do I track consignors in Shopify?
Put the consignor’s name or ID in the vendor field on every product at intake, which lets you filter the product list and build collections by consignor. That gives you a label, not a ledger: Shopify’s documentation does not describe a way to record what each consignor is owed. For balances, statements and payouts you need a consignment app that reads Shopify’s orders and keeps an account per consignor.
What happens to consignment items that do not sell?
The agreement should name one of three outcomes at the end of the term: the consignor collects the item, the shop donates it, or it becomes the shop’s property. In Shopify, returned and donated items should be taken off sale with their quantity set to zero. Items that become store property should be moved to your own vendor and your own clearance rules, since the contract clock and the split no longer apply.
— Palm Beach Themes is a Miami-based Shopify app studio. We use the apps we sell, so every claim in this post comes from our own merchant testing.
If your consignment app handles the ledger and you need something to run the schedule on your Shopify prices, Auto Markdown steps prices down by collection, product type or vendor and stops at the floor you set. It will not track a consignor or pay one, so choose your consignment software first.