Buying a device (trade-in)

Buying a phone or laptop from a customer over the counter is a Buy button in the Point of Sale top bar, next to Refund. It only appears on a plan that includes trade-in and buyback, and only for an operator holding pos.refund — Process refunds — the same permission a refund needs, because from the drawer's point of view a device buy is the same kind of event: money going out.

What gets recorded

Brand, model and generation; an IMEI or serial number; a condition grade; the price paid; and who you bought it from — a seller name, a contact, and a free-text note for whatever ID was sighted. Notes are optional, and you choose which inventory category the device is filed under.

The condition grade is one of a fixed four, not free text, so a resale price and a later dispute both mean the same thing in every shop:

The serial/IMEI field carries one soft check: a value that is exactly 15 digits and fails the IMEI checksum shows a warning. It never stops you saving — a laptop serial or anything with letters is left alone entirely, because it was never shaped like an IMEI to begin with.

Approving the payout

Paying a seller needs a supervisor's or admin's PIN — the same bar as a refund. The approval is one-shot and expires two minutes after it is given, so it has to be entered at the moment of the buy, not banked for later.

Where the money comes from

The payout comes out of the cash drawer. Only the shop's cash payment methods are accepted for it — pay a seller any other way and the buy is refused, because a payout that did not come out of the drawer would not show up when the drawer is counted at close. At end of day, every device payout for the shift is subtracted from expected cash, so the drawer still reconciles.

The device becomes stock

Completing a buy books the device into the catalogue as an ordinary product: cost is set to what you paid, price starts at $0, and the product is held inactive — it will not appear at the till or in the product grid until someone prices it. One unit of stock is added at the store that bought it, and the movement is recorded as a receiving event. See Activity log.

Pricing it

Open Inventory → Trade-ins and set a price. Setting it above zero puts the device on the shelf; setting it back to zero takes it off again — there is no state where a device is both listed and priced at nothing. Pricing a trade-in requires an admin.

Selling it

Nothing special happens here — once it is priced, a bought-in device sells through the ordinary till exactly like any other product.

The trade-in list

Inventory → Trade-ins lists every device bought this way: serial, condition, what you paid, the current price, and a status — Not priced, For sale or Sold. It can be filtered by store and status, and searched by serial or seller.

What this does not do yet

• There is no way to take a trade-in as part-payment against a purchase in the same transaction — a buy and a sale are always two separate events.
• There are no valuation guides.
• There is no buyback price book.
• A seller can only be paid out of the cash drawer — there is no way to pay by bank transfer or card.