Bottle deposits

[momaro20 (deleted)]

Is there a way to handle items that require deposits, like soda bottles?

[support]

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to bottle deposits. Here are the various ways of handling it that I can think of:

Bottle deposits charged by vendor; bottles returnable to recycling center:
You can just add the bottle deposit charge to the applicable item, in Invoice processing. There is a note about this in the help at the top of the page. An example would be various canned or bottled sodas, juices, etc.

Bottle deposits charged by vendor; bottles returnable only to vendor:
If you get charged for the deposits by the vendor and you must return those bottles only to that vendor for a refund, clubs find it convenient to create new items in the database denoting all the various sizes of bottles that the vendor supplies. You create two records for each bottle size: one for a deposit (charge) and one for a refund (credit). They would be equivalent to each other except one would say deposit and have a positive price, and the other would say refund and have a negative price. When a member takes a bottle home, you add that "bottle deposit item" to their order. When they return a clean bottle for a refund, you add the "bottle refund item" to their order, for the appropriate size bottle, which gives them a credit since the price is negative.

Bottles owned by club, not charged by vendor; returnable to club for refund:
Some clubs own a set of bottles or jars which are used because the vendor only delivers in large bulk quantities. In this case, the charge for the bottle/jar deposit could be added either to a vendor invoice (Invoices page) or using the Member balances page (as a debit) if you have enabled the prepaid balances feature. Returning the jar for a refund would usually be done on the Member balances page (as a credit) because members can return them at any time, and not wait until the next order of the vendor where they got the jar.