Consignment workflow
How to track art consignments without losing track of work
The moment artwork leaves the studio, inventory becomes operational. You need to know where the work is, who has it, what the agreed price is, and what happens next if it does not sell.
Track consignments in the same place as the artwork record
Try the live demo to see how artwork status, contacts, collections, and sales records can stay connected instead of splitting across files and email threads.
Especially useful if you place work with multiple galleries, fairs, or consultants.
The basics every consignment record should include
- Artwork inventory code and title
- Gallery or contact name
- Date delivered or shipped
- Retail price and commission arrangement
- Current location and return expectations
- Status, such as On consignment, Sold, or Returned
Those details sound basic, but they are the ones artists end up looking for over and over. If they are not tied to the artwork record, they tend to disappear into inboxes and old PDFs.
Why location history matters
Consignment tracking is really location tracking with higher stakes. It is not enough to know that a painting is “with a gallery.” You want the exact gallery or contact, the handoff date, and whether the work is expected back, still available, or already sold.
That history becomes useful for insurance, pricing, repeat placements, and simply avoiding awkward uncertainty when someone asks whether a specific piece is still available.
Pricing and commission should live with the artwork
One of the fastest ways for consignment admin to get messy is letting pricing live in one place and the artwork list in another. The cleaner system is to keep the price, placement, and later sale outcome close to the artwork record itself.
That makes it easier to explain what happened to a work over time and harder to accidentally create inconsistent pricing between direct sales and represented sales.
The easiest way to stay current
Update the record on the day the work moves, not later. That is the whole trick. If you wait for a weekly admin session, details slip and certainty drops fast.
This is where Artwork Codex is designed to help, because status, contact records, and documents sit next to the artwork itself rather than in unrelated files.