Retail is your gift shop — merchandise sold in person, through an embedded online store, or on a kiosk. This walkthrough covers building the product catalog, setting fair market values so gifts are receipted correctly, tracking stock, and choosing how tax is handled.
What retail covers
Setting up a gift shop that takes purchases in person or online, deciding whether your prices are tax inclusive or tax exclusive, and presenting products to your donors with imagery and fair market values.
Retail Products: finding and editing a product
Where to find it. From your dashboard, open Retail → Retail Products.
This lists every existing product for your organization and is where you add new ones. Select a product to edit it.
Name, category, and SKU
- Name — public facing. This is what your donors see.
- Category — groups products for quick access. With postcards, stickers, mugs, pens, and books each categorized, someone on a tablet can tap a category and see only those products; the same works with a mouse when the kiosk form is open on a laptop or desktop.
- SKU — use your own SKU scheme, or adopt PineconeAI's, which is configured at the organization settings level.
Description and base price
The description is public facing for that retail item.
The base price is the price of the product itself. Any member benefits you extend come off the base price — those are set per tier in Memberships.
Fair market value and the tax-deductible amount
Fair market value is the value of the item independent of the base price, and it is what determines the tax-deductible amount for the donor.
For example: a base price of $6 with a fair market value of $3 leaves a tax-deductible amount of $3 for the donor buying it.
Stock and inventory
To track inventory and have stock decrease as items sell, switch off unlimited stock and enter a total item quantity.
To restock, edit the item and increase the stock quantity. You can decrease it too — useful if you have comped an item without recording a retail purchase, or if something has been damaged.
Items that never run out can simply be set to unlimited stock.
Purchases: reading the list
Every retail item's purchases are visible under Purchases. Each row shows the date, the payor — usually the donor making the payment — the product name, the quantity, the total, and the SKU.
Discounts, tax, fee coverage, and net
Each purchase also shows:
- the original pricing of the transaction
- any discounts applied, typically from a membership entitlement
- tax — either added on under tax-exclusive pricing, or calculated but not added under tax-inclusive pricing
- whether the donor covered the fees, and the total fee coverage
- the total, and the net amount received by your organization
Tax settings: inclusive or exclusive
Your organization chooses between tax-inclusive and tax-exclusive pricing. The difference is whether the price a donor sees is the price they pay.
Tax-inclusive pricing
With tax-inclusive pricing on, a $25 item is shown to the donor at $25 and purchased at $25. Any membership entitlement discounts apply to that $25. The tax is then calculated and the base price recalculated on the back end.
What your bookkeeper sees
All of this appears in the revenue reconciliation reports and the retail purchasing reports, which you can hand to your bookkeeper or financial accountant. They show the tax calculated for an item and the resulting base price adjustment. Scheduling those reports is covered in Reporting.
Tax-exclusive pricing
With tax-inclusive pricing off, the donor sees $25 for the item and pays $25 plus tax calculated at checkout. At an 8.25% rate, that item comes to $27.06.
How tax is calculated for in-person sales
PineconeAI calculates tax for in-person sales at the local jurisdiction where the purchase is happening. If you are taking payments in the gift shop with a card reader, that is the location set for that card reader and your organization — whichever local municipality is your taxing authority.
Who remits the tax
PineconeAI calculates the tax basis for you. It does not distribute tax to your local tax authority — that remains your organization's responsibility, together with your accountant.
Searching and sorting purchases
Search purchases by payor name or by item, and sort to see total cost, purchase date, or any other column.
Recording a manual purchase
Type in the donor's email address. If the donor is known in your database the lookup finds them and pulls their details through, and you can update the address from there. Then add the product to the cart.
Because this is an offline entry, you select the product at the individual line item level rather than tapping the item as you would on the kiosk.
When to use manual entry
Most retail goes through one of two routes: an online gift shop or retail store, or an in-person sale where the buyer is with you and you process the payment live — which still lets you record a cash or check payment. Manual purchase entry is specifically for an offline payment recorded separately.
The kiosk itself — what it looks like to your donors on a tablet, and to the staff or volunteers working your gift shop — is covered in The Kiosk.
