Items That Ask for Cost & Retail at the Register

Some things don't have a fixed price. A one-off estate pipe, a consignment humidor, a custom order — the price is whatever you agreed with that customer, and there's no sense pretending it lives on an item record.

TORO handles these by asking at the register. Convert an item to Provide Cost & Retail at Time of Transaction and every time it's rung up, the employee is asked what it sold for.

Converting an Item

Open the item and choose the option to provide cost and retail at the time of the transaction. TORO warns you first, because this is a real change:

Are you sure you want to remove cost information? This will disable any active skus!

That's not a small print detail — converting disables the item's skus and forces a save and reload. It's the right move for genuinely variable items and the wrong move for something you simply haven't priced yet.

Then TORO Asks How to Work Out the Cost

This is the new part. The employee provides the Retail at the register, but TORO still needs a Cost behind it, or your profit reporting is meaningless. You now choose how it gets one.

First — how should the default Cost be calculated?

• Percent of the Retail — then you enter the percent, 0 to 100. This is the traditional behaviour, and the box starts at 50%, which is what every converted item used to get whether it suited you or not.
• Dollar Amount — a flat cost in dollars, regardless of what it sells for.

Second — can the employee change it?

• Yes - Employee Can Change It — the cost appears as a default and can be adjusted at the counter.
• No - Cost is Fixed — the cost is what you set, and the register won't let it be moved.

Fixed is the one to reach for when you don't want a cashier's guess landing in your margins. Adjustable suits shops where whoever rings the sale genuinely knows what the piece cost you.

The Cost Is Never Zero

Whatever the rule works out to, the cost recorded on a sale is always at least $0.01.

That's a deliberate floor. A zero-cost line reads as pure profit everywhere it turns up — margin reports, profit by employee, your daily numbers — and one mis-keyed sale can quietly distort a month. A penny is honest about being a placeholder in a way that zero isn't.

Items You Converted Before

They keep working exactly as they did: 50% of retail, adjustable at the register. Nothing was changed underneath you.

If one of those would suit a different rule, convert it again and pick what you want.