There is no consignment system built for the UK market apart from ours, so the honest shortlist is short. Of the established US products, ConsignCloud (from $139 a month) is the one that works outside North America without workarounds: configurable currency, Stripe card payments, Shopify and Square integrations. Ricochet ($199 a month, plus $100 if you do not use its US card processor), SimpleConsign ($159 to $359 a month) and ConsignPro ($1,495 once or $129 a month, Windows only) are strong general consignment tills but treat the UK as an afterthought. A Shopify store with a consignment app such as Consignify (from $15 a month, developer based in Cambridge) is the cheapest route for an online-first reseller. None of them - ours included in some respects, see the table - will decide for you whether a sale is an agent sale, a margin scheme sale or a standard-rated sale, which is the question a UK consignment shop actually has to answer on every ticket.

All prices below are as of August 2026 from the vendors' own pricing pages, linked under Sources. Where a price is not published we say so.

The comparison table

Product Price (Aug 2026) Consignor payouts and split rules UK VAT (agent vs principal, margin scheme) Serialised luxury items and authentication record Multi-channel listing GBP pricing / UK presence Best for
Ricochet $199/month, all features; $100/month extra if you do not use Ricochet Pay (from 1 May 2026) Yes; splits per consignor, ACH payouts ($2 per ACH, US only) No. US sales tax model only Generic item record; no authentication field found Own webstore (free 3 months, then paid), QuickBooks, Mailchimp No GBP; Boise, Idaho; Ricochet Pay is US-only, so a UK shop pays the $100 surcharge US consignment and vendor-mall stores
ConsignCloud Basic $139/month; Pro $189/month per location; Enterprise custom Yes; split defaults by account, category, price point or SKU; PayPal bulk payouts ($1 each), Checkbook ACH (US) Configurable tax types and currency code, but no agent/principal or margin concept Generic; custom item fields; no authentication record found Shopify and Square integrations; eBay/Facebook/Instagram via Shopify USD only; "international use" is claimed and the currency setting makes it workable UK shops that want a proven consignment till and will handle VAT in the accounts
SimpleConsign Basic $159, Standard $259, Professional $359/month (intro $99 for 6 months) Yes; consignor portal and ACH payments from Standard No. US sales tax Generic Shopify and QuickBooks from Professional USD only; "U.S.-based support team"; no statement on international use US multi-location consignment
ConsignPro $1,495 one-off per PC (+$395 per extra PC) or $129/month EZ Lease; $250/year support renewal Yes; statements and cheques No Generic Optional web services (MyResaleWeb, store builder), priced separately USD; Windows only, "We don't run on Macs" Single-site shops that want installed software and own it outright
Liberty REACT (Resaleworld) Shop page lists Liberty Cloud $189.95 and Consignor Center $49.95; billing frequency not stated Yes; cheque runs, consignor app, "over 500 price codes" No Generic Shopify listing, eBay storefront link, QuickBooks Online/Desktop export USD; Orlando, Florida Established US shops needing eBay plus Shopify from one inventory
Shopify + consignment app (e.g. Consignify) Shopify Basic £25/month (£19 annual) plus Consignify $15-$35/month, or PuppetVendors from $49/month App calculates payouts from commission rules; consignor portal Shopify handles VAT rates on sales; no agent/margin concept in the app Shopify product record; serial as SKU or metafield Shopify channels: eBay, Facebook, Instagram, Google, POS Shopify priced in GBP; Consignify Ltd is registered in Cambridge, billed in USD Online-first resellers already on Shopify
Square for Retail Free, or Plus £49/month per location; 1.75% in person (1.6% on Plus) No consignor ledger; vendor reporting only No Generic Square Online Priced in GBP A till with vendor reporting, not a consignment system
Milleso - our product, so weigh this row accordingly Counter £99/month, Trade £249/month ex VAT; one month free; migration done for you Consignment and memo with consignor payouts Three VAT regimes in one sale; VAT treatment decided at intake; margin scheme stock book Serialised one-of-a-kind stock with all-in cost; watches, bags and jewellery in one list Chrono24 feed, eBay, Shopify, WooCommerce; listings pause when a piece leaves the building GBP, built for the UK; Xero and Sage export UK luxury resale: watches, jewellery, bags; not furniture or vendor malls

Where Milleso does not fit: no US sales tax, no multi-store yet, no built-in card terminal other than the Dojo integration, no vendor-mall booth rent, no FCA pawn-loan ledger.

Why "consignment software" mostly means American software

The category was built for the US resale shop - clothing consignment, furniture, vendor malls with booth rent - and the five established products above all come from there. That shapes three things a UK buyer will notice immediately.

Tax. Every one of them models sales tax as a percentage added at the till, by location. UK VAT on consignment does not work like that. Which brings us to the column none of them fill.

Payouts. Ricochet, ConsignCloud and SimpleConsign all offer integrated consignor payouts by ACH, which is the US bank network. From the UK you are left with PayPal (ConsignCloud's PayPal bulk payout at $1 a time works internationally), cheque, or exporting a payout list and paying by Faster Payments from your bank. That is fine, but it is not the one-click payout run the marketing shows.

Card processing. Ricochet now charges $100 a month if you do not use Ricochet Pay, and Ricochet Pay is a US processor. A UK shop on Ricochet is therefore paying $299 a month before its own card fees. ConsignCloud lets you use Stripe, which works in the UK, or any non-integrated processor at no extra charge.

How does UK VAT work on a consignment sale, and which system handles it?

This is the column that matters and the one every US roundup omits. A UK consignment shop sells goods it does not own, and VAT asks one question first: are you selling as an agent or as a principal?

  • Agent, in the consignor's name (disclosed agent). The sale of the goods is the consignor's supply. If the consignor is a private individual there is no VAT on the goods at all. Your commission is a supply of services to the consignor and is standard-rated if you are VAT-registered: 20% on the commission, invoiced to the consignor.
  • Agent, in your own name (undisclosed agent). For VAT you are treated as buying and selling the goods. Section 17 of VAT Notice 718 lets you use the margin scheme on eligible goods: your purchase price is what the consignor receives, your selling price is what the buyer pays, and your margin is the commission. VAT is 1/6 of that margin.
  • Principal. You bought the item outright. Ordinary margin scheme treatment, with the stock book that goes with it.

Notice 718 paragraph 17.7 also requires the agent to hold an invoice with the details in paragraph 5.3, which means the system has to record who the consignor is, what they get, and the agreed price, against the item. Our consignment accounting and VAT article goes through the bookkeeping.

None of the five US systems has a field for any of this. ConsignCloud's "multiple tax types" can be bent to apply 20% to a commission line, and a competent bookkeeper can reconstruct the rest from the consignor statements. But the decision - agent or principal, margin or standard - is made outside the software, and is not recorded against the item. Milleso records the VAT treatment at intake and the till applies it at sale; that is the main reason the row exists.

What does each one cost a UK shop in sterling?

At £1 = $1.30, roughly where sterling has been trading, the monthly figures in the table convert to: Ricochet about £230 (or about £153 if you could use Ricochet Pay, which you cannot); ConsignCloud Basic about £107, Pro about £145; SimpleConsign Basic about £122, Professional about £276; ConsignPro EZ Lease about £99; Shopify Basic £25 plus Consignify at about £19 to £27. Add 20% if the vendor is registered for UK VAT on digital services and charges it, which you should check on your first invoice. Card-not-present fees on a USD subscription will add a percentage or two on top.

Ricochet, ConsignCloud and SimpleConsign all say no long-term contract. ConsignPro is a purchase plus an annual support renewal.

Which one copes with luxury items rather than clothing racks?

A clothing consignment shop tags hundreds of items a week at low values. A luxury reseller holds a Submariner, a Birkin and a sapphire ring, each one-of-a-kind, each with a serial, a condition record, a set of authentication photographs and a provenance trail that a buyer will ask for. The feature list that matters is different:

  • One record per piece, not SKU plus quantity. All the consignment systems do this reasonably, because consignment is inherently item-level. Shopify does not: a product is a SKU with a quantity, and serial numbers go in a metafield or the SKU field.
  • An authentication record. Entrupy, Real Authentication and the like issue a certificate per item. None of the vendor feature pages we read describe a dedicated authentication field; you attach it as a photo or note. We could not verify whether any has added one, so treat this as "not found" rather than "not possible".
  • Stolen-goods and AML checks. For watches, check the serial before you take it in. If you also buy outright for cash, high value dealer rules apply above £10,000. No consignment system we looked at has an AML file against the consignor.
  • Channels. Luxury sells on Chrono24, eBay, Vestiaire and your own site, and a piece listed in three places must come down from all three the moment it sells in the shop. Liberty (eBay plus Shopify) and ConsignCloud (Shopify, and eBay through Shopify) get closest among the US five.

Should you just use Shopify and an app?

For an online-first reseller with one shop or none, yes, it is the cheapest working answer. Shopify Basic is £25 a month in GBP, Shopify POS handles a counter, and Consignify ($15 to $35 a month, 60-day trial, unlimited consignors) or PuppetVendors (from $49 a month) add the consignor ledger and portal. We compare the apps in Shopify consignment apps compared.

What you give up: the VAT problem above (Shopify charges VAT on the sale price by default, which is wrong for a margin scheme or agent sale unless you configure each product), item-level stock, and any intake or repairs workflow. The moment you hold stock you own alongside stock you hold on consignment, and sell both through one till, you have outgrown it.

What we could not verify

  • Liberty's billing model. Resaleworld's shop lists Liberty Cloud at $189.95 and Consignor Center at $49.95 without saying whether these are monthly or one-off. Ask before you budget.
  • ConsignCloud's trial length. The pricing page says "Start for Free" without a number of days.
  • Whether any of the five has a dedicated authentication-certificate field. Not on any feature page we read.
  • Ricochet's non-integrated processing fee. Reported by ConsignCloud and Circle Hand, both competitors, citing a Ricochet support announcement dated 1 May 2026. Ricochet's own pricing page does not mention it. Confirm with Ricochet before signing.
  • Which vendors charge UK VAT on the subscription. Not stated on any pricing page.
  • Exchange rate. Sterling figures above use $1.30; check the day's rate.

Sources

This is general information, not tax advice, and vendor pricing is not a quotation. Prices were read from the vendors' pages on 19 August 2026 and change without notice. The VAT treatment of a consignment sale turns on the facts of your agreement with the consignor; confirm it with your accountant before you set up your till.

Milleso is our product. It is in the table above with the disclosure; the short version is that it is built for UK luxury resale - serialised stock, consignor payouts, the VAT treatment decided at intake, Chrono24, eBay and Shopify channels, and Xero and Sage export - and it is not the right choice for a US store, a vendor mall or a furniture consignment business.