Delivery, gift-wrapping and alteration charges

How the Retail pack charges delivery, gift wrapping, alterations and repair handling on customer orders, so service income posts apart from product sales.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 5 min read · For Retail businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

A menswear shop takes up a suit's trousers. A furniture store delivers a dining table to a flat on the fourth floor. A gift shop wraps a dozen corporate hampers. A jeweller sends a watch away for a new strap and handles the paperwork. Each of these earns money, and in most shops none of it is visible: the charge is added to the product price, given away to keep the customer happy, or posted to sales alongside everything else.

That makes it impossible to answer simple questions. Does delivery pay for the van? Are alterations worth the tailor's wages? The Retail & e-commerce pack in Achekam's Industry CRM gives these services their own items and their own income account. This article explains how to set them up and charge them so they show up apart from product sales.

Service items in the starter catalogue

When the Retail pack is switched on, its starter catalogue includes four service items:

• delivery;
• gift wrapping;
• alterations and fitting;
• repair handling.

Each one posts to an income account called Delivery and service income (4410), not to your product sales.

The pack's records are Customer orders, for special orders and returns, and its quotes are Quotations. Service items fit naturally on both: a quotation for a special-order couch can carry the delivery charge, and a customer order for a suit can carry the alteration.

Setting your own prices

The starter items arrive without prices. No starter catalogue item in any of Achekam's industry packs carries one; the business sets its own.

Pricing services is a different exercise from pricing products, because the cost is mostly time and transport rather than stock. Before you enter a price, work out what each service costs you:

Then decide when you charge and when you waive. A waived charge should still appear on the order at its price with a discount, so you can see what the free service cost you.

For repairs and alterations, agree the charge before you start. In South Africa, section 15 of the Consumer Protection Act on Acts Online sets out the rule that a business doing repair work must give an estimate and get the customer's authorisation before doing the work or charging for it. A quotation the customer accepts before the work starts covers that.

Delivery and service income on its own account

With the Industry CRM, an invoice line names the revenue account and the product it sells. When the invoice is issued, revenue is posted per account, and any cost of sales goes in the same journal.

So an invoice for a dining table and its delivery posts the table to your product sales and the delivery to Delivery and service income (4410), on one invoice, with no recoding at month end. The customer sees one document; your income statement sees two kinds of income.

The account added when the pack is switched on

You do not have to create the 4410 account yourself. Switching on the Retail pack adds its revenue accounts to your chart of accounts and its unpriced starter items to the catalogue.

If your chart already uses that code for a different type of account, for example because an earlier bookkeeper created a liability or an expense under the same number, activation is refused and the message names the account concerned. Ask your accountant to check your chart before activation day, and to move or renumber the clashing account so the pack can switch on.

Charging the service on the customer order

The pack keeps service charges where they belong: on the customer order or quotation they relate to. A sensible routine:

1. Add the service item to the quotation when you quote the product, so the customer sees the full cost before agreeing.
2. Carry it through to the invoice, where it posts to 4410.
3. For alterations, write the specific work on the line, such as "Trousers shortened, hem as pinned".

One boundary to respect: the Retail pack never rings up a sale. Till sales stay with the till. If a cashier rings up a delivery charge at the till, it is posted like any other till sale, to the till's revenue account rather than to 4410. Decide which route each service takes: services sold with a customer order go on the order; quick extras at the counter, such as wrapping a single gift, may be simpler at the till, but then they will not show separately.

Reading service income apart from product sales

Once services post to their own account, the questions become answerable. Compare Delivery and service income with what you spend on delivery and alterations: fuel, van costs, the tailor's wages. If delivery income covers only part of what the van costs, you can decide whether to raise the charge, set a minimum order for free delivery, or accept the cost as marketing, knowing the number.

The pack also helps with the timing of service work. It reminds staff when a special order is expected and when it has not been collected, and can remind the customer to collect 3 days before the collect-by date, so an altered garment does not sit in the back for weeks. More on that is in reminders for uncollected orders. The path from quotation to invoice is covered in special orders from quote to invoice, and how the Industry CRM writes to your ledger in how the CRM posts to your ledger.

Before the pack goes live, list every service your shop already performs, decide which you will charge for, and price each starter item from what it costs you.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.