A furniture business that sells made to order already knows what it holds in customer deposits, because the total sits in the accounting system. The harder question is about the orders delivering this month: which pieces are on the truck, and what balance is still owed on each. Answering it takes three systems and an afternoon.
The answer belongs on one order record, from deposit to delivery, inside Shopify where the sale is taken. Extending Shopify to hold that record is what we build at Teifi. When homenature, a New York furniture maker that customizes 60% of its range, moved its work orders and purchase orders into Shopify with WorkMate, its order-management costs fell 90%.
Public retailers carry tens of millions. At March 31, 2026, Havertys held $40.4 million in customer deposits, up from $35.5 million at the end of 2025. It books the revenue when the merchandise is delivered, and about $1.8 million of the year-end balance had still not become revenue three months later. Bassett Furniture held $24.7 million at February 28, 2026, and does not ship product to its retail warehouses until a consumer has ordered and paid a deposit.
Your business carries the same line, smaller. La-Z-Boy told investors on August 19, 2026 that its custom upholstery ships in four to six weeks from its US supply chain, and a 2026 trade estimate puts domestic custom upholstery at eight to sixteen weeks. Dates move inside that window. A vendor ships late or a customer changes the fabric, and the balance you were due to collect moves with the truck.
The short answer: Manage made-to-order deposits order by order, against each order's delivery date. Keep the deposit, balance due, vendor purchase order (PO) and delivery date on one order in Shopify, where the payment is taken. On Shopify, WorkMate, the work order system Teifi builds into Shopify POS, lists every open order with its status and due date, and each order carries its own balance.
What is owed on the orders delivering this month?
The balance due on each of them. The deposits are already on your balance sheet; the balances are cash you have not collected, charged when each piece ships, so every delivery date that moves takes a payment with it. Finance asks for that figure at every month-end.
The pieces of the answer usually sit apart. The deposit is in your point of sale (POS) or your accounting system. The vendor purchase order went out by email or lives in your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The delivery slot is on a route sheet or in your logistics lead's spreadsheet. Each record is accurate. Each started as a sensible fix: the vendor needs a purchase order in its own format, and the delivery team plans by truck. None of the three holds the other two, so the month-end figure gets built by someone lining them up by hand.
WorkMate keeps the balance on the order. A deposit written on a paper ticket has to be re-keyed before anyone can see the balance behind it. WorkMate takes the deposit at the counter in Shopify POS, and the balance stays on the same order until it is captured when the piece ships. Every work order becomes a native Shopify order. This month's deliveries come off one list, with each order carrying what is still owed.
What happens to a made-to-order piece between the vendor PO and the delivery truck?
The piece leaves your sales floor as a purchase order and comes back weeks later as a shipment. The specification agreed at the counter has to survive both trips. Every handoff is a chance to retype it. Before the change, homenature's WorkMate case study records that fabric choices and dimensions were particularly hard to capture and that crucial details on intricate custom orders were lost or incorrectly transferred between departments.
Those lost details cost cash. A wrong fabric means a remake, and a remake means a later delivery date. The deposit stays on your balance sheet for another production cycle and the balance due at shipment waits with it, while the customer who calls to ask where the sofa is waits for someone to read back through the vendor's last email. The ledger shows only the deposit.
WorkMate carries the specification into the purchase order. Fabric, finish, dimension and leg style usually live in email threads and handwritten notes until something ships wrong. WorkMate captures them at the point of sale and stores them on the work order, and when the work order becomes a vendor purchase order mapped to the right supplier, the custom details carry across without re-entry. Receiving reserves the piece for its customer. Every purchase order stays linked to the work orders waiting on it. Status updates reach staff and customers automatically from first quote to final delivery.
How do you track special orders across several showrooms?
With one stock count that every showroom and the warehouse share.
One count across every showroom. Without it, a customer at one showroom asks after a piece at another, someone phones the warehouse, and the answer depends on who picks up. Teifi RMS, the retail management system in our Retail Commerce Suite, holds multi-location inventory and purchase orders in one Shopify-native stack. The warehouse and every showroom see the same stock. An associate can tell a customer on the spot whether the piece is on a floor somewhere or still on order.
Teifi Bridge keeps the ERP in step. Where an ERP or an accounting package books the money, the sale often gets re-keyed into it by hand; Teifi Bridge connects Shopify to your ERP and your accounting, so the order finance reads there matches the order the showroom sold. Nobody types the sale twice.
homenature cut order-management costs 90% after retiring its second database
For over 25 years, homenature has sold luxury furniture in New York. It ran Shopify beside its previous furniture order-management system, so the business kept two inventory databases, and the team spent over 40 hours a week manually reconsolidating orders and stock. The manual work bred costly errors. Forty hours a week is a full-time role spent keeping two systems in agreement. Robert Morrison, a senior consultant at homenature, calls vendor price changes under the old setup "an ordeal."
The company moved its work orders and purchase orders onto WorkMate, inside Shopify's inventory. Morrison put the difference in stockroom terms. "If we're out of stock, we can create a purchase order within the app, taking less time than checking two different inventories." homenature's published results put order-management costs 90% below the previous solution, order processing 50% more efficient and total order-management time down 25%. Of the WorkMate team, Morrison says: "They got us launched exactly when we wanted to."
Your team already keeps these records straight
The people who run your deposits and deliveries know every open order, and the business has grown on what they know. The exposure is that the knowledge lives in two or three people. At homenature, the previous setup had designated staff members who could enter orders, and by the company's own account that quickly led to longer lead times and bottlenecks. Moving deposit-to-delivery onto one record is a real project. Your current systems hold years of order history, and a peak season is the wrong time to move it. The direction is settled. The date is yours.
What should furniture deposit and balance-due software track?
The deposit with the balance still due, the specification agreed at the counter, the vendor purchase order raised against it, and the delivery date, all on the same order. Finance and the sales floor read the same record. And it has to sit inside the system that takes the payment, or it turns into one more copy to reconcile.
A deposit record kept beside the POS, in a spreadsheet or a separate order system, has to be updated each time the counter takes a payment and each time a vendor date moves. Each missed update is a disagreement. Month-end reconciliation is the search for them.
One order shows whether your record is whole. Pick any order delivering next week and ask for its balance and its truck date. If one screen answers both, it is.
Together, WorkMate, Teifi RMS and Teifi Bridge make up our Service Retail Accelerator, which runs across bikes, automotive, furniture and specialty retail. WorkMate already runs in bike shops such as Winter Park Cycles. A single-showroom business may need only WorkMate.
The deposits stay on the books either way
Every deposit you hold stays on the books until its piece is delivered, whichever system tracks it. With the balance and the delivery date on one order, the month-end figure comes from the orders themselves. Finance can see what is owed on this month's deliveries, and the floor can tell a customer where the piece is. Neither waits for the person who keeps the spreadsheet.
If you sell from stock and take payment in full at the counter, your point of sale already does this job. Financing and vaulted-card charges taken weeks after the sale are a separate problem; our furniture page covers how we handle them. We have delivered the Retail Commerce Suite across more than 50 retail implementations.
The 25% Year follows one sofa from deposit to delivery and asks whether your systems can see what moves while the deposit waits. Landed cost is one: the 25% duty on imported upholstered furniture has applied since October 14, 2025. Delivery and returns are the others, and each changes what an order really costs after the sale.
If you want to walk through how your deposits and delivery dates sit today, talk to us.
Questions furniture retailers ask
How long does a made-to-order sofa take to deliver?
Weeks, and the range is wide. On its August 19, 2026 earnings call, La-Z-Boy put its custom upholstery at four to six weeks from its US supply chain. A trade estimate puts domestic custom upholstery more broadly at eight to sixteen weeks.
Can you take a deposit on a custom furniture order in Shopify POS?
Yes. With WorkMate, you take the deposit in Shopify POS and the balance stays on the order until it is captured when the piece ships. The work order behind the sale converts to a native Shopify order.
What is the difference between a work order and a purchase order in furniture retail?
A purchase order goes to your vendor and records what you are buying and when it ships. A work order is your internal record of the job, carrying the specification and the customer it belongs to. A made-to-order sale needs both, linked, so the vendor's shipment can be matched to the customer waiting for it.
Why do furniture retailers take deposits on custom orders?
Because the piece is built or shipped to order after the sale. Bassett's quarterly filing for February 2026 ties shipment to the deposit: product reaches its retail warehouses only after a consumer has ordered and paid one. The deposit then sits on the balance sheet as a liability until delivery.