Gun shows are some of the best selling days a shop has, and some of the hardest on its records. Guns leave the building while the website still lists them. Someone at the counter sells a rifle that’s actually on a table two counties away. An out-of-state show means transfers to the host FFL and back, bound book entries in both directions, and a settlement with the host that might not arrive for weeks. Most shops handle all of that with a spreadsheet, a printed list and a lot of memory.
We’ve built gun show support into MFS Exchange to take that off your plate. It follows a show from the day you plan it to the day the last dollar is settled, and it keeps your inventory, your bound book and your books in agreement the whole way.
Plan the show
Every show starts as a plan. You enter the dates, the venue and the host, and choose whether you’re selling the guns yourself at an in-state show or sending them to a host FFL across state lines. Then you pick the guns. Each serial’s details and cost are saved as they were that day, so your numbers later reflect what you actually took, not what the product says months after. You can print the manifest, or save it as a PDF, for packing and for the table.
A plan is only a plan. Saving it doesn’t hold any inventory or touch your bound book, so you can change your mind about what goes until you’re ready to load the truck.
Guns at the show can’t be sold twice
When you stage a show, every gun on it gets a show hold. A held gun can’t be sold at the register, bought on your website, put on layaway or published to marketplaces until it’s back in the store or sold at the show. The hold works alongside any other hold on the same gun, so ending one never quietly releases another.
Two edge cases get special treatment:
- Online orders that slip through. If a paid order arrives for a gun that’s already staged for a show, it’s held for a manager to review instead of heading straight to fulfillment, and it appears on a conflict list with what to do next.
- GunBroker auctions. A gun that’s live in a GunBroker auction can’t be staged, because pulling the listing would end the auction and strand its bidders. MFS tells you which gun it is so you can leave it off the show.
Selling at an in-state show
For a show where you’re working the table yourself, you enroll the device you’re taking as a show register. During the show’s dates, that register can sell the guns from that show, and only those. Each sale is tied to the gun on the manifest once the payment goes through, so you always know which guns sold at the show and for how much.
If a gun comes back early and a customer wants it at the store, a manager can authorize a one-off sale of that serial for the next 30 minutes, with a reason recorded on the order.
When the show is over, you scan every gun back in. Anything that doesn’t come back goes on a missing-items list for a manager to resolve, with notes, instead of disappearing into a spreadsheet nobody checks.
Out-of-state shows and transfers
When guns go to a host FFL in another state, each one has to leave your bound book as a transfer and come back as an acquisition. MFS handles that with FastBound, with Orchid, or with a paper bound book:
- File the transfer. MFS starts a pending transfer to the host for each gun in FastBound or Orchid, or records a paper entry. It never commits a transfer on its own. Your staff confirm it in the bound book.
- Check before it ships. A printable transfer sheet marks every serial either cleared to go or “do not transfer”, with the reason, so nothing leaves on a problem.
- Take it out of stock only when the book agrees. MFS checks the bound book until it shows the transfer to that host, or until the paper entry is recorded, and only then removes the gun from your stock. A worklist flags any transfer that’s running late.
- Bring it back the same way. When the guns come home, you scan them in and the return acquisition is filed. Each gun goes back into stock once the book confirms it, or a manager confirms it was recorded.
If the host sells a gun at the show, it’s recorded as sold by the host from their statement, so it doesn’t sit on your books as missing.
Settling up with the host
The money side is often what drags on longest. For each show, MFS keeps the host’s statement of what sold, every payment you receive (including partial ones), any adjustments, and write-offs for the small differences that aren’t worth chasing. A financial overview shows what’s owed, what’s been received and what’s still outstanding, and you can export it.
All of it posts to QuickBooks on the right dates, so a show’s income and costs land in the month they belong to. Write-offs post as bad debt or overpayment income, and voiding one posts the reversal.
A show closes only when every gun is accounted for, back in the store, sold, or resolved, and every dollar is settled. A zero balance on its own isn’t enough. If a late statement or a payment arrives after you close it, the show reopens so the books stay right.
Built for the messy parts
Show venues are where Wi-Fi goes to die, and bound book services have their own bad days. So before every step that touches your bound book, MFS saves what it’s about to do. If a connection drops halfway through, no gun ends up half-transferred, and a step that may or may not have gone through is held for checking instead of being blindly tried again. Anything MFS can’t confirm stays on a manager’s list with a clear next step until someone resolves it. Turning the feature off doesn’t release a hold or lose a record, either.
Turning it on
Gun show support ships in WooPOS 1.65.0 as an opt-in setting, so nothing changes for a shop until it’s switched on. If your shop works shows, book a time with us. We’ll turn it on with you and help set up your first show.