What to do with sm bus inventory

[stressin]

I have probably about $20,000 or more left in inventory and I am getting ready to file for bankruptcy. The lawyer and I have gone over my inventory of personal belongings and she believes that most to all of them will be exempt, the only question right now is whether my exemptions will cover any or all of my inventory.
I am ready to close the shop and file, so I am wondering what to do with the inventory during the bankruptcy process. I know it needs to be available to the trustee. Is storing it the best option? I can rent a storage unit and stack boxes. I want to keep the business inventory separate from our personal property. Not sure it matters in our bankruptcy filing, but since the trustee is more likely to want to take the inventory to sell and pay something to creditors, I want it to be easily accessible, but I don't want to keep the shop open just so that the inventory will be available. (I am renting retail space and my rent is paid through August 15th, but I need time to get everything boxed, cleaned up, painted, etc.)
For anyone with a small business that filed--did you store the inventory during the bankruptcy process? I have a call in to my lawyer.
Obviously one option is to try and sell it off, but I have been working on that and even at 50% off it's not moving as quickly as I would like. I am fine with it if the Trustee wants it to sell off--I just need a new beginning and I want to get out from under my debt. The Trustee can have whatever they want--I just don't want to have to keep the store open and running so that the inventory is available and I don't think putting all this stuff in my garage is a great idea, either.
Ideas, experiences?

[AngelinaCatHub]

I would box it up and mark it as what it is. Keep it out of the weather and dirt but if you put it into storage you have to pay money out. Your garage should be fine. The Trustee does not care where you store it. They only care about you listing it. They probably will not even come to your house to check. They did not come to ours and I have invited a physical inventory of what we have. Box it and store it is my vote. ‘Hub

[BKOnce]

What are they?... eBay or Craiglists!?

[southernbelle]

I boxed and rented a storage space about a block away from my business when I closed it. Some small stuff didn't fit so I stored it in my garage at home. The one important thing I did was to take pictures of everything while it was in place so that I could remember what I had.

I also made a spreadsheet of what I had that listed when I bought it and what the approx. value was. It helped me later when I filed because I didn't have to go hunting around for that information. I also didn't have to unbox everything or go rooting around to show the furniture dealer (who was hired by the Trustee) what I had either. I was able to email him pictures because he could see that the storage space was maxed out and wanted to get a better look at everything.

Document. Document. Document. Pictures helped me a lot. Good luck.

[stressin]

The suggestion to take pictures is a very good one--thank you. I have a digital camera and can do this easily. I can photograph what is going into each box and put the photo number on the box as well. Thanks--this way the Trustee can decide, what, if anything, they want.
Has anyone NOT had their inventory (not exempt) taken by the Trustee? I can't imagine that it would be worth it, but I'm not losing sleep over what happens to the inventory at this point. I have heard that a lot of people end up keeping their inventories for small businesses--that the trustee COULD have taken the stuff, but decided not to, and it was considered abandoned, returned to the bankruptcy petitioner.

[reallynervous]

In our case, our attorney had us list my small business inventory (online store that closed at the beginning of the year) with yard sale values like the rest of our belongings. The attorney then included that value with our other exemptions (we have a lot of unused home equity exemption).

I just have it stored in boxes sitting my landing temporarily.

reallynervous

[fltoo]

I marked everything at my cost and sold it off. Chances are your inventory was charged on cc cards?

I saved every receipt when I bought something cash to offset the cash I received from the sale of goods. I also have quite a bit of time between the sale of goods and my filing.

You have 1 1/2 months left. Have a huge going out of business sale.

[southernbelle]

The suggestion to take pictures is a very good one--thank you. I have a digital camera and can do this easily. I can photograph what is going into each box and put the photo number on the box as well. Thanks--this way the Trustee can decide, what, if anything, they want.
Has anyone NOT had their inventory (not exempt) taken by the Trustee? I can't imagine that it would be worth it, but I'm not losing sleep over what happens to the inventory at this point. I have heard that a lot of people end up keeping their inventories for small businesses--that the trustee COULD have taken the stuff, but decided not to, and it was considered abandoned, returned to the bankruptcy petitioner.

You are welcome. I find the more organized the better. Pictures are the way to go. My atty. almost high fived me when I told him I had pictures of everything. Although my Trustee makes me want to scream, I'm glad I'm organized because the unorganized folks must really go through the ringer.

My entire inventory isn't exempt and isn't worth much, but the Trustee is in the process of deciding if it's worth liquidating it or not. The way she did that was to send a local furniture dealer to the storage location to look at the equipment and I don't know if she wants it or not yet. If the house appraisal I have scheduled for tomorrow shows zero equity, I have a good feeling my Trustee won't bother with my small business inventory because I don't believe it's worth it. If she does tell me I can have it, I plan to donate most to a homeless shelter and will sell the rest.

[BigJohn]

A business, like mine, went out of business about 6 months ago. What she did not sell, I bought. I didn't want to buy her stuff so I insisted she make me an offer. After about 4-5 offers, I agreed to $400.00. The way I looked at it, she would have to pay for storage and shipping cost (because she was moving out of State) so in the end, she was probably further ahead by taking my $400.00.

As for us, we haven't filed yet but plan on using what we bought her stuff for as to what our stuff in our store is worth.

[newme]

In our case, we only had one secured loan from one bank (the rest of our business debt were un,secured ccs) so our lawyer suggested we call the bank and tell them we are closing our doors and filing for bankruptcy. We told them to come and take the rest of the inventory (no worries about where to store inventory), and gave them whatever money we had left in our business account. Then we filed chpt 7 bk, no asset. I can't imagine having to go through an asset case! We just had the 341 today, and it went smoothly! whew.

[BigJohn]

Our lawyer told us to sell down the inventory so that is what we have been doing. Since March, we haven't bought one thing. Because we want to keep the business, we have not been discounting.
As for the value of things, that might be hard to determine. I have some things I mark up as much as 50 times (5000) or more. It might take a long time to sell the item, but eventually they do. We carry some items that are almost, if not impossible, to find any where else. For example, I have some Angkor statutes I paid about $3.00 for each one. Overseas where I bought them, one place sells them for about $1300.00 each.