Jewellery Billing and Accounting: What Businesses Should Track

Why one total is not enough

A jewellery bill that shows a single amount is almost useless afterwards. Nobody can tell from it how much metal left the shop, what labour was earned, what the stones contributed, or what was given away as discount. Six months later, when margins look thin, there is no way to find out where they went.

Break every bill into its components at the moment it is made, and the same document answers all of those questions for the rest of its life. It also answers the customer’s question, which matters more: a buyer who can see the metal weight, the rate and the making charge separately is a buyer who trusts the price.

What belongs on a jewellery bill

• The piece, identified. Item code, description, purity, and hallmark details where the piece carries them.
• The weights. Gross, stone weight and net metal weight. The customer is charged the metal rate on net, never on gross.
• The rate used, and its date. A price is only defensible if the rate behind it is on the document.
• Making charge. Per gram, as a percentage, or a fixed amount — but stated.
• Wastage. Separately from making, because they are different things and customers ask about them differently.
• Stone value. Priced as stones, not as metal.
• Discount. On its own line. A discount hidden inside a reduced making charge is a discount nobody can report on.
• Tax. Shown on the invoice, with the registration details a VAT invoice requires.

A worked bill, line by line

One 22K necklace, with invented figures. The rate below stands in for that morning’s published figure; amounts are in rupees.

Why you never edit a finished bill

The instinct, when a bill is wrong, is to open it and fix it. Resist it. A finished invoice has already changed your stock, your customer’s balance and your tax register, and editing it silently rewrites all three with no trace of what was there before.

Correct it instead with a credit note or a debit note that references the original. The mistake and the correction both survive, the arithmetic still comes out right, and when somebody asks in eight months why that invoice is unusual, the answer is in the record rather than in somebody’s memory.

Invoice numbers

Numbering sounds like a detail until it is examined. A number must never be reused, and the sequence should have no gaps that cannot be explained — including after a cancellation, and including when the counter was billing while the connection was down. This is one of the few places where a shop’s convenience and its tax obligations point in exactly the same direction.

The ledgers a jewellery shop keeps

Four running records, each answering a question somebody asks weekly.

1. Customers. What each customer bought, what they have paid, and what is outstanding. Receipts must be recorded against the specific bills they settle rather than into a general pot, or the dues report becomes an opinion.
2. Suppliers. Opening balance, invoices, returns, debit notes, payments, closing balance — with payments allocated to the invoices they clear.
3. Karigars. Metal issued, metal returned, wastage, labour earned, payments made. Covered in the guide to karigar work.
4. Stock, by fine weight. The physical ledger, which is the one that can be checked against a scale. See the guide to tracking gold stock.

The fiscal year, and what closes with it

In Nepal the fiscal year runs from Shrawan to Ashadh, and every register your accountant asks for is bounded by it. Sales and purchase registers, the VAT register, customer and supplier balances as at year end, and stock valuation on the closing date all have to be producible for that window rather than for a calendar year. A system that can only report January to December will make somebody re-add a year of figures by hand.

What to check before the period closes

Six checks, in this order, save most of the questions that come back a fortnight later.

• Every bill for the period is finished rather than left as a draft at the counter.
• Credit and debit notes each reference an original document, and none of them is a correction that should have been a fresh sale.
• Receipts are allocated to specific invoices, so the dues figure is a fact rather than a difference between two totals.
• Supplier payments are allocated the same way, and the closing balances are agreed.
• Old gold taken in during the period is recorded with its own weight and purity, not netted off against the sales it reduced.
• Stock valuation is run on the closing date, at cost and at the closing rate, and kept with the rest of the period’s papers.

Where the software stops and your accountant starts

This is worth being plain about. DataJewellers is not an accounting system. It does not keep a general ledger, and it does not produce a trial balance, a profit and loss statement or a balance sheet.

What it does is produce the layer underneath those: correct bills, correct credit and debit notes, customer and supplier ledgers with real allocations, karigar balances, stock by fine weight, sales and purchase registers, VAT registers by fiscal year, and exports to CSV, Excel and PDF. Your accountant takes that and keeps the books. Tax rates and tax settings are configurable, and which rates apply to your business is a question your accountant confirms rather than one a software vendor should answer for you.

How DataJewellers does this

Jewellery billing software produces the bill in the shape set out above, with metal, making, wastage, stone value, discount and VAT as separate lines, invoice numbers that are never reused, credit and debit notes that reference the original document, and billing that keeps working when the line drops and syncs without duplicating an invoice.

The ledgers and registers sit behind it: customer dues, supplier balances, sales and purchase registers, VAT registers by the Nepali fiscal year, and exports your accountant can take straight into their own system. For the buying side of the same records, see purchase management. A business that has enrolled with the IRD for electronic billing can enable the CBMS adapter with its own credentials.