How to Track Gold Jewellery Stock Accurately

Why a piece count cannot reconcile

A piece count answers a question nobody in a jewellery shop is really asking. If the tray should hold fourteen chains and holds thirteen, you know something is wrong, but you do not know how wrong, and you cannot check the answer against anything. A scale does not weigh pieces. It weighs metal.

Fine weight is the figure that fixes this, because it is the only measure that adds up across purities. Two grams of 24K and two grams of 18K are not two comparable things, but 2.000 g fine and 1.500 g fine are, and they can sit in the same total. Once every item in the register carries a fine weight, the business has a single number for how much gold it holds, and that number can be checked.

The four weights, and what each one is for

Every piece needs four figures recorded against it, not one. Each answers a different question, and collapsing them is where most of the trouble starts.

• Gross weight is what the scale says with the piece as it stands, stones and all. It is the figure you check a physical count against, because it is the only one you can measure without dismantling anything.
• Stone weight is the part of the gross weight that is not metal. It is not a note in a description field: it has to be subtractable.
• Net weight is gross minus stone. This is the metal, and it is what a customer is charged the metal rate on.
• Fine weight is net weight multiplied by the purity ratio. It is the pure gold content, and it is the figure valuation, reconciliation and karigar settlement all run on.

Three items, to make it concrete:

Purity, and the number you multiply by

Karat is a ratio out of twenty-four, so the multiplier is the karat divided by 24. Written out, that gives the four figures a Nepali counter uses most:

One caution. Some businesses work from assay fineness instead of the karat ratio, and write 916 for 22K, 875 for 21K and 750 for 18K, which differ slightly from the ratios above. Neither convention is wrong, but a shop that mixes them will find a persistent drift of a fraction of a gram per piece, which compounds quietly over a year. Pick the convention your suppliers and your hallmarking use, set it once, and do not let a second one in through the side door.

Tola and gram

One tola is 11.6638 g. Hold the record in gram, because that is what the scale reads and what the arithmetic wants, and convert for display when your counter thinks in tola. Working the other way around loses precision at the point of entry, which is the one place you cannot get it back.

• 31.405 g fine ÷ 11.6638 = 2.692 tola
• 10.000 g ÷ 11.6638 = 0.857 tola
• 5 tola × 11.6638 = 58.319 g

Where the gold actually is

A total is only reconcilable if every place gold can sit has a line of its own. Six places, and a stock record that is missing any of them will never close.

• On the counter and in the safe. Saleable stock, the part you can put on a scale this evening.
• Out with a karigar. Metal issued for a job is still yours. It has left saleable stock and it has not left the business.
• In transit between branches. A transfer has two ends and a gap in the middle, and the gap needs an owner.
• Customer repairs. Physically on your premises and not your stock at all. Counting these into your own weight overstates your holding and, worse, invites someone to sell one.
• Old gold awaiting melt. Taken in over the counter, weighed at its own purity, not yet turned into anything.
• Sold and not yet delivered. Pieces against a sales order or an advance, set aside for a named customer.

A monthly reconciliation that closes

Do this once a month, on the same day, in fine grams. Start with last month’s closing figure and walk every movement that can change it. Say a shop opens Shrawan with 4,182.500 g fine.

That closing figure is a claim about the whole business, not about the shop floor, so the second step is to say where it sits. Metal issued to karigars and a transfer still on the road are both inside the 4,211.030 g and neither is on the premises.

When it does not close

It usually will not, the first few times. Work the difference in this order, because the causes are roughly in this order of likelihood.

1. A transfer recorded at one end and not the other. Check both branches for the same despatch.
2. A karigar job received back but never closed, so finished pieces are in the tray and the issued metal is still shown as out.
3. A repair counted as your own stock, or your own piece sitting in the repair tray.
4. Old gold taken in and credited at the wrong purity, which shows up as a small, consistent bias rather than a single gap.

Past that, the causes are stone weights never separated from metal and pieces that were never tagged at all — both covered in how jewellery businesses can reduce inventory errors. Whatever it turns out to be, write it down: a shop that keeps its audit results can see that the same tray drifts every quarter, which is a management fact rather than an inventory one.

A rate change is not a stock change

The commonest confusion in a gold stock report is a movement that is not a movement. If the market rises, the value of the stock rises and the weight does not. Weight is the physical record and changes only when metal moves; value is a calculation over that weight at a rate on a date. A report that cannot show both separately will be argued about.

How DataJewellers does this

The item record holds gross, stone, net and fine weight with the purity behind the fine weight, so every one of the figures above is a field rather than a calculation somebody does by hand. Read more on jewellery inventory management, which covers branches, locations and the physical stock audit that produces the count.

Metal out with a karigar stays visible as issued rather than vanishing from the total, and what comes back is compared against what was expected before labour is settled — see workshop and karigar management. Daily rates are read from FENEGOSIDA with a manual override, valuation runs at cost and at the current rate side by side, and tags carry the item code as a CODE 128 barcode so a count is a scan rather than a transcription — see barcode management.