Jewellery purchase management software

What it is

Purchase management is the buying side of a jewellery ledger: supplier records, purchase invoices entered line by line with weight and purity, the receipt of goods into stock, and the payments that clear the balance. A shop looking for jewelry purchase software is after the same thing, and the terminology here is the trade’s.

The problem in a jewellery shop

Two habits cause most of the trouble. The first is entering a purchase as a single amount rather than as lines with weights: the stock then has no cost per piece, so nothing can be valued at cost afterwards and margin is a guess. The second is booking stock when the invoice arrives rather than when the goods do — which means the register says you are holding pieces that are still in a bag somewhere, and a stock audit reports a shortage that is really a timing difference.

Then there is the supplier balance. When payments are recorded into a general pot rather than against specific invoices, the total may still be right while no one can say which invoices remain open. That is the conversation that goes badly at the end of a fiscal year.

How DataJewellers handles it

A purchase is a document with lines, and each line is a piece or a lot with its own weight and purity. Stock and the supplier balance both follow from it rather than being typed separately.

• Lines that carry the real figures. Weight, purity, making, wastage and other charges per line, so what you paid for metal and what you paid for labour stay distinguishable.
• Received, then in stock. Stock moves when the goods are actually received and checked. Until then the invoice exists and the pieces do not.
• Cost that stays cost. What a purchase cost remains what it cost, whatever the rate does afterwards. That is what lets stock valuation show cost and market value side by side instead of one number that means neither.
• Returns that reference the original. Purchase returns and supplier debit notes are raised against the invoice they correct, so the original document is never rewritten and the trail stays readable.
• Old gold bought over the counter. Metal bought from the public is weighed, assessed at its own purity and priced accordingly, and enters stock as what it actually is rather than as whatever the last purchase was.
• Supplier ledgers. Opening balance through to closing, with payments allocated against the specific invoices they clear, and a list of what is still payable and what it was for.

Purchases also feed the purchase and VAT registers for the Nepali fiscal year, which is usually the reason an accountant asks for this data at all. Tax settings are configurable and your accountant confirms the rates that apply to your business; the software’s job is to produce the register from documents that were entered once, and to export it in a form they can work with.

A worked example

Say a purchase invoice arrives with three lines. The fine weight on each line is what the metal content is worth arguing about; making and wastage are agreed separately per line.

Who it is for

Retailers buying finished pieces from wholesalers and manufacturers, shops buying bullion and old gold to feed their own workshop, and any business with more than a couple of suppliers whose balances now have to be reconciled from paper. It matters most to the shop that wants a real margin figure, because margin is the selling price less a cost that was recorded properly on the day the piece arrived.

It is the least visible part of a jewellery system and the one that decides whether the rest of it tells the truth. A sale entered beautifully against a purchase entered as a lump sum still produces a margin nobody can defend, which is why this is usually the first area a shop sets up when it begins.