A jewellery POS: gold weight, daily price and making charges

A gold shop does not sell products at prices. It sells weight at a rate that changes every morning, plus a making charge, minus whatever the customer brought in to trade. A standard retail system cannot express that, which is why so many jewellery shops run a calculator beside the till.

The pricing model

Price = (weight × karat rate for today) + making charge + stones + VAT treatment as applicable

Every element needs to be in the system:

Daily rate. Entered once each morning, per karat — 24, 22, 21, 18. Everything else derives from it. Entering it in one place and having every sale use it is the core requirement.

Weight. Captured per piece, ideally from an integrated scale so nobody types it. Typed weights are both slower and an error source on an item worth thousands.

Karat. Determines which rate applies.

Making charge. Per gram or per piece depending on how you sell. Both must be supported.

Stones and non-gold components. Priced separately from the metal.

Trade-ins

A customer brings in old gold against a new purchase. The shop weighs it, tests the purity, applies a buy-back rate, and deducts it.

Requirements:

• Recording the traded item: weight, karat, and the buy-back rate applied
• Deducting it from the sale as a distinct line, not as a discount — the distinction matters for both margin reporting and VAT treatment
• Adding it to a scrap or resale inventory with its weight
• A trail, because this is a high-value transaction

Confirm the VAT treatment of trade-ins with your accountant. It is one of the least intuitive areas in retail and it is not something a POS vendor should be advising you on.

Stock control at high value

Every piece is individually valuable, which changes the discipline:

• Piece-level tracking, not quantity-level. Each item has an identity.
• Daily count of the display case. It is small enough to count daily and valuable enough that you should.
• Tags that survive handling and carry the weight and karat.
• Strict adjustment permissions. A stock adjustment in a gold shop is a large amount of money.
• Approval on discount. A cashier who can discount the making charge freely has a lot of latitude.

Repairs and custom orders

Most gold shops also take in repairs and make custom pieces. These need:

• A job record with the customer, the item, the agreed work and the promised date
• Custody of the customer's property recorded — this is someone else's gold in your safe
• A deposit taken and tracked
• Balance on collection

Treating repairs as informal notes is the source of the most common dispute in a jewellery shop.

Reporting a gold shop actually needs

• Margin per gram, not per product. This is the number that tells you whether your making charges are right.
• Sales split between metal value and making charge. The metal is a pass-through; the making charge is your business.
• Stock by weight and by karat, valued at today's rate.
• Trade-in volume — weight in, weight out.
• Sales by staff member, since jewellery is a sold product rather than a picked one.

What to ask a vendor

1. Enter today's gold rate for four karats and show it applying to a sale.
2. Weigh a piece on an integrated scale and price it.
3. Add a making charge per gram, then per piece.
4. Take a trade-in with a buy-back rate and show the invoice.
5. Show me margin per gram for last month.
6. Show me stock valued at today's rate.

Wameed ships jewellery as a distinct industry mode with gold weight, daily price and making charges; see theindustry workflows feature.