I build management systems for jewellery businesses in India: stock by karat and design, artisan job-work tracking, HUID hallmarking records, gold-rate-linked pricing, customer credit ledgers and old-gold exchange — in one system your staff can run from the counter.
How does the shop actually run today?
Kem cho? Let me guess, and tell me how close I get. Stock lives in one register. Karigar jobs live in a diary. Udhaar lives in the owner’s head, supplemented by a notebook only he can read. The day’s gold rate arrives as a WhatsApp forward and gets written on a slip near the till. And the whole thing works — genuinely works — because the people running it are good at it and have been doing it for twenty years.
It works until three things happen. The diary is wrong, and nobody can prove whose memory is right. The karigar disputes what gold he was given against what he returned, and the argument has no arbiter. Or BIS asks for hallmarking records and the answer takes a week to assemble. Since June 2021, hallmarking with HUID has been mandatory in phases (bis.gov.in) — every piece already carries a paper trail; the question is only whether your books carry the matching one.
What does the system handle?
- Stock that thinks in karat and gram. A 22K bangle and an 18K ring are not the same “1 unit” — the system knows weight, purity, making charges and design, so valuation is a computation rather than an estimate.
- Karigar job-work. Gold issued, wastage agreed, fine weight returned, balance carried. Every issue and receipt against the karigar’s own khata, so settlement is arithmetic instead of negotiation. Chokkho hisab, both sides.
- Rate-linked pricing. The day’s rate enters once and every tag follows it. No calculator at the counter, no stale slip, no piece accidentally sold at last Tuesday’s rate.
- Udhaar and schemes. Customer credit with statements you can actually send, and monthly gold schemes with instalments tracked to the member. Udhaar runs on bharosa; the records run on Postgres.
- HUID and GST records. Hallmarking captured at intake, e-invoicing ready for the ₹5-crore threshold (cbic.gov.in), and a CA who stops reconstructing your month.
- Old-gold exchange. Assessed purity and weight in, credit against the new sale, melt lot tracked onward — the flow where margin most often disappears without anyone noticing.
Why me, and not a generic billing app?
Because a generic app sells you invoices. Your dhandho runs on weight, purity, labour and trust, and if the system doesn’t model those four first, the invoice it prints is a guess with a logo on it.
I’m a systems architect who builds double-entry ledgers for fintechs — and a jeweller’s books are a ledger with gold in it. Every piece is an asset with a weight; every karigar issue is a receivable denominated in fine grams; every udhaar is credit extended on judgment. That’s balance-sheet thinking, which is exactly the discipline I bring from money systems. Honestly, some of the cleanest double-entry reasoning I’ve encountered came from how old trading firms kept hisab long before anyone wrote software for it — the columns were different, the rigour was the same.
I may not speak Gujarati fluently. But I speak dhandha fluently, and hisab is the same in every language.
What changes in the first season?
The first stock-take is the moment most owners decide it was worth it: a variance report per karat, per branch, per design category, produced in an afternoon instead of a fortnight — and specific enough to act on rather than argue about. Karigar settlements stop being Thursday arguments, because both sides read the same issue-and-return ledger. The udhaar list becomes a collection list, sorted by age, which turns a vague worry into a Friday task. And when the CA asks for something, it arrives the same day.
None of this makes anyone a better jeweller. It makes the operations around the craft as precise as the craft — which is the only fair thing to ask of software in a trade where the product is measured to the third decimal.
Related reading
/products/retail-erp — the multi-branch retail sibling · /industries/retail — the wider trade · /products/whatsapp-automation — scheme instalment reminders customers actually read · /services/fintech — the ledger discipline underneath
Wherever the dhandho is
Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot, Mumbai, Jaipur — the system travels, and so do I when the engagement needs a room. /contact: bring one register, one karigar khata and last season’s stock-take. Paisa vasool, guaranteed conversation.
Questions I actually get
Does it work across multiple branches?
Yes — one stock truth, per-branch counters, and transfers tracked piece by piece rather than in totals. A bangle leaving Rajkot for the Surat showroom is a tracked movement with a weight and a karat, not a line in a WhatsApp message, so the branch-versus-branch arguments at stock-take simply stop happening.
Can my existing counter staff actually use it?
If they use WhatsApp, yes. The counter screen is deliberately narrow — find the piece, weigh it, apply the day's rate, bill it, done — and the complexity lives in the back office where the owner and the accountant work. Counter staff are productive within a day; the back-office training is a separate, deeper session for the two people who need it.
What happens to my old registers and udhaar balances?
They migrate as part of setup: stock with karat and weight, karigar balances, customer udhaar, scheme members and their paid instalments. The registers run in parallel for the first month until physical counts agree, then retire with honour. Nobody bets a season on a switch.
How does it handle HUID and hallmarking records?
Hallmarking data is captured at intake against the piece, so the BIS trail exists as a by-product of stocking rather than as a scramble when someone asks. Since June 2021 hallmarking with HUID has been mandatory in phases (bis.gov.in) — every piece has a paper trail whether your books do or not, and this makes yours match.
Can it handle old-gold exchange and buy-back?
Yes — old gold in at assessed purity and weight, credited against the new purchase, with the melt lot tracked onward to the karigar or refiner. That flow is where a lot of shops lose margin quietly, because the exchange is negotiated at the counter and recorded nowhere afterwards.
What about GST and e-invoicing?
GST-correct billing including the composition of making charges, with e-invoicing ready for the mandatory threshold — above ₹5 crore turnover since August 2023 (cbic.gov.in). Your CA gets clean data instead of a month-end reconstruction, and the filings stop being an event.