Jewelry Inventory Management: The Complete Guide

Inventory is the balance sheet

In a jewelry business, inventory is the balance sheet. Most stores have more money in their cases and safe than in the bank, much of it in unique pieces, and all of it moving: to the bench, out on memo, to a show.

Four core principles

Four principles come first. Serialize what matters, and count the rest. A bridal piece gets its own record; findings, chain and loose melee are tracked by quantity. Track attributes, not descriptions: metal, carat weight, vendor style, certificate and cost can all be searched, priced and reported on. Keep it real-time. A piece sold at 2 p.m. that's still listed online at 4 is a refund waiting to happen. And reconcile constantly, so a missing piece is found in a shift, not a year later, with every piece's age in plain sight.

A counting cadence that works

Here's a counting schedule that works. Case counts every day at open and close; the safe, memo and the bench every week; one category in full every month; and a full audit against book value once a year.

The tools that make it work

The right tools keep every movement inside the system: RFID turns a case count into a few seconds, and serialized barcodes remain right for lower-value stock. Memo in and out stays on the books, and pieces moving between stores show as in transit. The website sells from the same stock list, and aging, turnover and forecasting reports turn the list into decisions.

Aging: what to do at each bucket

Bucket your stock by age, and give each bucket an action. Under six months, leave it alone. From six to twelve months, move it to a better case, and make sure the staff know it's there. From one to two years, reprice it, remount it, or talk to the vendor about a return. Over two years, remount it, scrap the metal and reuse the stones, or sell it through another channel. And avoid the blanket discount: it trains customers to wait.

The common mistakes

The common mistakes: leaving memo off the books, letting anyone override a cost or a price without a permission and a record, and, for wholesalers, not tracking the stock the sales reps carry.

Inventory in WJewel

In WJewel, every piece has one record, entered one item at a time, or imported from Excel. Pieces can be serialized, with a stock number for each one, while bulk items are tracked by quantity. Record attributes like the item type, brand and category, so the filters and reports can use them, and price a style each day from its metal weight and that day's metal prices. For diamonds, enter the certificate number, and the program retrieves the lab's details. Search what's in stock by category, brand and much more, including the pieces on memo with you, and see which pieces are on layaway, or at the bench. Transfer pieces between stores, and scan them for a physical inventory, to see if anything is missing. RFID and barcode tags both work, with the popular jewelry tag printers, and WJewel connects to your website, whether it's Shopify, WooCommerce or custom built. And the inventory reports turn the list into decisions.

Contact us

You'll find the full guide on the WJewel blog. WJewel is fully web-based, and runs on PCs, Macs, tablets and phones. To learn more, visit www.wjewel.com, or call us at (646) 578-8300.