Counting a gold shop in grams, not in pieces
Why a piece count tells a jeweller nothing, how to measure stock as pure metal per fineness, and how workshop wastage is actually found.
In a grocery it is enough to know you have forty tins. In a gold shop, "forty rings" means nothing at all: forty 18k rings weighing three grams each are not forty 21k rings weighing twelve, and the difference between them can be the price of a car.
The right unit
Stock in the gold trade is a weight of pure metal, held per fineness and summed afterwards if you want one number. A piece is not a unit of stock — it is a container carrying a weight, a fineness, stones and a making charge.
Three numbers to know daily
- Pure weight available per fineness: what you actually own and can sell.
- Turnover in grams: how many grams of each fineness leave per day.
- Days remaining: available ÷ turnover — the number that tells you when to buy.
The workshop, where gold goes missing
Gold rarely leaves a shop in one large theft. It leaves a gram at a time, with a reason each time. So what goes out to the bench and what comes back must both be weighed, and the loss measured for each craftsman individually — then compared against your own shop’s median rather than some published percentage. A craftsman losing three times what his colleagues lose is not necessarily less skilled, but he is a number worth a question.
Why a monthly count is not enough on its own
Because it tells you two grams are missing without telling you when or where. A ledger that records every movement as it happens — sale, purchase, transfer, issue to the bench, return — turns the monthly count into confirmation of what you already knew rather than a discovery of what you missed.
What ZahabFlow does
Every movement is an entry in a book nothing is deleted from, and a correction is a reversing entry with a reason and a name on it. Balances per fineness are recomputed from that same ledger, so a displayed balance cannot disagree with the sum of its movements.
Questions we are asked
How often should a gold shop take stock?
A physical count monthly or quarterly depending on size — but the book balance should be right at every moment, so the count confirms rather than discovers.
How do I total stock across different finenesses?
Convert each to pure weight by multiplying weight by fineness and dividing by a thousand, then add the results.
What is an acceptable workshop loss?
It varies enormously by the kind of work, which is why the useful benchmark is your own shop’s median over time rather than a figure borrowed from someone else.