2026 buyer's guide
Most jewelry inventory software was designed for chain retail: SKUs, barcodes, sell-through. Independent jewellers need a different model — stones that outlive their settings, commissions with no product code, and repairs that belong to a client relationship going back fifteen years. Here's how to tell the categories apart before you commit.
Decision matrix
| Category | Best for | Typical price | Stone tracking | Bespoke | Repairs | Clienteling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trade-specific CRM + inventoryAurelian | Independent jewellers, goldsmiths and watch dealers with bespoke and repair work | Free · €59 · €149 / mo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Jewelry POS suitesRetail-first jewelry POS | Counter-heavy stores with high transaction volume and stocked SKUs | $99–$400 / mo | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial |
| Jewelry ERPManufacturing ERP | Manufacturers running casting, metal reconciliation and multi-site production | Enterprise, custom quote | Yes | Yes | Partial | No |
| General retail inventoryShopify / Lightspeed | Stores selling mostly repeatable stocked product online | $40–$200 / mo | No | No | No | Partial |
| SpreadsheetExcel / Google Sheets | Under ~150 pieces, one person, no repairs pipeline | Free | No | Partial | No | No |
Price bands reflect publicly listed pricing in the category at time of writing. Verify with each vendor.
A single sapphire can pass through three settings across a decade. Retail inventory models collapse that into one flat product code and lose the stone's history. Check that stones, settings and finished pieces can exist as separate linked records before you buy anything.
Commission pieces need to live in inventory as work-in-progress with a brief, an agreed price, a deposit and a metal/stone reconciliation — long before they have a product code. POS-first systems almost always force a workaround here.
A repair intake should attach to the piece the client bought from you in 2011, not open as an orphan ticket. If repairs sit in a separate system from client records, your best relationship data quietly rots.
Insurance schedules need value with a source and a date, tracked over time. One editable price field cannot produce a defensible schedule when a client's insurer asks.
Vault, bench, showroom, memo, courier, client home. Every movement should log an actor and a timestamp so a discrepancy surfaces in hours rather than at the annual count.
Ask how you get your data out before you put any in. If the answer is a support ticket rather than a button, treat that as a red flag regardless of how good the demo looked.
For an independent jeweller doing a mix of stocked pieces, bespoke commissions and repairs, a trade-specific system that models stones, settings and finished pieces separately will fit better than a retail POS. Aurelian is built for exactly that shape and has a free single-user tier. High-volume counter retail with mostly stocked SKUs is better served by a jewelry POS suite; manufacturers need an ERP.
Roughly three bands in 2026: trade CRM and inventory tools run free to about €150 per month; jewelry POS suites typically run $99–$400 per month depending on terminals and seats; manufacturing ERP is enterprise-priced on a custom quote. Watch for per-terminal and per-user charges, which are where POS pricing escalates.
For repeatable stocked product sold online, yes. For loose stones, bespoke commissions, repairs and consignment or memo stock, no — those need record types that general retail platforms do not have, and the workarounds cost more in staff time than the software saves.
If stones move between settings, or you carry meaningful loose-stone value, yes. Tracking them separately is the only way to keep certification, provenance and valuation attached to the stone itself rather than to whichever piece it happened to be in at the time.
Export to CSV, clean the columns so each piece has a stable reference, then map fields explicitly on import — reference, description, metal, stone detail, cost, retail, current location and status. Run a ten-row test first, then import the rest and keep the spreadsheet read-only for a couple of months.
Only if you manufacture. ERP earns its cost when you are running casting, metal reconciliation across benches, and production scheduling. A retail or bespoke business without a production floor is paying for complexity it will never use.
Import a hundred real pieces, log a repair, and open a bespoke commission. If it doesn't feel faster by day three, it isn't the right tool — for us or anyone else.