Jewelry Invoice: What a Gold Sale Slip Must Show

A jewelry invoice for a gold piece has to record five things a normal sales receipt never does: karat, weight in grams, the price per gram at the moment of sale, the making charge on a separate line, and the weight of any stones. Leave one out and the invoice stops protecting you on the day the customer comes back to sell or trade in.

TL;DR. Treat the gold invoice as a weight record first and a money record second. Write the weight to the same precision as your scale, state the karat as a number, and use the gram price that actually applied at that minute. Keep gold value, making charge and stones on separate lines. A trade-in is a deduction line with its own weight, karat and price, not a lump "discount". Number invoices in one unbroken sequence and keep a copy.

Why a gold invoice is not an ordinary receipt

In a clothing store, the receipt names the item and the price, and that is the end of it. In a gold shop, the item carries a value that moves every day, and the customer may bring it back in a year or in ten. On that day the invoice is the only neutral witness to what was sold.

An invoice is, in general terms, a commercial document recording a sale between two parties. For gold it carries three extra jobs:

1. Proof of weight. A customer selling back will put the piece on a scale and compare it with the slip. Any gap is argued against you.
2. Proof of karat. The stated karat decides how many pure grams the piece is worth when you buy it back.
3. Separating metal from work. The making charge does not come back when a customer sells. If it was never shown separately, the customer will assume it was all gold.

Jewelry invoice fields, one by one

This is the field list any jewelry invoice for gold needs, whether it lives in a carbon book or a system. The layout can vary. The fields cannot.

Field	Why it matters	Usual mistake
Sequential invoice number	Stops duplicates and quietly removed slips	Two books sharing number ranges
Date and time	Gram prices change during the day	Date without a time
Customer name and phone	Needed for exchanges and follow-up	"Walk-in" on every slip
Item description and code	Links the slip to the stock record	"Chain", with no code or style
Karat	Basis for the pure-gold value	Just "gold"
Gross weight	Whole piece on the scale	Rounded to the nearest gram
Stone weight	Deducted from the gold weight	Left out entirely
Net weight	What the gram price applies to	Price applied to gross weight
Price per gram at sale	Value of the metal that day	Morning price used in the afternoon
Making charge	Craft cost plus the shop's margin	Folded into the gram price
Trade-in deduction	Scrap taken as part payment	A cash figure with no weight
Payment method	Needed to close the safe	Everything marked "cash"

Gross weight, stones and net weight

Gem-set pieces cause more disputes than anything else. The stone is not gold, so it cannot be charged at the gold gram price, and it cannot be bought back at that price either.

Write all three figures: gross weight, stone weight, net gold weight. If the stone is valued separately, give it its own line. A customer who sees "gross 6.40 g, stones 0.85 g, net 5.55 g" on the slip will not argue about weight five years later.

Metal value and making charge: two lines, never one

Most trade-in arguments start with a single large figure at the bottom of the slip. The customer remembers paying for gold. The shop remembers that part of it was labour. Write them separately and nobody is surprised.

Line one: net weight × gram price for that karat. Line two: the making charge, whether you price it per gram or per piece. We explain both methods, and how to set the lowest discount you can afford, in how to price gold jewelry.

If you sell several karats, the gram price on the slip must be the price for that karat, not the 21K price adjusted on a side calculation. Karats relate through millesimal fineness: 18K is 750 parts per thousand, 21K is 875 and 24K is 999. Our guide to gold karat conversion walks through the arithmetic.

A worked example with a trade-in

The figures below are illustrative round numbers, not real prices. They show the shape of the slip only.

A customer buys an 18K ring set with a stone and hands over an old 21K chain as part payment.

Line	Calculation	Amount
18K ring, net gold	5.55 g × EGP 3,400	EGP 18,870
Stone (separate line)	fixed price	EGP 1,500
Making charge	per piece	EGP 900
Trade-in: 21K chain	4.10 g × EGP 3,900	− EGP 15,990
Balance due		EGP 5,280

The trade-in line shows its own weight, karat and buying price, not a vague "credit". That protects you if anyone later claims the chain was heavier. The inspection steps that come before that line, from the hallmark to suspected plating, are in our old gold trade-in guide.

Five mistakes that make an invoice useless

1. Rounded weight. The scale reads two decimals and the slip says 6 g. Small gaps on every sale add up at the monthly count.
2. A stale gram price. The price was updated at noon but the cashier copied the morning figure from the sheet on the wall.
3. No item code. You cannot tell which tray the piece left or whether the stock count already removed it.
4. Corrections in pen. A crossed-out figure on a gold slip invites suspicion. Void it and issue a new invoice with a new number.
5. No shop copy. The customer loses the slip and you have nothing on file, so nothing can be proved either way.

Sales slips and purchase slips

When the shop is the buyer, whether of scrap or a second-hand piece, the document is a purchase slip, not a sales invoice. The fields are nearly the same, but the direction reverses: cash leaves the safe and metal comes in.

A purchase slip needs more about the seller: full name, phone, and a copy of identification if that is your policy. Give purchases their own number sequence. If both run on one counter, the inventory count turns into a hunt for whether slip 452 was a sale or a buy.

Carbon book, spreadsheet or system?

	Carbon book	Spreadsheet	Barcode system
Weight and karat	Cashier's handwriting	Typed by hand	Pulled from the item record
Gram price	Sheet on the wall	Pasted daily	Current price, automatically
Stock	Not connected	Separate file	Item leaves stock on sale
Shop copy	If the carbon survives	A file anyone can edit	Stored, cannot be overwritten

A carbon-book jewelry invoice is fine for a one-person counter. It breaks when two cashiers, three karats and two price changes a day meet in the same shift.

How Tibr does this

The Tibr product page describes a sale as scan and confirm: the barcode brings up the piece, and the safe, stock and daily journal update together. One invoice can carry several items with a discount, payment can be split across cash, card and InstaPay, and a customer's scrap can be taken as a trade-in inside the same sale.

The gram price is updated for one karat and the others follow by purity ratio, so every sale uses the current price. Entries are append-only, which means a mistake is fixed with a recorded reversing entry rather than an eraser. For the wider picture of running the shop on one system, see our gold shop management software guide.

FAQ

What must a gold jewelry invoice include?

A sequential number, date and time, customer name, item description and code, karat, gross and net weight, the price per gram at the time of sale, and the making charge on its own line. If scrap was traded in, add a deduction line with its weight, karat and price, then the payment method.

Should the invoice show the price per gram or only the total?

Always show the gram price. A total on its own cannot tell the customer how much was gold and how much was making charge. When they come back to sell, the gram price on the day of purchase is what makes the comparison fair.

How precise should the weight be?

As precise as your scale. If the scale reads two decimal places, write two decimal places. Rounding to the nearest gram creates a small gap on every slip, and those gaps surface at the end-of-month count.

A customer lost their invoice. What can I do?

If you keep shop copies or the invoice is stored in your system, you can reissue a copy under the original number, which is why the shop copy matters. With no record at all, treat the piece like any new scrap: test it, weigh it and price it from scratch.

Is there a free jewelry invoice template I can use?

Any template works if it carries every field in the table above. Check that it has separate lines for net weight, stones and making charge, and a trade-in line with weight and karat. Most generic templates only have quantity and price, which is not enough for gold.

Written by Mindshift Team, Tibr product team.

Want invoices that pull weight, karat and the current gram price from the barcode? See Tibr on its official page.