Karigar management software: metal given, metal back, and a clean hisaab

What karigar management means in a jewellery shop

Most jewellery shops don’t make everything themselves. You give gold to a karigar to make a set, or send a chain for repair or polish. Each time, your metal sits with someone else until the work comes back.

That is where money quietly goes missing. A notebook says “Sunil, 50 g”, but not whether it was 22K or 24K, or whether he already returned part of it. Three months later nobody agrees on how much gold he still holds.

Karigar management software (some call it job work software) is a register for exactly this. It records what goes out and what comes back by weight and purity, so the karigar’s balance is always worked out the same way.

What to record when metal goes to a karigar

• The karigar and the job. Who it is with, what he is making or repairing, and for which customer order, if any.
• Gross weight, to the milligram. Weigh it in front of him and write the exact figure, not a rounded one.
• Purity. 24K, 22K, 18K, or silver 999 or 925. The same 50 g is a very different amount of gold at 22K and at 18K.
• Fine weight. The pure metal in what you gave: gross weight × karat ÷ 24 for gold. This is the figure the hisaab should run on.
• Pieces from stock. If a finished piece goes out for polish or repair, mark it as with the karigar so nobody sells it from the counter.
• The due date. When it should come back, so late jobs show up before the customer calls.

When the work comes back

Weigh what comes back and note its purity, as you did when it went out. Record any scrap or dust he returns too; it is still your metal. If a stock piece came back from polish or repair, its new weight should replace the old one.

Now compare fine weight with fine weight. Gross weights hide the real picture: a karigar can return more grams than he took if he added lower-purity metal, and fewer for an honest reason. Fine in against fine out is the fair comparison, for both of you.

Wastage: how much loss is fair

Every karigar loses a little metal: filings, polishing, soldering. Shops and karigars usually agree an allowance up front, as a percentage of the fine metal given. Loss within that allowance is accepted. Loss above it is what you talk about, or deduct for.

A worked example. You give a karigar 100 g of 22K gold. Its fine weight is 100 × 22 ÷ 24 = 91.667 g. He returns 98.5 g of 22K jewellery, which is 98.5 × 22 ÷ 24 = 90.292 g fine. The loss is 91.667 − 90.292 = 1.375 g fine. If you allow him 2% of the fine given, his allowance is 1.833 g, so he is inside it by 0.458 g. Had he returned 97 g, the fine back would be 88.917 g, the loss 2.750 g, and 0.917 g would be over his allowance.

Some shops reward a karigar who stays well within the allowance and deduct from one who goes over, at a rupee rate per gram. Whatever you decide, write the rule down and apply it the same way every time. Work out fine weight from a tunch with the free fine gold calculator, and the metal and value of a wastage with the wastage calculator.

Labour, advances and karigar pay

Metal is one half of the hisaab. The other half is money: the labour (mazdoori) you owe for each job, advances you gave him before Diwali, and what you have paid in cash, UPI or bank transfer.

Keep the two apart; never net grams against rupees in your head. A good karigar ledger shows the metal he holds by purity, and separately the money you owe him or he owes you, with each line dated. When he asks “kitna baaki hai?”, you should be able to answer both questions in one screen.

The karigar ledger: karigar ka hisaab on one page

A karigar’s ledger, or statement, lists every line for a period: opening balance, metal given, metal back, scrap returned, wastage, labour, advances and payments, with the running balance after each line. It is what you sit down with at the month-end or festival settlement.

Sharing it matters as much as keeping it. A statement the karigar can read on WhatsApp, with the same figures you see, turns the monthly settlement into a check rather than a fight.

Job work and GST: what the law says

This is general information from official sources, not tax advice. Ask your CA how it applies to your shop.

Under GST, job work means any treatment or process done by a person on goods belonging to another registered person (section 2(68) of the CGST Act). A registered jeweller (the “principal”) may send inputs to a job worker without paying tax under section 143, under a challan, and must bring them back, or supply them from the job worker’s premises, within one year. If that doesn’t happen, the sending is treated as a supply on the day the goods went out. CBIC also says the responsibility of keeping proper accounts of goods sent for job work lies with the principal. Source: CBIC Circular No. 38/12/2018-GST, 26 March 2018.

The principal reports goods sent to and received from job workers on FORM GST ITC-04. From 1 October 2021 it is filed half-yearly if your aggregate turnover is above ₹5 crore, and yearly if it is up to ₹5 crore, according to the GST portal’s ITC-04 manual.

The karigar’s own bill for job work is for a service, under service code SAC 9988, with its own GST rate, separate from the 3% on jewellery. The rate and its source are in the job-work section of the HSN code guide. For GST on the jewellery bill itself, read the GST billing guide.

Other software that handles karigar work

Other products cover karigar work too. Here is what two of them say on their own websites, checked 1 November 2026.

Tally. Tally’s jewellery inventory page says TallyPrime calculates labour and making charges from job work entries, tracks stock issued to and received from artisans, and records metal loss, recovery and balances during manufacturing. Its real strengths are that it is full accounting software your CA may already use, and its prices are published on that page: TallyPrime Silver from ₹750 a month or ₹22,500 lifetime, Gold from ₹2,250 a month or ₹67,500 lifetime, plus 18% GST.

Online Munim. Online Munim’s home page says you can assign orders to different karigars, track them with SMS and notifications, keep track of the gold and silver metal transactions with each goldsmith, and send repair articles to karigars. It also offers a girvi (gold loan) module and a mobile app, which CaratOS doesn’t. A price is not published on their website; it says a maintenance fee varies with the features you choose.

How CaratOS handles karigar work

CaratOS is jewellery billing and shop management software for Indian jewellers. It runs in your browser at app.caratos.co.in, in English or Hindi, and karigar work sits next to your stock and bills. If you also sell to other jewellers, Wholesale keeps each trade party’s cash, fine gold and fine silver.

On every plan (Starter and Growth): karigar jobs. Create a job for a karigar, record the metal given by gross weight and purity, and CaratOS works out the fine weight. Record what comes back the same way. You always know which piece is with which karigar and when it is due back, and a stock piece sent for polish or repair is marked as with the karigar until it returns.

On Growth: wastage, karigar pay and production stages. Set the wastage you allow, as a percentage of the fine metal given, and CaratOS works out each return’s loss against it, in fine weight. Karigar pay keeps labour, advances, payments and any wastage bonus or deduction in one place, with the karigar’s hisaab showing metal and money together. Production stages track a piece through each workshop step, and a finished piece goes straight into stock with its weight, purity and next tag.

Starter is ₹1,199 a month and Growth ₹3,999 a month (or ₹42,999 a year), GST included. A 15-day Starter trial is available on request, starts when CaratOS approves it, and needs no card. See every row on pricing, and how stock and HUID work on Stock.

What CaratOS doesn’t do today

CaratOS is made for retail and wholesale jewellers who send work out, not for a factory. It has no manufacturing bill of materials (BOM), so if you run casting lines and need material planning for every design, a manufacturing ERP will suit you better. It also doesn’t do girvi (gold loans) or RFID, and there is no Android app; it runs in the browser on a computer, tablet or phone. It runs online, so you need an internet connection; CaratOS Desktop is coming soon.

If you also send pieces to other jewellers on approval, that is a memo, not a karigar job: read the wholesale guide. Memo is on Growth.

See karigar work in a demo

Bring one real karigar job from last month: the metal you gave, what came back and what you paid. Book a demo and we’ll enter it in CaratOS in front of you, so you can see the fine weight, the wastage and the balance for yourself.

For the rest of the shop, read the shop management guide, or see everything on features.

Questions shop owners ask