How to Track Jewelry Work in Progress Without Losing Metal or Margin
You know what's in your safe. You know what's listed on Shopify. But what about the six pieces sitting on the bench right now, half-set, mid-polish, waiting for stones? That's your work-in-progress inventory, and for most jewelers it's a black hole.
WIP is where metal leaves "raw materials" but hasn't arrived at "finished goods." It's the 14K casting that's been sprued and invested, the pendant that's soldered but not polished yet, the ring that's done but waiting on a backordered 0.30ct stone. Every gram sitting in that limbo has a cost. If you're not tracking it, your books are wrong in two places: raw materials are overstated (or understated, if you deducted early) and finished goods don't reflect reality.
This guide covers what WIP actually means for a jewelry workshop, why it costs you more than you'd expect, and a practical framework for tracking it.
What counts as WIP in a jewelry workshop
In manufacturing accounting, WIP is any item that has consumed raw materials but is not yet a finished, sellable product. For jewelers, that includes:
- Cast pieces before cleanup: sprued trees, individual castings still on the button, pieces fresh from the flask
- Pieces in fabrication, where metal has been cut, formed, or soldered but not assembled into a finished piece
- Mountings ready for stones, settings waiting on a delivery from your supplier
- Stone-set pieces still needing final polish, rhodium plating, or hallmarking
- Finished pieces that haven't been inspected, photographed, and entered as finished goods yet
- Repairs and rework, where a customer's piece is on your bench consuming your time and sometimes your metal
In every case, materials have been committed and labor applied, but the piece isn't sellable yet. All of it ties up capital.
The cost of not tracking WIP
Your raw material counts are wrong
Say you deducted 5.2g of 18K yellow from inventory when you started a build, but the ring is still half-finished on the bench three weeks later. Your raw materials ledger says you have less gold than you actually do. If you didn't deduct it, your ledger says you have more. Either way, the number is wrong, and you're making purchasing decisions off bad data.
At $120/g for 18K gold (current spot), ten pieces in WIP averaging 5g each means $6,000 of metal that exists in your workshop but not in any system. During a busy holiday season with 30–40 pieces in flight, that climbs to $18,000–$24,000.
COGS becomes guesswork
Cost of Goods Sold should reflect what it actually cost to make a piece: materials consumed at the price you paid (or at current spot, depending on your accounting method), plus labor, plus overhead. Without WIP tracking, you end up assigning material costs at one of two bad times. Either when you buy the metal, which is too early because price may move before you use it, or when you ship the order, which is too late and usually estimated rather than measured. Getting it right means knowing exactly when materials move from "raw" to "in progress" to "finished." For more on that math, see our guide to calculating true COGS when gold prices move.
Delivery dates are promises you can't keep
A customer asks when their custom ring will be ready. You say "two weeks" because that's how long it usually takes. But your setter is backed up with eight pieces, your caster is waiting on a grain shipment, and the stone for this order hasn't cleared customs. You just don't know any of that because nothing tracks what's in production or where it's stuck. The delivery estimate was a guess. Broken promises cost repeat business. This problem is especially acute for custom jewelry orders, where clients expect regular updates and firm delivery dates.
Inventory counts don't reconcile
Quarterly inventory count. Your system says 200g of 14K yellow. You weigh your stock: 174g. The missing 26g isn't lost. It's in the five rings on the bench, the casting tree that hasn't been divested, and the two pieces waiting for pickup. Now you're spending an hour hunting down WIP to reconcile, instead of the 15 minutes the count should take. Our inventory count guide covers the full reconciliation process.
The three stages of WIP and what to track at each
Not every workshop needs the same granularity. But most benefit from at least three distinct stages between "raw material" and "finished good."
Stage 1: Allocated (materials reserved, work not started)
A Shopify order comes in, or you decide to build to stock. Materials are earmarked for a specific piece but haven't left the safe yet.
| What to track | Why |
|---|---|
| Materials reserved (type, weight, purity) | Prevents double-allocation. You can't promise the same 0.50ct stone to two orders |
| Linked Shopify order (if applicable) | Ties production to revenue |
| Expected start date | Capacity planning. How loaded is your bench this week? |
| BOM snapshot with current costs | Locks in your cost estimate at order time |
At this stage, raw materials haven't physically moved. But they should be flagged as "reserved" so your available-to-use balance reflects reality. The difference between "on hand" and "available" is the entire point. You may have 300g of 14K in the safe, but if 120g is reserved for pending builds, you can only commit 180g to new orders.
Stage 2: In production (materials consumed, piece being made)
Metal has been weighed out, the piece is being cast or fabricated. This is the moment raw materials should be deducted from stock and transferred to WIP.
| What to track | Why |
|---|---|
| Actual materials consumed (weighed, not estimated) | BOM says 5.0g but you actually used 5.3g. Track the real number |
| Production stage (casting, assembly, setting, finishing) | Know where every piece is without walking to the bench |
| Who's working on it | Accountability, capacity visibility |
| Variance from BOM | If you're consistently using 15% more metal than your BOM says, the BOM needs updating |
Most tools fall over here. Spreadsheets can't handle the state change from "raw" to "WIP" without manual formulas that break when someone edits the wrong cell. Craftybase handles basic manufacture completions but doesn't model production stages or track variance against BOMs.
Stage 3: Complete (finished, ready for sale or delivery)
The piece is polished, inspected, photographed, and ready. WIP balance decreases, finished goods balance increases.
| What to track | Why |
|---|---|
| Final weight | Compare to target weight. Feeds future BOM accuracy |
| Total material cost (actual, not estimated) | True COGS for this specific piece |
| Scrap generated | Track what's recoverable vs. lost to polishing compound |
| Shopify sync | Finished goods count in Shopify should update automatically |
Completion is also when waste should be recorded. If the BOM called for 5.5g (including a 10% waste factor) and the finished ring weighs 4.8g, you generated 0.7g of scrap. That scrap has value. It goes into your sweep jar, bench filings, or refining lot. Recording it here means you can account for every gram that entered the build, whether it ended up in the piece, in the scrap bin, or lost to the polishing wheel.
What a WIP tracking system looks like in practice
Take a 14K white gold halo engagement ring that sells through your Shopify store on Monday morning.
| Day | What happens | Inventory effect |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Shopify order received | Build order created. 6.0g of 14K white grain + 1 0.75ct RB diamond + 12 1.3mm melee reserved |
| Tuesday | Casting begins | Raw materials deducted. 6.0g 14K white moves from "raw" to "WIP" |
| Wednesday | Casting complete, assembly starts | Stage updated. Diamond and melee deducted from raw → WIP |
| Thursday | Setting, pre-polish, rhodium plate | Stage updated. No inventory change |
| Friday | QC passed, piece marked complete | WIP → Finished. Final weight: 5.4g. Scrap: 0.6g to sweep. Shopify inventory +1. COGS recorded at actual cost |
At every point in that week, you know where the metal is and how much is in each bucket. When the customer calls Wednesday asking "where's my ring?" you can tell them it's in assembly, not "let me check with the shop."
How most jewelers handle WIP today
The "ignore it" method
Most small studios don't track WIP at all. Raw materials go in, finished pieces come out, and everything in between is a mystery. This works when you're making three pieces a week. It stops working the moment you have more than a handful of orders in flight, need to quote a delivery date, or try to reconcile your inventory count.
The notebook method
A step up: a physical logbook where you write down what you pulled from the safe, what you're making, and when it's done. Better than nothing. But it doesn't connect to your inventory numbers, doesn't flag when reserved materials conflict, and isn't searchable when a customer calls about order #4217.
The spreadsheet method
A "Production" tab in your master spreadsheet. Columns for order, materials, stage, date started, date completed. Formulas to subtract from the "Materials" tab and add to the "Finished Goods" tab. This works until someone forgets to update a row, a formula reference breaks, or two people edit at the same time. By the time you have 20 active builds, the spreadsheet is the most fragile part of your operation.
Craftybase or similar
Craftybase lets you log a "manufacture": select a product, confirm the materials, complete the build. Materials deduct, finished goods increase. But there are no stages between "started" and "done." Materials aren't reserved when an order comes in. There's no variance tracking. You can't see what's currently in production or where it's stuck. It's a two-state system (raw → finished) in a workshop that has five.
What to look for in a WIP tracking system for jewelry
If you're evaluating tools, or deciding whether it's time to move beyond spreadsheets, here's what matters. (For a broader look at how WIP tracking fits into your overall software needs, see our guide to jewelry ERP software for small studios.)
- Material reservation at order creation. The system should earmark stock the moment a build is planned, not when production starts. "Available to use" and "on hand" need to be different numbers.
- Stage-based production tracking. At minimum: allocated, in production, complete. Ideally with sub-stages you can customize (casting, assembly, setting, finishing).
- Actual vs. BOM variance. If your BOM says 5.0g and you used 5.4g, the system should record the difference. Recurring overages mean your BOM needs updating.
- Weight-native inventory. WIP for jewelry is measured in grams and carats, not units. The system must track materials by weight natively.
- Scrap and waste tracking. When a build completes, log what became the piece, what became recoverable scrap, and what was lost.
- Shopify sync on completion. When a piece moves from WIP to finished, the Shopify inventory count should update automatically. No manual entry, no delay.
- Order linkage. Every build should tie back to the Shopify order (or "build to stock" if you're making ahead) so you can connect production to revenue and answer customer questions without walking to the bench.
How Forge handles WIP: When a Shopify order comes in, Forge creates a build order and reserves the exact materials from your BOM, including weight-based metals and individually tracked stones. Your "available" balance updates immediately so you never double-commit stock. As production moves through stages, you update status with a tap. On completion, Forge records actual materials used vs. the BOM, logs scrap, moves the piece to finished goods, and pushes the updated count to Shopify. Every gram accounted for.
Know what's on every bench, right now.
Forge tracks build orders through each production stage, reserves materials at order time, and records actual vs. BOM variance on completion. No more WIP black holes.
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