How to Track Raw Materials for Your Shopify Jewelry Store

Shopify is excellent at tracking finished goods. It knows how many "14K Gold Solitaire Ring — Size 6" you have in stock. What it cannot do is track the 5.5g of 14K yellow casting grain, the 0.50ct round brilliant, and the 0.1g of medium solder that went into making it. And when that ring sells, Shopify deducts one unit from finished inventory — but nothing changes in your raw materials.

That gap between what Shopify tracks and what a jewelry manufacturer actually needs to track is the operational problem this guide addresses. We'll cover the weight units your stock should live in, what a proper Bill of Materials looks like for a jewelry piece, how precious metals pricing works and why it matters for your COGS, and what a complete raw materials tracking system looks like.

Why Shopify's native inventory isn't enough for jewelry manufacturers

Shopify was designed for retailers who buy finished goods and sell them. Its inventory model is fundamentally a unit counter: how many of SKU X do I have at Location Y? For a jewelry manufacturer, that model is incomplete from the first purchase of casting grain.

Here is what Shopify's inventory system cannot do:

• Track materials by weight — there is no gram, pennyweight, or troy ounce field anywhere in Shopify's native inventory
• Define a Bill of Materials — Shopify has no concept of "this ring requires 5.5g of 14K gold + 1 diamond + 1 prong setting"
• Auto-deduct raw materials when a finished piece sells — when you fulfill an order in Shopify, only the finished goods count changes
• Model parent-child relationships between raw materials and finished goods — every SKU is independent
• Track dynamic material costs — the "cost per item" field is a static number you set manually
• Manage work-in-progress inventory — Shopify has no concept of production stages

This is not a criticism of Shopify. It is a description of what Shopify is: a commerce platform, not a manufacturing system. Filling this gap requires a dedicated manufacturing layer — either an app embedded in Shopify Admin or a separate system connected to it. We break down what to look for in a Shopify jewelry inventory app in a separate guide.

Weight units: grams, pennyweight, and troy ounces

Before any tracking system can work, your team needs to agree on which weight units to use. Jewelry manufacturing uses three systems, and knowing when each applies prevents costly conversion errors.

The gram (g)

The metric standard used worldwide and increasingly in US workshops. Most digital bench scales default to grams. Gold and silver suppliers often quote prices per gram for small quantities. The gram is the simplest unit for international communication and increasingly the standard in younger studios.

The pennyweight (dwt)

The pennyweight equals exactly 1.555 grams (technically 1.55517384g). It is the traditional workshop unit in the North American jewelry trade — the standard for buying and selling scrap gold, quoting fabrication metal from suppliers like Stuller and Rio Grande, and daily bench operations. The name comes from the medieval English silver penny, and the abbreviation "dwt" from denarius (the Roman coin that became the British penny) + weight.

Pennyweight produces convenient whole numbers for common jewelry pieces: a men's wedding band weighs roughly 4 dwt, a pendant roughly 2–3 dwt, a women's ring roughly 2.5–4 dwt. If your suppliers quote in dwt and your scale reads grams, you need a reliable conversion in your tracking system.

The troy ounce (ozt)

The troy ounce equals 31.1035 grams — about 10% heavier than the regular (avoirdupois) ounce you'd use for kitchen scales (28.35g). Gold, silver, and platinum spot prices are always quoted in troy ounces on every market in the world. When CNBC says "gold hit $5,000," that's per troy ounce.

Conversion	Value
1 troy ounce	31.1035 grams
1 pennyweight	1.555 grams
1 troy ounce	20 pennyweights
1 gram	0.643 dwt
1 gram	0.03215 troy ounces

A raw materials tracking system built for jewelry must natively support all three units and handle conversions automatically. Entering 500g of 14K grain and seeing that value in grams, dwt, or ozt depending on what you need is a basic requirement — not a premium feature.

What a Bill of Materials looks like for a jewelry piece

A Bill of Materials (BOM) is a complete list of every material, component, and quantity required to produce a single finished piece. For jewelry, it captures the full cost picture before production starts and provides the deduction recipe when production completes.

Here is what a BOM looks like for a 14K yellow gold solitaire ring:

Component	Specification	Qty	Unit	Unit cost	Line total
14K yellow casting grain	585 fineness, yellow alloy	5.0g	grams	$93.73/g	$468.65
Waste factor (10%)	Scrap/polishing loss	0.5g	grams	$93.73/g	$46.87
Round brilliant diamond	0.50ct, VS2, G color	1	each	$1,000.00	$1,000.00
4-prong basket setting	14K yellow, 5mm RB	1	each	$28.00	$28.00
Medium solder, 14K yellow	Legor or equivalent	0.1g	grams	$93.73/g	$9.37
Ring box	Leatherette w/ insert	1	each	$3.50	$3.50
Total material cost					$1,556.39

Notice the waste factor line. The ring finishes at 5 grams of gold, but you'll consume 5.5 grams to make it — filing, polishing compound, grinding, and scrap all consume metal. A good BOM accounts for this. A spreadsheet usually doesn't, which means your COGS is understated every single time you make a piece.

Waste factor benchmarks by production type

Production type	Typical waste %	Notes
Simple cast bands, minimal finishing	3–5%	Sprue recycled, low polishing
Standard stone-set pieces	5–7%	Filing + polishing loss
Complex hand-fabricated work	7–10%+	More cut/file/solder operations
Well-managed shop with recovery	2–3%	Vacuum, bench sweeps, wet traps
Shop without recovery systems	8–15%+	Polishing compound, floor loss

At March 2026 gold prices (~$93/g for 14K), a workshop losing just 1 gram of gold per working day loses $93/day — roughly $23,000 per year. Proper vacuum suction at the polishing station and daily bench sweep recovery typically reclaim 80%+ of what would otherwise disappear into the polishing wheel.

How precious metals spot pricing works — and why it matters for your inventory

Every gram of precious metal you own has a value that changes continuously. Understanding where that price comes from helps you build a tracking system that reflects reality.

The LBMA and COMEX

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) oversees the world's largest over-the-counter gold market. Twice daily — at 10:30 AM and 3:00 PM London time — a standardized electronic auction involving 12–15 major banks sets the "LBMA Gold Price," the global benchmark used for settlement, accounting, and long-term contracts.

COMEX (the Commodity Exchange, a division of CME Group) runs the world's most active gold futures market — processing approximately 27 million ounces daily. Less than 1% of COMEX contracts result in physical delivery, but the massive volume provides transparent, continuous price discovery. Arbitrage keeps COMEX and LBMA prices aligned, with the spread typically averaging just a few dollars per ounce.

The practical result: gold prices update every few seconds during trading hours, across markets in Chicago, London, Hong Kong, New York, Shanghai, and Zurich — nearly 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.

What gold has done since 2023

Period	Gold ($/ozt)	Silver ($/ozt)	Platinum ($/ozt)
January 2023	~$1,823–$1,930	~$23.50–$24	~$1,050–$1,080
January 2024	~$2,050–$2,065	~$23–$25	~$990–$1,030
January 2025	~$2,625–$2,750	~$28–$30	~$940–$970
March 2026	~$5,000–$5,100	~$80–$85	~$2,027–$2,135
All-time high (Jan 28, 2026)	$5,602/ozt	—	—

Gold has risen approximately 180% since January 2023. For a jeweler with 500g of 14K gold in stock, that's the difference between a $17,000 inventory position and a $47,000 one — and a COGS per gram that went from $34 to $93. A tracking system that doesn't update this automatically is giving you fiction, not financials. For the step-by-step math on how this affects your margins, see our guide to calculating true COGS when gold prices move.

How most jewelers track materials today — and where it breaks down

Spreadsheets

Most studios start here. A workbook with tabs for materials, BOMs, and inventory levels, connected by formulas. It works at small scale — maybe 50 materials and 20 BOMs. The problems compound as you grow: every stock change is a manual entry, recalculating all BOMs when gold moves is tedious and error-prone, and multi-user collaboration without conflicts is nearly impossible. When you have 300 materials and a team of four, the spreadsheet becomes the bottleneck on every production decision.

Craftybase

The next step for most makers. Handles BOMs, auto-deducts materials on production completion, imports Shopify orders. Works well for general handmade businesses. For jewelry specifically: no live metals pricing (costs update only when you manually enter a new purchase), no weight-native units, no purity fields, no serialized inventory. Automated deduction requires the Indie plan ($99/mo); auto-sync to Shopify requires Business ($199/mo). We cover the full comparison in our Craftybase alternative guide.

Notebooks and manual tracking

The "gold book" — tracking metal in and out by weight — has deep roots in jewelry workshops. Many traditional bench jewelers still do this. It works for a single artisan making a handful of pieces a week. It is not scalable, not searchable, and not something an accountant can work from at tax time.

What a complete raw materials tracking system needs

For a Shopify jewelry manufacturer, a proper system needs to do six things:

1. Track materials by weight in grams, dwt, and troy ounces — with automatic unit conversion
2. Maintain a Bill of Materials per product variant that includes waste factors and live material costs
3. Auto-deduct raw materials from stock when a Shopify order is fulfilled — in real time, not batched
4. Update material costs when precious metals spot prices move — not just when you enter a purchase order
5. Track gemstone lots and individual stones with quality attributes — type, cut, carat weight, GIA certificate
6. Flag low stock before you discover it the hard way — mid-build when you're 0.3g short of 18K rose