Home › Resources › Karigar Management in Jewellery Software
For Indian jewellery manufacturers and retailers who produce their own pieces, the karigar relationship is the heart of the operation. Raw gold leaves the business to a craftsman and returns as finished jewellery. Between those two moments, the gold is entirely in the karigar's hands — and in most Indian jewellery businesses, the tracking of that gold is done on paper, on a loose chit, or not at all. The financial consequences of this gap are significant, and they compound quietly over years before they are noticed.
Every experienced Indian jeweller knows that karigar wastage is real and expected. Filing dust, melt loss, surface finishing — all legitimate. The agreed wastage allowance per tola or per gram is a standard part of the karigar arrangement. The problem begins when actual wastage consistently exceeds the allowance, and nobody is measuring it systematically enough to notice.
Consider: you issue 100 grams of 22KT gold for a batch of necklaces. Your agreed wastage allowance is 2%. You should receive back 98 grams in finished pieces. Instead, you consistently receive 95 or 96 grams across multiple jobs from the same karigar. The difference — 4 to 5 grams per 100 issued — is above the allowance. Over a year of regular manufacturing, that difference accumulates into hundreds of grams of unexplained gold. At current MCX rates, this is a significant financial loss.
Without a system recording each job individually — issued weight, received weight, declared wastage, calculated shortfall — this pattern never becomes visible. It is absorbed into the annual stocktake discrepancy and attributed vaguely to "manufacturing losses."
Every gold issue to a karigar generates a formal job card: karigar name, date of issue, gold weight, purity, job description, agreed wastage percentage, and expected return date. This record is in the system from the moment the gold leaves — not reconstructed later from memory or paper chits.
When finished pieces are received back, the system records the weight of each piece. Total received weight plus declared wastage is automatically compared against issued weight. Any shortfall beyond the permitted allowance is flagged immediately — not buried in a year-end count. The karigar's account shows the balance outstanding.
At any time, the owner can see exactly how much gold is with each karigar — broken down by job, with issue date and return date. Overdue jobs are highlighted. Gold that has been with a karigar for longer than the agreed period is visible — and can be chased proactively rather than forgotten until a stocktake.
Over time, the system builds a wastage history per karigar. If one karigar's average actual wastage is consistently higher than another doing similar work, the data makes this visible. Conversations about wastage rates are grounded in fact rather than impression. Karigars who consistently work within their allowance can be recognised and rewarded; those who consistently exceed it can be addressed.
A properly integrated system connects karigar management to the retail inventory. When finished pieces are received from a karigar, they are automatically added to the retail stock register with their tag numbers, weights, purities and HUID numbers. There is no separate entry step — the receipt of finished goods and the addition to retail stock are the same transaction. This eliminates one of the most common sources of stock discrepancy in Indian jewellery businesses that manufacture their own pieces.
Karigar management is not a back-office function — it is a core financial control in any Indian jewellery business that manufactures. The gold with your karigars is your gold, and it deserves the same level of tracking as the gold in your safe or on your display. The businesses that manage this well protect margins that their competitors are quietly losing.
To see karigar management in action in Jwellex, request a free manufacturer demo.
Complete karigar tracking and wastage reconciliation — request a demo.
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