Guide / free and the trade
Free jewellery inventory software
A spreadsheet runs a small jewellery collection better than most free apps — until packaging levels, commissions and material costs arrive. Here is where free carries the trade, where it stops, and our own paid position on the ladder.
The key facts
- Free stage one: a spreadsheet — fine for a maker with dozens of pieces and one person remembering what moved.
- The jewellery-specific fork: pieces nested in boxes, sleeves and cases — multi-level stock is where free tiers and spreadsheets both stop.
- Also outside free: commissions that reserve materials without consuming them, and traceable precious materials.
- BSimple's position: paid, from $180/month AUD, with multi-level stock and projects in the core plans — and a full trial rather than a free tier.
- The full picture: how the inventory record works is the hub page for everything above.
- 01The key facts
- 02What free covers for the trade
- 03Where free stops for jewellery specifically
- 04BSimple's rung, stated plainly
What free covers for the trade
A maker with a bench, a safe and an online store can run honestly on a spreadsheet: pieces as rows, quantities updated when something sells, a column for materials cost. That is not a compromise — at that scale it is the right system, and free tiers of paid tools mostly add an app and a barcode to the same job. The honest limit of every free option is the same as any trade: concurrency and structure. Two people editing, one collection across two markets, or a commission pipeline that must reserve materials without consuming them — these need a record, not a file.
The jewellery-specific pressure arrives with packaging. A finished piece ships inside a box, inside a sleeve, sometimes inside a case — and each level is stock in its own right. Free tools track one level; the trade needs all of them, decremented together. What the trade needs from software, in full covers the requirements behind this page.
Where free stops for jewellery specifically
- Multi-level stock: boxes, sleeves and cases as tracked levels with their own quantities — the first hard requirement, and the first paywall.
- Commissions: reserve gold or a stone against a job without consuming it, then consume on invoice — project-shaped work that free tiers do not model.
- Materials trace: which gold lot went into which run — batch tracking, and the costing and provenance answers it enables.
- Wholesale to stockists: per-store pricing and self-serve ordering through a portal — the B2B layer beyond any retail free tier.
The free-to-use ladder and the open-source option cover the escape routes and their maintenance costs honestly — self-hosted open source can do all of the above, at the price of owning the system.
BSimple's rung, stated plainly
We build BSimple, so weigh that: it is not free. Plans run $180/$250/$399 per month AUD with every feature in the core plans — multi-level stock for the packaging problem, projects for commissions (reserve, consume on invoice, history per customer), batch tracking for materials, and the accounting handoff to Xero or MYOB. The full-product trial is how we would rather be judged: load your real pieces, nest them in their boxes, run one commission and one wholesale order.
If your volume is spreadsheet-honest, stay free — the upgrade trigger is the first time packaging stock drifts, a commission double-books a stone, or two people edit the file on the same day. Until then, free is the correct price.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there genuinely free jewellery inventory software?
Spreadsheets, yes, and capped free tiers of paid tools — both genuine for low volume. The trade-specific requirements (multi-level packaging, commissions, materials trace) are where free stops, because that is where the engineering is.
Can free tools track boxes and sleeves separately?
Generally no — one level per product is the common ceiling. If you ship pieces nested in packaging, each level needs its own quantity and its own decrement, which is multi-level stock territory.
Does BSimple have a free plan?
No — plans start at $180/month AUD, everything in the core plans, with a full-product free trial instead. We would rather be judged on your real pieces than admired on a free tier.
What should a maker do before paying for anything?
Run the spreadsheet honestly: pieces, packaging, materials, commissions. If it holds, it holds. The paid layer earns its keep when packaging drift, double-booked commissions or two-person edits start costing real money.
Can BSimple import an existing spreadsheet?
Yes — that is the intended start: your product list imports, locations and reorder levels get set, and the trial runs a real week before any decision.
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