Any of the four mainstream UK ledgers will do a jeweller's bookkeeping and Making Tax Digital VAT return: Xero (£16 to £65 a month, rising to £18 to £70 on 1 September 2026), Sage Accounting (£20 to £59), QuickBooks Online (£16 to £123) and FreeAgent (£33, or free with a NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank or Mettle business account). What none of them does is the jewellery-specific VAT: none calculates VAT margin scheme sales on the item's margin, none keeps the item-by-item stock book HM Revenue & Customs requires, and none prints the reverse charge wording on a scrap gold sales invoice. Xero has said plainly that margin scheme VAT is "not in our roadmap"; Sage's own guidance is a manual journal routine; QuickBooks tells users to ask an accountant. Choose the ledger your accountant likes, then solve the three jewellery problems in front of it.

All prices are monthly, ex VAT, as of August 2026, from the vendors' UK pricing pages. Each vendor is running an introductory discount (Xero 80% off for six months, Sage and QuickBooks 90% off for six months, FreeAgent 50% off for six months); the figures below are the full rates you pay afterwards.

The four ledgers on the jeweller's questions

Xero Sage Accounting QuickBooks Online FreeAgent
UK price (full rate) Ignite £16, Grow £37, Comprehensive £50, Ultimate £65; from 1 Sept 2026 £18, £39, £55, £70 Start £20 (1 user), Standard £43 (3 users), Plus £59 (unlimited users) Sole Trader Plus £10, Simple Start £16, Essentials £38, Plus £56, Advanced £123 £33 limited company; free with NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle business account
MTD VAT return Yes, all plans Yes Yes Yes
VAT margin scheme (VAT on the margin, no VAT on invoice, stock book) No. Feature request marked "not in pipeline"; the manual VAT-amount edit used as a workaround is not in new invoicing No in the cloud product. Sage's knowledge base method (T9 code, output tax report, manual journal to boxes 1, 4, 6 and 7) is for Sage 50 Accounts and is manual No. Community answer: "not supported within QuickBooks Online"; use journals No native support
Scrap gold reverse charge (buyer: boxes 1, 4, 6; seller: no VAT, statutory wording on invoice) Reverse charge tax rates exist (built for overseas services and construction); no gold wording on the sales invoice Reverse charge codes exist; no gold wording Reverse charge codes exist; no gold wording Not verified; no gold wording in any case
Repairs labour at 20% Yes, a standard-rated service line Yes Yes Yes
Stock Tracked inventory is SKU and quantity Stock on Plus, SKU and quantity Stock on Plus and above, SKU and quantity No stock module
Serialised one-of-a-kind pieces with all-in cost No No No No
Customer property (repairs, valuations) No - a job is not a ledger concept No No No
Cash threshold / HVD monitoring No No No No
Bank feeds, receipts, payroll Yes; payroll add-on Yes; payroll for 1 employee included (5 on Plus), +£1.85 per extra employee Yes; payroll add-on Yes
Imports from a stock system CSV invoices and bills; large app marketplace CSV; app marketplace CSV; app marketplace CSV

The row that matters is the margin scheme one. Almost every UK jeweller who sells second-hand or antique pieces uses the margin scheme, and every one of the four ledgers handles it the same way: not at all, with a journal at quarter-end.

Why can't the ledger do the margin scheme?

Because the margin scheme is a per-item tax, and a general ledger is a per-transaction one. Under VAT Notice 718 the VAT on a second-hand sale is one sixth of the difference between what you paid for that specific piece and what you sold it for. The ledger does not know what you paid for that piece. It knows the total of your purchases account.

So the usual routine is:

  1. Post margin scheme purchases with no VAT, to a "second-hand stock purchases" account.
  2. Post margin scheme sales with no VAT (a zero-rated or no-VAT code), so the customer's invoice shows no VAT - which is the legal requirement - but now the ledger thinks you owe nothing.
  3. At quarter-end, total the margins from your stock book, work out one sixth, and post a manual journal for the output VAT so box 1 is right, adjusting boxes 6 and 7 as Notice 718 requires.

That is what Sage's knowledge base article describes for Sage 50, what accountants on AccountingWEB describe for Xero and QuickBooks, and what a bookkeeper will do for you in any of the four. It works. It depends entirely on a stock book that exists outside the ledger, with the twelve columns in our stock book article, and on someone doing the arithmetic every quarter. If the stock book is wrong, VAT becomes due on the full selling price. The ledger cannot save you from that, because it never saw the piece.

Xero's position is the clearest. Its product ideas forum carries a request to calculate margin scheme VAT; the status is "not in pipeline", and its community manager's reply was that "this isn't in our roadmap". The manual edit of the VAT amount on an invoice, which some people used as a workaround, is not available in Xero's new invoicing.

What about the scrap gold reverse charge?

Different problem, same answer. When a VAT-registered jeweller sells scrap gold to a VAT-registered refiner at metal value, section 11 of VAT Notice 701/21 says no VAT is charged and the buyer accounts for it, and the seller's invoice must state the output tax the buyer must account for in the statutory wording - see do I charge VAT on scrap gold.

Xero, Sage and QuickBooks all have reverse charge tax codes, because the construction industry and overseas services forced them to; we did not check FreeAgent's. Xero's default "Reverse Charge Expenses (20%)" rate posts to boxes 1, 4, 6 and 7, and the domestic reverse charge rates for construction can be switched on. On the buying side that gets you close to what 701/21 wants. On the selling side, none of them will put "£... output tax on this supply of gold to be accounted for to HM Revenue and Customs by the buyer" on the invoice, nor record the weight, fineness and fix price the notice wants kept. That has to come from the system that weighed the gold, or be typed.

If you run a gold desk, the ledger is the last place the reverse charge gets recorded, not the first.

Repairs, valuations and customer property

Repairs are the easy part for the ledger - labour and parts on a standard-rated invoice, input VAT on the findings reclaimed as normal. The part the ledger cannot do is the job. A repair is a customer's ring in your safe with a ticket, a promised date, a quoted price and a risk you carry until it goes back. None of the four has a concept of a job, and putting a customer's property into the stock module to track it is the single most common way jewellers corrupt their stock figure. Keep jobs in a repairs system or on a job sheet and let the ledger see only the invoice. The insurance side is covered in is customer jewellery insured in my workshop.

Which one should a jeweller pick?

  • Xero if your accountant is on Xero, as many UK small practices are, and if you want the biggest choice of connected apps. Budget for the September price rise.
  • Sage Accounting if you came from Sage 50, want payroll included at the headline price, or your accountant is a Sage practice. The Plus plan's stock is still SKU and quantity.
  • QuickBooks Online if you are a sole trader at £10, or you want five users and stock at £56. Its margin scheme answer is the same as the others.
  • FreeAgent if you bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle and want it free, and you are a maker or a small shop without stock to speak of. It has no stock module at all, which for a margin scheme dealer is a disadvantage and for a maker is irrelevant.

None is a bad choice for the bookkeeping. The differentiator is not in the ledger; it is in what sits in front of it.

What should sit in front of the ledger?

A jeweller's stock system has to do four things the ledger will not: hold each piece with its purchase price and VAT treatment decided at intake; produce the margin scheme invoice with the right wording and no VAT line, and the gold reverse charge invoice with the statutory sentence; keep customer property separate from stock; and push the sales and purchases to the ledger with the right VAT codes so that the quarter-end journal is generated rather than hand-calculated.

The options are the jewellery shop systems - Clarity & Success, Jewel-Master and the US systems, with varying UK VAT handling - or a spreadsheet and a disciplined bookkeeper. Milleso is our product and belongs in this list too, with the obvious caveat: it decides the VAT treatment at intake, keeps the stock book, issues margin scheme and reverse charge invoices, tracks customer property separately and exports to Xero and Sage. It does not replace the ledger, do payroll or file the VAT return, and it does not export to QuickBooks or FreeAgent.

What we could not verify

  • Whether Sage Accounting (cloud) has any margin scheme guidance of its own. The Sage knowledge base article we found is for Sage 50 Accounts; we did not find an equivalent for the cloud product.
  • FreeAgent's sole trader and partnership prices. We checked the limited company price (£33); the other business types are priced separately on the same page.
  • Exactly which VAT return boxes each ledger's reverse charge codes populate. Xero's default code is reported to post to boxes 1, 4, 6 and 7; we did not test all four. Notice 701/21 wants the buyer's gold entries in boxes 1, 4 and 6. Ask your accountant to check the box 7 treatment.
  • QuickBooks Advanced features at £123. Listed but not relevant to a single-shop jeweller; not examined.

Sources

This is general information, not tax or accounting advice, and it is not a quotation. Ledger prices change with notice and VAT treatment turns on your own facts; confirm the journal routine for the margin scheme and the reverse charge with your accountant before your next return.

Milleso sits in front of the ledger: VAT treatment decided at intake, the stock book kept automatically, margin scheme and reverse charge invoices with the right wording, customer property outside stock, and a clean export to Xero or Sage so the quarter-end journal is a file, not a spreadsheet.