Jewellery repair tracking software does four things a paper envelope cannot: it gives every job a number and a status anyone in the shop can look up, it texts or emails the customer when the job moves, it keeps a photograph of the piece at intake and at return, and it counts the value of customers' property in your workshop separately from your own stock. The jewellery systems - Clarity & Success, Jewel-Master, The Edge and Jewel360 - do the first three, as do the generic repair tools (Repair Pilot from £29 a month, RepairDesk from US$99, RepairShopr from US$69.99), which were built for phones and laptops; a spreadsheet does none of them reliably. The fourth, treating a repair as customer property rather than stock, is where the generic tools stop and where Milleso, our product, starts.

The comparison table

As of August 2026, from each vendor's own pages unless marked.

System What it is Published price Envelope / job ticket Status stages Customer notified Photos Outworker tracking Customer property counted separately from stock UK
Clarity & Success Evolution UK jewellery EPOS and stock system Not published; repairs is an optional module on the Standard edition Yes Yes Not stated on pages we read Not stated Not stated Not stated Yes - Stafford; support Mon-Fri 8-5
Jewel-Master UK jewellery EPOS, cloud Not published; fixed monthly fee; repairs included with EPOS Yes - barcode receipts Yes - any number between "new" and "complete", e.g. sent to repairer, back, ready SMS and email Yes - camera scan at arrival and departure Yes - "jobbers and repairers" stages Not stated Yes - Basingstoke
The Edge US jewellery system, Windows on-premise One-off licence, not published by vendor; directories say from US$3,500 Yes - barcoded envelopes Yes Text or email when finished Not stated on page Not stated Not stated No UK presence published
Jewel360 US jewellery system, cloud US$199 a month Startup; repairs on Core, price on request Yes Yes - job templates, notification at each stage Text and email Yes Not stated Not stated No UK presence published
Repair Pilot UK generic repair tracker, cloud Starter £29, Growth £49, Pro £99, Multi Store £129 a month; 14-day trial Receipts and worksheets Yes Yes Before and after photos Not stated No - a job tracker, not a stock system Yes - UK company
RepairDesk Generic repair POS, phone-repair heritage; lists watch and jewellery repair Essential US$99, Growth US$149 a month (US$79 and US$119 annual) - from directories, vendor page blocked to us Yes Yes Yes Yes Not stated No Not addressed
RepairShopr Generic repair ticketing and POS; lists watch repair Starter US$69.99, Repair Shop US$139.99, Big Chain US$149.99 a month Yes Yes SMS and email Yes Not stated No Not addressed; QuickBooks only
Spreadsheet or carbon docket book Free £0 Docket book yes; spreadsheet prints nothing Manual Manual No Manual No n/a
Milleso (our product - weigh this row accordingly) UK back office with workshop Counter £99, Trade £249 a month ex VAT Job number, promised date and stage on every job Yes - with late jobs marked No - not yet Yes - photographed once at intake Yes - the board shows who has the piece and when it is due back Yes - repairs are a separate book held under bailment, never counted as stock Yes

What goes on a repair envelope that the software must capture?

The envelope is the contract. Whatever system you use, the intake record needs: a job number; customer name and two contact routes; a description specific enough to identify the piece back to its owner (metal, hallmark if visible, stone count, sizes, weight); condition on arrival, including the things the customer did not mention - a worn shank, a chipped stone, a missing claw; the work required; the quoted price and whether it is an estimate; any deposit; the promised date; and the initials of whoever took it in. A photograph at intake is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy, because the "that scratch wasn't there" conversation is settled by the timestamp, not by memory.

The software test is whether all of that is captured in one screen at the counter, printed on the envelope or ticket in one action, and available to the bench without retyping. Jewel-Master's page describes exactly this: condition, work required and detail fields, barcode receipts, and a camera that attaches the image as the piece arrives. The Edge prints barcoded envelopes and pulls up the job on scan. Jewel360 uses job templates so a claw retip or a ring size is set up once. Repair Pilot prints receipts and worksheets and attaches before and after photos.

What status stages does a jewellery repair need?

More than "in" and "done". A workable sequence for a shop with a bench and outworkers is:

  1. Booked in - envelope printed, photo taken, deposit recorded.
  2. Awaiting approval - estimate sent, customer has not said yes.
  3. At bench - with your own workshop.
  4. With outworker - left the building; this is the stage insurers care about.
  5. Back from outworker - checked in again, cost recorded.
  6. Quality check.
  7. Ready - customer notified.
  8. Collected and paid - or uncollected, which needs its own list.

Jewel-Master's repairs module allows any number of stages and names "sent to the repairer" and "back from the repairer" as examples, which is the right shape. Jewel360 notifies the customer at each stage. The Edge's page focuses on the notification when the job is finished, which is the one that reduces phone calls most. A generic repair tool will let you define the stages; what it will not know is that stage 4 changes the insurance position.

The uncollected list matters more than it looks. Finished jobs that sit for months are both an insurance exposure and a cash problem, and the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 sets out the notice procedure before you may sell uncollected goods. A system that cannot report "ready for more than 90 days" leaves you to find them in a drawer.

Why is a repair not stock, and why does the software have to know?

Because the ring belongs to someone else. Three consequences follow, and a SKU-and-quantity system gets all three wrong.

Insurance. Customers' goods in trust are covered, if at all, under a separate section of a jewellers block policy with its own limit, and that limit is often lower than the stock limit and sometimes excludes goods with outworkers. Your broker will ask for the maximum value of customers' property on the premises at any one time. If repairs are booked into stock, that number is buried in your stock valuation; if they are on paper, it does not exist. Our piece on whether customer jewellery is insured in your workshop explains what to check on the schedule.

VAT. The repair labour and parts are a standard-rated supply at 20%. The ring itself never enters your books as a purchase or sale. If your system books the ring in as stock at a nominal cost and out again at the repair price, you have just created a fictitious margin scheme or standard-rated sale of goods, and your stock book is wrong. Where the piece is your stock - a second-hand watch you are servicing before sale - the repair cost sits against the piece for your gross profit but, under the margin scheme, does not reduce the taxable margin; we cover that in the margin scheme for second-hand watches. The software needs both behaviours and must not confuse them.

The count. At any moment you should be able to answer "what is in the building that is not ours, and what is it worth" in one report. That is the number your insurer wants, the number you check when the alarm goes off at 3am, and the number the generic repair tools cannot produce because they have no concept of stock to be separate from.

Which system should a UK jeweller choose for repairs?

If you already run a jewellery EPOS, use its repairs module. Jewel-Master includes repairs with the EPOS and its page says "many repair-only operations" use it on its own, which is the strongest repairs-first signal among the UK systems. Clarity's Evolution has a Repair app for taking jobs in away from the till and lists repairs as an add-on module on its Standard edition; the pages we read do not describe notifications or photos, so ask. The Edge and Jewel360 are both mature on repairs, but you would be buying a US system for the bench and inheriting its lack of a VAT model at the till; see The Edge vs Jewel360 vs Lightspeed for UK jewellers.

If you are a repair-only workshop with no retail stock, Repair Pilot is the UK-priced generic option: £29 a month for two users, £49 for five, £99 for ten, with photos, receipts and a 14-day trial. RepairDesk and RepairShopr do the same job in dollars with a phone-shop accent; RepairShopr's accounting link is QuickBooks only and some of its features are US-only.

If you are a retail jeweller who also buys gold, takes part-exchange or sells second-hand, the repairs module needs to sit inside the system that handles those, because the same customer often does all of it in one visit. Milleso is our product, so read this accordingly: repairs are a separate book held under bailment - a job number, a promised date, a stage, who has the piece and when it is due back, with the late ones marked - and never counted in stock value or the margin scheme stock book. It does not yet send the customer a text when the job moves. It sits beside the serialised stock, the gold desk and a till that runs margin, standard-rated and reverse charge lines in one sale, with exports to Xero and Sage. Counter is £99 a month and Trade £249 a month ex VAT, one month free, migration done for you. It has no multi-store yet and no US tax model.

A spreadsheet is fine for ten jobs a month. At fifty it fails in the predictable way: nobody updates it, the envelope is the real record, and the first time a piece goes missing you discover the spreadsheet said "at bench" for three weeks.

What we could not verify

  • Clarity & Success repairs module detail. The site names a Repair app and a repairs add-on; notifications, photos and outworker stages are not described on the pages we read.
  • RepairDesk prices. Its pricing page returned an access error; the figures are from software directories.
  • Whether The Edge and Jewel360 report customers' property separately from stock. Not described on their pages.
  • Jewel360 Core plan price, where repairs live. On request.
  • Repair Pilot's integrations and SMS costs. The pricing page says "all integrations" without naming them.

Sources

This is general information, not a recommendation to buy any product, and not insurance or tax advice. Vendor pricing and features change without notice; every figure above was checked against the linked page in August 2026 and should be re-checked before you sign. Milleso is our product and appears in the table with that disclosure. Check your cover for customers' goods with your broker, and VAT questions with your accountant.