Gold price movement and your online jewellery listing: a rule for quoted prices

A buyer puts a 22 karat chain in her cart at night and pays the next afternoon, and by then the rate on your board has moved. You either ship at a loss or ring her to ask for more, and both cost you. What stops it is a written price rule in three parts. Rebuild the listed price from the weight, the day's rate and a separate making charge. Change the rate once a day, at a stated time. And hold a cart price for a stated window, after which it re-prices in plain view.

Why a fixed price on a moving rate goes wrong

On many small jewellery websites the price was typed into each product once and is updated when somebody remembers. In a rising week the site becomes the cheapest gold in town, and the orders that pour in are the ones you least want. In a falling week it is dearer than your own counter, and the buyer who rings the showroom to check gets a lower figure than the website showed her. After that she asks on WhatsApp before buying anything, and your website becomes a catalogue.

The opposite mistake is a live feed that changes the price every few minutes. She takes a screenshot of one figure, reaches checkout and sees another, and assumes she is being played.

The three decisions to write down

1. What the price is made of. Net gold weight multiplied by the day's rate for that purity, then the making charge, then the value of any stones, then GST on its own line. Only the gold line should move with the rate. If your making charge is a percentage of the gold value it moves too, and the page should say so.
2. When the rate changes. Once each trading day, at a fixed time, from the same board rate your showroom uses. Pick one source, whether that is your own board or the rate your local association publishes, and never mix the two. Print the time beside the rate.
3. How long a quoted price holds. From the moment the buyer reaches checkout, the price holds for a window you choose. It needs to be long enough for a UPI payment or a card OTP to go through, and short enough that you are not carrying the rate for her overnight. When it lapses, the cart re-prices and shows the old and the new figure side by side.

Two points belong to your advisers. Whether you may cancel an order that went through at a stale price depends on your terms and on consumer rules, so write the clause before you need it and have it checked. GST belongs to your CA: show it as a separate line and let them confirm how it applies to making charges and to old gold taken in exchange. What the invoice must show comes from BIS and the tax rules, and changes.

What the buyer should see at checkout

This is the screen that stops the phone call. Every line answers a question she would otherwise send on WhatsApp.

22K gold chain, 18 inches, hallmarked
Net gold weight          19.40 g
Gold rate (22K)          as set at 10:30 am today, per gram
Gold value               weight × rate
Making charge            per gram, shown in rupees
GST                      on its own line
Total                    one figure

This price is held until 11:15 am.
If you pay after that, it updates to the rate in force then.

The "held until" line tells her the clock is running. A buyer who can see how long the price lasts pays inside the window instead of thinking about it overnight. The rest of the page, from stone charges to the hallmark photograph, is set out in why a buyer trusts an online jewellery seller.

For example: a Rajkot jeweller who re-priced by hand

For example, imagine a family jeweller in Rajkot that sells lightweight 22 karat chains and earrings across Gujarat through its own website. The prices sat in a spreadsheet, and the owner's son updated them whenever the rate had moved "a lot". One week the rate climbed for several days running while he was away at a family wedding, and orders came in from Surat to Bhuj at the old figures.

The arithmetic is unkind. Using illustrative numbers, say the rate has risen by ₹150 a gram since the last update. A 20 gram chain is then ₹3,000 under-priced before making charges and tax, and every order that week carries the same gap. The family honoured them all, because cancelling would have meant refunds and angry reviews from first-time buyers. It was a week's margin gone, on invented numbers, and the son has not been allowed to forget the wedding.

The family did not just promise to update more often. Every product price is now calculated from one field: the board rate typed in each morning by whoever opens the counter. One number changed instead of two hundred prices. Pieces above a set weight show weight, purity and a button to confirm the price on WhatsApp.

Made-to-order pieces need a different rule

A made-to-order bangle never weighs exactly what the catalogue says. Show an estimated weight range, take a booking amount, and state how the balance is worked out.

There are two honest choices. Fix the rate on the day of booking, which suits you if you buy the metal as soon as the order comes in, because your own cost is fixed that day too. Or charge the rate on the day of the invoice, which suits a jeweller working from stock, and tell her before she pays the booking amount. In both cases the final weight is charged as weighed, and the difference is refunded or collected against an invoice with the weight printed on it.

When a fixed online price is the wrong choice

Skip the daily rate engine if gold is a small part of what you sell online and most orders are silver or fashion pieces. Put "price on the day" where the number would be, and answer the WhatsApp question while she is still looking. The same applies to heavy bridal sets, where the price is a conversation with the family.

And keep gold prepaid. On cash on delivery, the rate risk sits with you until the courier collects the money, and a buyer who sees the rate fall that week can simply refuse the parcel.

What to do next

Open your website and your showroom price list side by side, and work out the price of five pieces at today's board rate. If the two disagree, write the three rules above on one page and decide who types the rate each morning. Pricing is one part of selling jewellery and other categories online; if you want the rule written and built into the store with pricing and packaging strategy, tell us what you need.