What does 'commission' mean in Jewelry Studio Manager?

A commissioned piece — a client asking you to make something bespoke. It does not mean staff sales commission or payroll. Jewelry Studio Manager does not calculate what to pay your sales team, and it has no payroll features. If that is what you need, this is the wrong tool.

Does Jewelry Studio Manager do inventory, repairs, or appraisals?

No. It tracks materials belonging to a specific commission — a client's gemstone moving from your studio to a setter and back — but it is not a stock-control system, it is not a repair-ticketing system, and it does not produce valuations or appraisals. If those are your primary need, choose a tool built for them.

Do I need Shopify to use it?

No. It runs standalone with its own login and billing, and it also works as an embedded Shopify app that syncs customers, orders and products. Shopify is optional.

Buyer's guide

Choosing a CRM for a jewelry business

Q: How much does Jewelry Studio Manager cost?

There is a free plan with no card required, which covers 3 active commissions, 50 clients and 1 user. Paid plans are $9.99/month (Starter), $19.99/month (Professional, which adds the client approval portal, Shopify sync and analytics) and $29.99/month (Enterprise, which adds multi-location, white-label and API access). Paid plans include a 14-day trial and fall back to the free plan rather than locking you out.

Most jewellers who go looking for a "jewelry CRM" don't actually need one. This is an honest guide to working out which of the three tools you need — written by the people who make one of them, so weigh it accordingly.

Updated 14 July 2026

Start by naming what you're actually tracking

"CRM" means customer relationship management, and the clue is in the name: the thing it tracks is a relationship. A contact, a history, a follow-up. That is genuinely what many jewellery businesses need, and if it's what you need, you should buy a normal CRM and stop reading.

The trouble is that a lot of jewellery work isn't a relationship problem at all. It's an object problem. Somebody has handed you their grandmother's diamond and expects it back, reset, in eight weeks. What you need to track is where that stone physically is, who approved the CAD, and whether the wax has been signed off before anyone casts metal. No amount of contact management solves that.

So before comparing products, work out which of these you are:

The three tools, and who each one is for

1. A general CRM — if you sell finished pieces and want to sell more

If your business is stock you already own, and your problem is remembering to follow up with the customer who tried on the emerald ring in April, buy a general CRM or a clienteling app. They're cheaper, more mature, better integrated and better supported than anything jewellery-specific, and the jewellery-specific vocabulary buys you nothing.

This is the honest answer for most retail jewellers, and it is the answer even though we sell a competing product.

2. A retail/POS system — if the shop floor is the business

If you're running counters, stock levels, repairs taken in over the counter, and sales staff, what you want is a jewellery retail platform: point of sale, inventory, repair intake. That's a different category again, and a CRM bolted onto it is usually a feature, not the product.

Jewelry Studio Manager is not this. It has no stock control and no repair-ticketing workflow. If that's your core need, don't buy it.

3. Bespoke-commission software — if you make things to order

If a meaningful part of your income is pieces made to commission — engagement rings, remodels, resets, one-offs — then the unit of work isn't a customer and isn't a stock item. It's a project with a physical object inside it, and it has properties no CRM models:

It moves through stages that must happen in order (you cannot cast before the wax is approved).
It contains someone else's irreplaceable property, which leaves your premises and must come back.
It requires formal sign-off at points where a mistake becomes expensive and unrecoverable.
The client wants to see progress without ringing you every Tuesday.

That is the category Jewelry Studio Manager is built for, and it's the only one we'd argue for.

The two questions that actually decide it

"Am I holding property that isn't mine?" If yes, you need chain-of-custody — a record of where a specific stone is at any moment: in the studio, at a setter, in transit, returned, or consumed into the piece, with its certificate number and insured value against it. This is not a feature you can approximate with notes in a CRM, and it's the thing that turns a lost stone from a catastrophe into a conversation.

"Does a mistake here cost me metal?" If yes, you need approval gates rather than attachments. Design proposal, CAD render, wax model, final render, production sign-off — each formally approved by the client, with revision history, before the next stage can begin. A CRM can store a file. It cannot stop work.

Where Jewelry Studio Manager fits — plainly

It's a bespoke-commission production system with a client approval portal, not a CRM with jewellery labels on it. It tracks a commissioned piece from inquiry through consultation, design, production and quality check to delivery, with jewellery-specific fields (metal, gemstone, shape, ring size, engraving) rather than generic ones. It has a client CRM inside it, appointments, watermarked design-photo sharing, orders and PDF invoices, and it syncs with Shopify if you use Shopify — but Shopify is optional and it runs perfectly well standalone.

What it does not do, stated plainly, because it's the fastest way to save you a trial:

No staff sales commission or payroll. "Commission" here means a commissioned piece — a client asking you to make something. If you need to calculate what to pay your sales team, this is the wrong app entirely.
No inventory or stock control. It tracks materials belonging to a specific commission, not sellable stock levels.
No repair ticketing. Repair exists only as a project type, not a workflow.
No appraisals or valuations. It records an insured value; it does not produce a valuation.
No accounting. Invoices carry tax lines; there is no ledger.
No point of sale.

What it costs

There's a free plan with no card: 3 active commissions, 50 clients, one user. Paid plans are $9.99/month (Starter — unlimited commissions), $19.99/month (Professional — adds the client approval portal, Shopify sync and analytics) and $29.99/month (Enterprise — adds multi-location, white-label and API). Paid plans have a 14-day trial and drop back to the free plan afterwards rather than locking you out of your own data.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a jewelry-specific CRM, or will a general CRM do? If your work is selling finished stock and following up with customers, a general CRM or a Shopify-native clienteling app is usually the right answer — cheaper and better supported than anything jewellery-specific. You only need jewellery-specific software when the thing you're tracking isn't a contact record but a physical object in production.

What does "commission" mean here? A commissioned piece — a client asking you to make something bespoke. It does not mean staff sales commission or payroll. Jewelry Studio Manager has no payroll features.

Does it do inventory, repairs, or appraisals? No, no and no. It tracks materials belonging to a specific commission, but it is not a stock-control system, not a repair-ticketing system, and it does not produce valuations.

Do I need Shopify? No. It runs standalone with its own login and billing, and also works as an embedded Shopify app that syncs customers, orders and products. Shopify is optional.

See pricing — free plan, no card

We build Jewelry Studio Manager, so treat the recommendation as one with an interest attached. The two questions in the middle of this page are the honest test, and for a lot of jewellery businesses they point somewhere other than us.