How to price gold jewelry with fineness and workmanship

The price on a gold item's tag is the product of a few variables. Define them correctly and your pricing becomes consistent, explainable and easy to automate. In this article we break the formula into its parts and work through an example.

The parts of the formula

Fine-gold price

The fine-gold (HAS) price is the price of one gram of pure gold and the starting point of every calculation. Because it changes during the day, always take it from an up-to-date source.

Net grams

Net grams is the item's weight after deducting stones, enamel and any non-gold parts. Recording the difference between gross and net weight prevents mispricing, especially for set pieces.

Fineness

Fineness expresses purity in parts per thousand:

Multiply net grams by fineness and you get the item's fine-gold equivalent. For example, a 10-gram 22K item contains 9.16 grams of pure gold.

Workmanship

Workmanship reflects the labor that went into the piece and your margin. It can be set in fineness points (e.g. +40), as a percentage or as a fixed amount. Set in fineness points, it moves together with the gold price.

A worked example

Say the fine-gold price is $140 per gram, you're selling a 10-gram 22K bangle and you apply 40 points of workmanship:

1. Fine-gold equivalent: 10 × 916 ÷ 1000 = 9.16 g
2. Gold value: 9.16 × 140 = $1,282.40
3. Workmanship: 140 × 10 × 40 ÷ 1000 = $56.00
4. Sale price: 1,282.40 + 56.00 = $1,338.40

In short: fine gold × grams × (fineness + workmanship) ÷ 1000 = 140 × 10 × 956 ÷ 1000.

Practical details

• Rounding: rounding prices to a step (e.g. $1 or $5) keeps tags readable.
• Change threshold: set a threshold so small rate moves don't change prices constantly.
• Price lock: rates can move while you negotiate. Locking a quoted price for a set time protects both you and the customer.
• Audit: record who changed a price by hand, and when.

How it works in Sarraf Store

When you link a product to a price source in Sarraf Store, this calculation runs on every rate update, with rounding, change thresholds and workmanship set per product. At the counter, prices can be live or locked for a set time or indefinitely, and manual changes land in the audit log. To try the formula with your own numbers, use the price calculator on our home page, and see gold price management for how automatic pricing works.