Running your own jewelry business is hard work, and sometimes the day-to-day business operations get in the way of doing what you love most: making handcrafted jewelry! Tasks like inventory tracking, customer invoicing and proper pricing are all tedious steps which can drain the energy and creativity right from you, leaving little time or interest in making jewelry. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the business end of running your own jewelry business.
This is where a good bead jewelry software package comes into play. There’s no reason to spend hours tracking inventory and writing up invoices by hand if you have a dedicated program that can do it all for you in seconds. After all, you just want to make handcrafted jewelry! If you’re just starting out then you don’t want to spend a lot of money at first. You should probably consider a bead jewelry database that has all the basic functions you need to grow into. Here are some of the basic software features you’ll want to be sure any jewelry software package has:
Jewelry Pricing Calculator: Keeping track of what materials you have in stock is important for ordering and making sure you don’t run out of essential items, but you should also be able to enter the items used in each piece and the software should be able to calculate the amount of money it costs to produce each piece. This will help make sure you’ll never make a beaded jewelry piece and sell it for less than you paid for the materials.
Invoice Printing and Customer Tracking: Tracking customers is just as important as being able to give your customers a professional receipt for their purchases. You don’t want to hand someone a little piece of carbon paper with some scribbles on it after they spend $50 for an elegant bead necklace and earring set. Tracking your customers is a great way to inform them of sales and craft shows you’ll be at and really helps to grow your number of repeat customers!
Low Cost: When you first start out bead jewelry software you buy shouldn’t costs more than $150, especially if you’re just starting your bead jewelry business. By the same token, you want to be careful about buying a jewelry program that doesn’t have all the features you need. Once your business really takes off you might want to consider upgrading or looking into software packages designed for professional jewelry or bead store management.
When you first start shopping for a software program you may be a little confused by all the options, but the features above are something any program designed for bead jewelry should have. Even if you aren’t comfortable with computers you’ll quickly see how much time you can save with the right software, which will give you more time to make your amazing handmade jewelry!