Serialized vs. Non-Serialized: How to Track Your Jewelry Inventory

If you manage inventory at a jewelry store or wholesale operation, you’ve probably faced this question: should each piece get its own unique identifier, or can you just track quantities by style?

Both approaches work. But choosing the wrong one for your situation leads to headaches—inaccurate counts, unreliable reporting, and a lot of manual cleanup down the road.

What serialization actually means

Serialized inventory means every individual piece gets a unique identifier—a SKU or serial number that stays with that specific item for its entire lifecycle. Each SKU has a quantity of exactly one. When you sell it, that SKU is gone.

Non-serialized inventory tracks quantities by style. You have 12 of this ring, 8 of that bracelet. Individual pieces aren’t distinguished from each other. The quantity goes up when you receive, down when you sell.

Why this decision matters

The core advantage of serialization is precision. When every piece has its own record, you can track exact cost, exact age, exact profit margin. You know exactly how long a specific piece sat in the case before it sold.

With non-serialized tracking, those numbers get averaged. If you received the same style at three different costs over the past year, the system calculates an average or uses a FIFO assumption. Age becomes an estimate. Profit margins become approximations.

For high-value fine jewelry, that precision matters. For commodity items you move in volume, it might not.

The practical trade-off

Serialization used to mean significantly more work. Every piece needed to be individually entered, tagged, and tracked. With older systems and manual processes, that overhead was real.

Modern inventory systems have largely eliminated that burden. Features like item cloning, barcode scanning, and batch receiving make serialized tracking nearly as fast as bulk quantity management. RFID takes it even further.

The question isn’t really about workload anymore. It’s about whether the precision is valuable for your business.

A simple rule of thumb

Here’s a practical test: Put two or three pieces of the same style on the counter. Turn around, have someone switch their positions, then turn back. Can you tell which is which?

If yes—they’re visually distinguishable, have different characteristics, or you’d care which specific one a customer bought—serialize them.

If no—they’re truly interchangeable and you sell them in volume—non-serialized tracking is fine.

The point is this: if individual pieces are different enough that you can tell them apart, they’re not truly interchangeable. Their individual histories matter. That’s a signal to serialize.

Most jewelry stores need both

The reality is that most jewelry inventories contain both types. A one-of-a-kind designer piece absolutely needs serialization. A basic silver chain you stock by the dozen probably doesn’t.

Good inventory software lets you configure this on a style-by-style basis. Serialize the styles where precision matters. Track quantities for the commodity items. Let the system handle the complexity of managing both approaches together—physical counts, reporting, sales, consignment—without you having to think about which method applies to which piece.

Making the switch

If you’re currently tracking everything one way and realize you need to change, do it thoughtfully. Switching from non-serialized to serialized is harder than going the other direction—you’re essentially creating individual records for items that were previously bulked together.

Before committing to a method for a new style, think about how you’ll want to analyze that inventory a year from now. Will you need to know exactly which pieces sold, at what margin, after how long? Or will aggregate numbers be good enough?