For jewellers
How to price the centre stone and the ring separately, in one quote
Here is a mistake that quietly costs jewellers a lot of money: pricing a diamond ring with one markup across the whole thing. You take your cost for the metal, the labour and the centre stone, multiply the lot by your usual markup, and send it. It feels tidy, but it either prices you out of the job or leaves money on the table, because a centre stone and your workmanship are two completely different things and they should be priced two different ways.
Why the centre stone needs its own price
Your standard markup exists to cover your skill, your bench time, your tools and your overheads. That is exactly right for metal and labour. A centre diamond carries none of that, it is a bought-in item with a market value, and your customer can often check that value online. If you apply your full workshop markup to a $6,000 stone, your quote balloons and you lose the job to a jeweller who priced the stone sensibly. Apply too little across the whole piece to compensate, and now your workmanship is underpaid. The answer is to stop treating them as one number.
Price the stone on its own tier
Centre and feature stones are usually priced on a slimmer, separate margin, and often on a sliding scale, a smaller percentage as the stone gets more expensive. Price the stone by its carat weight and quality on that tier, add GST, and you have a fair stone price that stands up to scrutiny. This is different again from how you price small accent or melee stones, which typically sit closer to your workshop markup because setting a row of them is mostly labour.
Keep your workmanship priced properly
With the stone handled separately, you are free to price the actual jewellery, the metal, the design, the setting and the finishing, at a margin that reflects your craft, without a big stone distorting the number. This is where jewellers usually undercharge, so protecting the workmanship price from the stone is half the point. If you want the full method for the rest of the piece, see our guide on how to price custom jewellery.
Handle a client's own stone or a trade-in
Sometimes the client brings the stone, or trades in old gold toward the piece. Pricing the two parts separately makes these easy. If they supply the diamond, you simply drop the stone line and price only the workmanship. If they trade in gold, you credit that value against the total. Because the stone and the making are already separate lines, none of this forces you to rebuild the quote from scratch.
Then show the client one clean total
Here is the part that matters: your customer does not need to see your two different margins. They should see one considered price for their ring. So you price the stone on its tier, price the piece on yours, and combine them into a single total on the proposal, with GST included. Behind the scenes the two are costed correctly and your margin is protected. In front of the client it reads as one clear, professional number, which is exactly how a fine piece should be presented.
Give options where it helps
Separating the stone also lets you offer honest options. The same setting with a lab-grown centre versus a natural one, or a 1.0ct versus a 1.5ct, becomes an easy conversation when the stone is its own line. Present good, better and premium, each as one combined total, and let the client choose. You will win more of these jobs, and win them at a better price, because the customer feels in control of the trade-off.
It does this for you, automatically
This is built into Workshop Pilot. Flag the centre stone and it is priced on your stone tier by carat weight, the rest of the piece is priced on your workshop markup, and the client sees one clean total with GST, on a proposal they can accept online. You get the margins right without doing the maths twice. Try it free for 14 days, no card required.
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