One of the ways to make your handcrafted jewelry or bead business more profitable is by instituting a degree of control and order over your beading inventory and customers so that you know exactly how much you’re spending in materials and you can price your jewelry appropriately. By keeping track of how much you spend on your beads you can use specially designed bead jewelry software to not only automatically figure out your cost-per-bead for you but you can also keep track of bead sales and always be aware of where you’re getting the cheapest beads from!

There are lots of jewelry business software packages on the market, but only a few of them are custom tailored to the inventory hassles and nature of making bead jewelry. Some are very expensive and have lots of features and some are very cheap but lack some basic features. Always try to see screenshots or, even better, a demonstration video to get a feel for how the software works ahead of time.

One of the most widely used and still very affordable options is Bead Manager Pro, which has all the features a small to medium home-based bead jewlery business should need at a very reasonable price.

Here are seven features you’ll definitely want to have in any software package you buy to handle your jewelry business:

Ability to Track Bead Inventory and Jewelry Supplies: This is obviously the most important feature so that you can keep track of what you have, what you need and what you’re definitely out of. It takes a little bit to enter all your existing inventory at first, but then it’s a breeze and it saves you so much time in the long run when you find yourself wondering whether or not you still have a certain type of bead that you can’t locate at the moment. Your software should be able to keep track of free beads and supplies as well as made pieces if possible.

Bead Jewelry Pricing Calculator: If you have all your bead inventory in the software then you should be able to list out all the beads you used in a certain beaded pieces and the software should give you an instant cost of goods and even make some suggestions on pricing. So if you used 30 Swarovski crystal bicone beads, 1 glass beaded pendant and 12 silver bali beads you would type those numbers into the software program and it would instantly tell you how much you spend on beads for that piece. No more guessing at pricing!

Ability to Store Photos of Your Beaded Jewelry Pieces: Any decent software will allow you to store photos of your beads and creations so that you can go back and reference them. It may even help in jewelry repair if a bead is lost and you need to see if you can find a certain type of bead without actually seeing the bead in person.

Customer Tracking: A lot of beginner bead jewelry artists track their beads and jewelry creations well, but don’t always track their customers. Tracking customers and being able to contact them from time to time is a great way to sell more jewelry to people who already like your style and beading ability.

Ability to Create Professional Invoices: Yes, at some craft shows you just can’t get electricity so you’re forced to use the little order pads, but ideally a professional piece of beaded jewelry should be accompanied with a professional invoice. It gives the buyer confidence in you as a business person and it serves as a receipt which can be kept and pulled out by the buyer if she wants to order more pieces from you in the future!

Export Data Ability: The ability to export data from your bead jewelry program into other programs like Microsoft Excel is essential to saving time and energy when tax season rolls around. And having numbers in Excel is a great way to then build sales charts and even track trends in your jewelry sales from one show to the next.

Affordability: If you’re just starting your beaded jewelry business then you probably don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on a piece of software, even if it will end up saving you hours of work and maybe hundreds of dollars more in the future. Be wary of anything too cheap, but expect good value for the money you spend. From what I’ve seen you can get some great bead jewelry software for well under $200.

There you have it! Those are the minimal things you should be looking for when you go looking at buying bead jewelry software for your business. Now that you know what to look for you may want to read some a review of the various bead jewelry software packages available today.