Question 1

How are live spot prices handled?

Accepted Answer

Pennyweight pulls live metal spot prices for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, and ties them directly to your material costs. Your items' prices are never stored. They're computed at render time from current spot, your labor rate, your overhead, and your markup rules. When gold moves, every gold piece in your catalog is repriced instantly. No manual updates, no stale spreadsheets.

Question 2

Is this accounting software?

Accepted Answer

No. Pennyweight is a pricing engine. It answers "what should I charge for this piece?" In our experience, tracking inventory, syncing to sales platforms, and reconciling non-production expenses is a full-time job on its own. We weren't even being diligent about it in Shopify; we don't expect you to do it here. Focus on pricing. Pair Pennyweight with QuickBooks, Wave, or Xero for the accounting side. We'd rather do one thing extremely well than do everything poorly.

Question 3

How is this different from my spreadsheet?

Accepted Answer

Spreadsheets can't pull live metal prices, recompute every item when spot moves, simulate 'what if' scenarios across channels, or apply bracket-based markup automatically. Pennyweight replaces the brittle spreadsheet pricing workflow most jewelers use with a purpose-built system that stays current by default.

Question 4

How much does it cost?

Accepted Answer

Two paid tiers, both with a 14-day free trial up front. Maker is $12/mo or $120/yr (~17% off) and covers up to 250 products in your catalog. Studio is $35/mo or $350/yr for unlimited products, priority support, and reserved capacity for team seats and API access as those ship. A card goes on file at signup and is charged at day 14 unless you cancel; cancel any time before then in the billing drawer and you won't be charged. The forward and reverse calculator stays free forever, and your data is always exportable.

Question 5

How fast can I get started?

Accepted Answer

Instant. Sign up, drop a card on file, and you have full Maker access for 14 days. No onboarding calls, no setup wizards, no waiting for approval. Cancel any time before day 14 in the billing drawer and you won't be charged. The fastest way to feel what Pennyweight does is to get a single product into the app and see what the system prices it at. Nobody else using Pennyweight can see it, and nobody on our team is poking around in it either, so put a real piece in there and trust the answer.

Question 6

What happens at the end of the 14-day trial?

Accepted Answer

At day 14, your trial converts to paid Maker automatically. Your card on file is charged $12/mo and your full editing access continues without interruption. If you decide it's not for you, cancel any time before day 14 in the billing drawer (avatar menu → Billing) and you won't be charged. Cancelled accounts drop to read-only: every item, material, vendor, snapshot, and analysis stays visible and exportable, the forward and reverse calculator keeps working on ad-hoc inputs, live spot prices stay visible, and your data never disappears.

Question 7

Can I price for multiple sales channels?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Set up retail, wholesale, distributor, and custom channels. Each channel is a percentage of retail (the keystone model). If your wholesale is 50% of retail, changing your retail markup automatically updates every wholesale price in your catalog. Change one number, every item downstream updates.

Question 8

What metals and purities are supported?

Accepted Answer

Gold (10K through 24K), sterling silver, platinum, and palladium. Purity factors (24K = 0.999, 18K = 0.75, 14K = 0.5833, and so on) are built into the pricing engine. Pick the karat and the math is handled correctly every time.

Question 9

Does Pennyweight have AI features?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it's available on every tier, not gated behind premium plans. Pennyweight's stance on AI is that it should accent the work, not replace it. We use it for the parts where you'd genuinely benefit from a smart assistant: turning a written description into a draft item, helping you import an existing spreadsheet, or explaining why a piece costs what it does to a wholesale buyer. We deliberately keep it out of the parts where you should be in control: your pricing rules, your markup, your margins, the shape of the engine itself. The math you trust is yours, not the model's.

Question 10

How secure is my data?

Accepted Answer

Your pricing data is yours, and only yours. We use the same authentication and database tools the rest of the modern web is built on (Clerk for sign-in, Supabase for storage, Vercel for hosting), every connection is encrypted, and your records are isolated to your account at the database level, not just in the UI. If that's the sort of thing you'd rather not think about, you don't have to: it's set up correctly, and we keep it that way.

Question 11

Can I export my data?

Accepted Answer

Yes. CSV export of your product catalog is built in, and full data export (items, materials, vendors, overhead, pricing profile, and snapshots) stays available at every tier, including after a trial expires. Your data is never locked in. You can leave with everything you put in, no questions asked.

Question 12

What's the cancellation policy?

Accepted Answer

Self-service, instant, no hoops. Cancel from your account settings anytime. No calls, no hold music, no retention scripts trying to talk you out of it. If you cancel partway through a billing month, you keep full access until the end of that period (no proration, no surprise cutoff). After that, the app drops to read-only the same way a lapsed trial does: your data stays exportable, the calculator still works, and you can pick back up later without losing what you built.

Question 13

Does Pennyweight work for non-metal or mixed-media pieces?

Accepted Answer

It depends. The pricing engine works for any piece you can break down into materials, components, and labor, so if your work is silver-with-leather, copper-and-enamel, or beadwork on findings, you can absolutely price it in Pennyweight. Where it shines is anything with metal weight in it, because that's where spot-linking adds the most value. Pieces that are entirely non-metal (pure leather, pure ceramic, pure textile) will work, but you'll lose the live-market hook that's the main reason to use Pennyweight in the first place.

Question 14

What if my first prices look too high or too low?

Accepted Answer

Take it as data, not a verdict. The first prices Pennyweight shows you are a function of the inputs you fed it: your labor rate, your markup, your overhead, your purchase costs. If a number feels too high or too low, the issue is almost always a setup choice: the labor rate is too low for your skill level, overhead is missing a real expense, the markup multiplier doesn't match what your channel actually pays. Adjust the inputs and the whole catalog updates. The Strategy page is designed exactly for this kind of tuning, and the guides at /guides walk through the four levers behind every price.

Question 15

Does Pennyweight work outside the US?

Accepted Answer

Currently USD. Weight units are flexible (grams, DWT, or troy ounces, your choice), and the pricing engine itself is currency-agnostic, so adding CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP, and others is on the roadmap rather than a rebuild. If you're outside the US and want to be the first to try non-USD, start the trial and let us know.

Question 16

What do I need to run it?

Accepted Answer

It runs in any modern browser: Mac, PC, iPad, or phone. There's nothing to install, nothing to update. Pennyweight is built mobile-first enough that you can pull it up on a phone at a craft show or on an iPad at the bench, but the desktop view is where the heavier work (catalog edits, multi-channel analysis) feels best.

The jewelry pricing engine for independent jewelers

Built for the way jewelers actually price

Tune one input. The whole catalog responds.

Gold, 14K yellow

Materials library, spot-linked

One price, every channel

30-day spot history, per metal

Bring your catalog with you

Try Pennyweight free for 14 days

Product

Company

Legal

The jewelry pricing engine for independent jewelers

Built for the way jewelers actually price

Tune one input. The whole catalog responds.

Gold, 14K yellow

Materials library, spot-linked

One price, every channel

30-day spot history, per metal

Bring your catalog with you

+How are live spot prices handled?

+Is this accounting software?

+How is this different from my spreadsheet?

+How much does it cost?

+How fast can I get started?

+What happens at the end of the 14-day trial?

+Can I price for multiple sales channels?

+What metals and purities are supported?

+Does Pennyweight have AI features?

+How secure is my data?

+Can I export my data?

+What's the cancellation policy?

+Does Pennyweight work for non-metal or mixed-media pieces?

+What if my first prices look too high or too low?

+Does Pennyweight work outside the US?

+What do I need to run it?

Try Pennyweight free for 14 days

Product

Company

Legal