Everyone runs a scheme. Few run it by the book.

Walk into almost any jewellery showroom in India and you will find some version of a monthly savings scheme running quietly at the back. The customer pays a fixed amount every month, the shop chips in a bonus at the end, and a year later they walk out with a necklace they have effectively been saving up for. It builds footfall, it locks in a future sale, and it is one of the oldest trust-based relationships in the trade. What a lot of owners do not realise is that this friendly little scheme sits on a legal line, and which side of that line you land on comes down to a single number: twelve months.

A savings scheme is a year-long promise to a customer. The books behind it should be just as reliable.

How the 11+1 actually works

The most common version is what the trade calls "11+1." The customer pays eleven monthly installments; on the twelfth month the jeweller adds one installment's worth as a bonus, and the customer redeems the full value in gold. Some shops run a straight "pay for ten, get a discount" variant instead. The mechanics differ, but the promise is the same: save with us every month, and we will sweeten the final purchase.

The customer commits to a fixed monthly amount, say five thousand rupees, for eleven months.
The jeweller adds a bonus installment or a maturity discount at redemption.
The accumulated value is redeemed against jewellery, usually at the gold rate on the day of purchase.
Making charges and GST apply at the point of redemption, not on the monthly collection.

The line you cannot cross: the twelve-month rule

Here is the part that rarely makes it into the sales pitch. Under the Companies Act, 2013 and the Companies (Acceptance of Deposits) Rules, 2014, money you collect in advance for supplying goods is perfectly fine, as long as you actually deliver those goods within 365 days of taking the advance. Stretch the scheme to twelve months or more, or fail to deliver within the year, and that advance can start to look like a "deposit." A normal jewellery business is not permitted to accept public deposits, and the aggregate limits and disclosure obligations that follow are not something you want to trip over by accident.

In plain terms: keep every scheme under twelve months, deliver the gold within 365 days of the first installment, and keep the paperwork clean. This is not legal advice, and your CA or CS should sign off on how your specific scheme is structured, but it is the reason nearly every reputable jeweller's scheme runs for eleven months and not thirteen.

A scheme that builds trust for a year should not cost you a compliance headache in the thirteenth month.

Gold that a customer saved for over eleven months should flow straight into a clean, compliant bill.

What your books actually need to survive this

The compliance line is only half the story. Running schemes on a paper register or a spreadsheet is where the real day-to-day risk sits: a missed installment, a disputed balance, a customer who is certain they paid one more month than your book shows. To run this cleanly you need:

A per-customer scheme ledger showing every installment, date, and mode of payment.
An installment schedule with reminders, so lapses are caught early instead of at redemption.
Clear tracking of the bonus or maturity discount, and the redemption date.
Redemption billing that applies the rate of the day, making charges, and GST correctly.
Delivery recorded within 365 days, with an audit trail that would survive close scrutiny.

Marg, Tally and the desktop tools, fairly

Most jewellers already run Marg or Tally, and both are genuinely capable accounting packages; myBillBook is a clean, simple billing app that a lot of small counters like. None of them, though, are built around the way a jewellery business actually works: rate-of-the-day pricing, weight-based billing, HUID capture, old-gold exchange, karigar job-work, and yes, savings schemes. So the scheme ends up living in a separate register while the billing lives somewhere else, and reconciling the two becomes a monthly chore. That gap is not a knock on those tools; it is simply not what they were built for.

Where BizRevolt fits

BizRevolt's jewellery workspace treats the scheme as a first-class part of the business, not an afterthought bolted on. The scheme ledger, rate-of-the-day billing, weight-priced POS, HUID capture, old-gold exchange and karigar job-work all sit in one place, so the money a customer saves over eleven months flows straight into a compliant redemption bill with the audit trail already attached. It starts at ₹1,499 a month for a single counter, ₹3,999 for a growing store, and ₹7,999 for a multi-branch chain, a fraction of what one lost scheme dispute or a compliance slip can cost you.

If you run a scheme and you are not fully sure your books would survive a close look, that is worth fixing before the next festive rush rather than during it. Message or call the founder directly on +91 91 0657 4865, we would honestly rather help you get the structure right than sell you something you do not need.

When the scheme meets old-gold exchange

There is one more wrinkle worth naming, because it is where manual billing quietly falls apart. At redemption, a scheme customer very often also brings in old gold to exchange — a worn bangle, an inherited chain — and wants it valued and adjusted against the new purchase along with their accumulated scheme balance. Now the counter has to weigh and value the old gold, net it against the scheme amount, apply the rate of the day, and still get the making-charge GST right on the fresh piece. Done by hand, at a crowded counter during the festive rush, this is exactly where mistakes and disputes are born. Done in one system, it is simply another clean, auditable bill.