The bag at the back of the safe
Every jeweller has one. A cloth bag or a shoebox at the back of the safe, full of repair envelopes from two, five, sometimes ten years ago. A resized wedding band. A chain with a new clasp. A watch with a new battery that nobody came back for. The work is done, sometimes paid for with a deposit, sometimes not paid at all.
Occasionally one of those customers walks in, ticket in hand, apologising. More often the envelope just sits. The phone number on it is disconnected, or nobody ever rang it more than once. Each time you do a safe count, the bag gets moved and nobody knows what to do with it.
Why finished jobs go quiet
The process ends at 'ready'. Someone rings the customer, leaves a voicemail, perhaps writes 'rang 14/3' on the envelope, and the envelope goes into the collection drawer. From then on, the job depends on the customer remembering.
There is no list that says: these twelve pieces have been ready for more than three months. The only view of uncollected repairs is physical, so the only time anyone looks is at stocktake, and at stocktake there is no time to make phone calls.
The trail is also incomplete. When you eventually want to act on a very old job under your terms, you need to show you tried to reach the customer. A pencil note on an envelope is weak evidence of that.
What the uncollected pile costs
| Issue | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Work done but unpaid | Bench time and materials you never recover |
| Safe space taken up | Room needed for stock and live jobs |
| Insurance questions | Customer property held with no clear record |
| No contact trail | Hard to act on old items under your own terms |
| Stocktake confusion | Customer items mixed in with shop stock counts |
There is a customer service cost as well. Plenty of these customers simply forgot. A friendly reminder a few weeks after the job was ready would have brought many of them back, and some would have bought something while they were in.
How we get old repairs moving again
We treat collection as a stage with its own reminders and records, instead of the end of the process.
- When a repair is marked ready, the collection clock starts and the customer is told by text or email.
- Reminders go out automatically at intervals you set, for example after two weeks, after six weeks and after three months, each with friendlier or firmer wording as you choose.
- Every reminder, call and letter is logged against the job with the date, channel and outcome, so the contact trail builds itself.
- An ageing list shows every finished job still held, grouped by how long it has been waiting, with the balance owed on each.
- Where you want to write formally, the system produces a letter from your own template with the job details filled in, ready to post.
- For the existing backlog, we help you enter the old envelopes quickly, photograph them, and bring them into the same list so the reminders can start.
What you are allowed to do with very old uncollected items depends on your own repair terms and on legal advice, which we do not give. What we provide is the record that lets you and your adviser make that decision properly.
After a few months of reminders
Collections become part of normal work. The reminders reach customers early, while the job is still fresh in their mind. The ageing list shows the stubborn ones, and those get a phone call from the owner instead of drifting.
- A clear count of finished repairs awaiting collection at any time
- Balances owed on uncollected work visible in one place
- A dated record of every attempt to contact the customer
- Customer items kept separate from stock in counts and reports
The bag at the back of the safe shrinks slowly, and the new jobs stop joining it.
Signs the safe is holding too many old jobs
- You have repairs from more than a year ago still waiting.
- Nobody could tell you how many uncollected jobs there are today.
- Contact attempts are pencilled on envelopes, if recorded at all.
- Customer pieces get muddled with stock during safe counts.
- Unpaid balances on finished work are never totalled.