The precious-metals register, kept at the workshop's pace

It is the French statutory register of precious-material movements. Article L. 834-6 of the Code de commerce requires manufacturers and dealers in gold, silver and platinum, wrought or unwrought, and more generally anyone holding those materials in the course of their profession, to keep a register of their purchases, sales, intakes and deliveries. The decisive word is "intakes": holding alone triggers the obligation, even when the metal belongs to a client and was never purchased.

No. Article 537 of the French tax code has been repealed since 1 July 2025, by order no. 2023-1210 of 20 December 2023. It is still quoted more or less everywhere — specialist sites, paper registers, software vendors — but it is no longer in force. The references to use today are article L. 834-6 of the Code de commerce for the obligation itself, and articles 56 J quaterdecies to 56 J octodecies of annex IV to the tax code, amended by the order of 30 June 2025, for the form of the register, its particulars and the treatment of consigned objects. If a document or a tool still tells you about article 537, it has not been updated since the recodification.

The obligation is the same, the operations are not. A reseller, a consignment shop or a buy-back counter mainly records second-hand purchases and sales, with the seller's identity established on proof. A manufacturer records movements of holding: intake of consigned material, intake of cast pieces, shipment to a subcontractor, consignment return, remelting, delivery of the finished piece. Those operations have no price, no buyer and no seller — which is precisely why they escape tools built for buying and reselling.

Every physical movement of precious material goes in, even without a purchase or a sale: intake from a supplier, intake of consigned material, importation, shipment to a contract workshop, delivery, return, remelting — a remelt being, incidentally, an outflow of the article and an intake of the material it yields. What does not go in is anything that is not a precious material: wax is not one, so a tree of waxes sent to the caster produces no entry. Nor does a purely book movement, such as an account-to-account transfer at a depository, as long as nothing moves physically — the entry comes when the cast pieces are received and weighed. Finally, plated goods, rolled gold and costume jewelry without precious metal are exempt, with the notable exception of gold or platinum clasps over 3 grams and silver clasps over 30 grams.

The rules list nine: the date in and the date out, the nature of the operation, the description of the object — precise enough to allow individual identification —, the count, the weight, the fineness in parts per thousand together with the metal, the origin, the identity of the counterparty with surname, first name and address, and the hallmarks where the context requires. Identity is established on proof, in particular for a second-hand purchase from a private individual, where the entry is individual whatever the value. For the sale of an article, the buyer's identity is required in specific cases: above €15,000 on investment gold, at public auction, or at the client's request.

Mirrored, on both sides: the material leaves the consignor's register and enters the consignee's, with the name and address of both parties, the detailed description, the nature, the weight, the metal, the fineness and the dates. The rules allow a substitute: a consignment note or a card kept in a continuous series carrying those same particulars. One point not to miss: the contract workshop still has to keep its own register. The fact that its client keeps one, in Liink or elsewhere, does not relieve it.

Yes, but not where you would expect. When a brand buys metal in its own name and has it delivered straight to its manufacturer, the parcel never passes through the brand: there is therefore no intake to record in its register. The entry is made in the manufacturer's register, since they physically hold the material, and the counterparty to mention is the brand — not the supplier — because the metal enters the workshop on their client's account.

Yes, the electronic form is provided for by the French rules, subject to conditions: integrity and immutability of the data, non-modifiable sequential numbering, timestamping of each entry, correction in the form of a new reasoned record rather than by overwriting, and the ability to produce the register filtered to precious metals only. Entries are kept for six years from the last transaction, under article L. 102 B of the French tax procedures code.

No — and it is a claim worth examining closely when a vendor makes it. There is no approval or certification of register software by the French authorities: it is for the operator to demonstrate the reliability of their system, in other words for you. The NF525 standard, often invoked by analogy, concerns point-of-sale software and does not apply to this register. What you can legitimately require of a tool is therefore not an official stamp but technical proof: continuous numbering, timestamping, append-only writing, cryptographic sealing and a verifiable export.

With a rectifying entry. In Liink, an existing entry can neither be modified nor deleted: the correction takes the form of a new, reasoned entry, opposite in direction to the one it rectifies and linked to it. The error stays visible, so does the correction, and the hash chain stays continuous. That is what the rules require of an electronic register, and it is also the only tenable position at an inspection: a register you can erase proves nothing.

Two sets of penalties coexist. Article L. 835-5 of the Code de commerce provides for a fine of €100 to €750, together with a penalty of one to three times the value of the objects concerned — on precious materials, it is that proportional penalty that really bites. Articles 321-7 and 321-8 of the French Criminal Code, which cover trade in second-hand goods, punish the absence of a register, inaccurate particulars and refusal to produce it with six months' imprisonment and a €30,000 fine.

Liink keeps the register, you remain responsible for it. The tool produces the entries as operations happen, numbers them, timestamps them, seals them and exports them over the requested period, as PDF or CSV — and refuses an export rather than silently truncating it, an incomplete register with no warning being itself a non-compliance. Three limits, said plainly: each company remains responsible for its own register, a contract workshop is not relieved of its own because its client keeps one; what you do not enter in the tool is not in it, an unweighed intake remains an unrecorded intake; and buying metal from private individuals is not open in Liink, for lack of a compliant identity-recording flow — the scope we take on is manufacturing between professionals.