The consignment note: the document that follows the precious material you leave at a workshop

It is the document that establishes the handover of precious material by one company to another, for a specific job, without transfer of ownership. The brand remains the owner of its gold while it is at the workshop; the workshop is the consignee, responsible for keeping it and returning it. The note describes what leaves, in what quantity, for what purpose and for how long, and it is signed by both sides. It plays three roles at once: proof of handover, basis of liability in the event of loss, and supporting document for the precious-metals register entry.

The same French word covers two very different realities. In retail jewelry, a "consignment" is the piece a private customer leaves in the shop for a repair, a resizing or an appraisal: the document identifies the customer's object, agrees a deadline and a quote, and that is what counter software handles. Between professionals, a consignment is raw material or work in progress: precious metal by weight, stones, works orders handed to a caster, a setter or a polisher. Here everything turns on the gram and the fineness, and the operation has to appear in both companies' registers. This page is about the second case — the one nobody documents.

In France, the legal obligation bears on the register: anyone holding gold, silver or platinum materials in the course of their profession keeps a register of their purchases, sales, intakes and deliveries (article L. 834-6 of the Code de commerce), and consigned objects are part of it. For those consigned objects, the rules allow the entry to be replaced by a consignment note or a card in a continuous series stating the consignor and the consignee with their addresses, the detailed description, the metal, the fineness, the weight and the dates (tax code annex IV, articles 56 J quaterdecies to 56 J octodecies). In other words, the note is not an optional convenience: it is the accepted form of an obligation. Badly filled in or unnumbered, it no longer plays that role. One useful clarification: article 537 of the French general tax code, still quoted more or less everywhere as the basis of the register, has been repealed since 1 July 2025 — the reference to use today is indeed article L. 834-6 of the Code de commerce.

Ten particulars. The number, in a continuous series. The full identity of the consignor and the consignee: company name, address, registration number. The handover date and the return date. The nature of the operation and a description allowing individual identification of the objects. The number of pieces. The metal and its fineness in parts per thousand. The measured weight, gross and net. The count and weight of the stones. The declared value. Finally the return deadline and both parties' signatures. The description, count, weight, fineness, metal, origin, dates and counterparty identity fields are precisely those required for every entry in the precious-metals register: a note carrying all of them does the work of both documents.

Yes, and on both sides. The principle is mirrored double recording: an outflow at the consignor when the material leaves, the matching intake at the consignee when it arrives. The fact that the material is not yours does not mean you have nothing to record — the register traces holding, not ownership. A contract workshop receiving gold from a brand records it as an intake in its own register, with the brand as counterparty, even if the parcel came straight from the supplier and never passed through the brand. And the return is traced symmetrically: intake at the party recovering it, outflow at the party returning it.

For consigned objects only, and provided it is kept in a continuous series with all the required particulars: that is the allowance the French rules provide. It never replaces the register for the rest of the activity — purchases, sales, intakes, deliveries, remelts. In practice, companies that keep both spare themselves the argument: the note travels with the parcel, the matching entry exists in the register. Beware a common shortcut: the fact that your client keeps an impeccable register does not exempt you from yours in the slightest. The penalties for a missing or inaccurate register range from a fine to a charge of up to one to three times the value of the objects.

It is done on a reference scale, at the moment of handover, and the result is put on the note before the parcel leaves. The ideal is joint weighing: both parties establish the same figure, or failing that the recipient reweighs on arrival and reports the gap immediately. On return, you reweigh — piece by piece, never as a parcel total, otherwise a gap on one piece drowns in the sum of the others. The gap between the weight that left and the weight that came back then becomes usable information: normal manufacturing loss, stones not deducted, or a genuine anomaly.

You subtract it, without exception. A set piece comes back with its stones, and the scale does not distinguish a gram of metal from a gram of diamond. If the count and weight of the stones are on the outgoing consignment note — along with the weight of the stones supplied by the brand — the subtraction is mechanical on return. Otherwise every set piece artificially inflates the metal returned, and the weight-account gap accumulates without anyone knowing where it came from.

They are part of the metal and must appear on the note. Two rules of method. Weigh before shipping, always. And sort before shipping the raw sprues, never reworked, from those that have been polished or deburred: the two do not follow the same buy-back route nor the same coefficient, and those coefficients are contractual, negotiated partner by partner. Reconstructing after the fact what was raw is impossible — once the box has gone, the information is lost.

Five come up everywhere. The weight is not measured but estimated, or copied from the CAD file. The stones are neither counted nor deducted, and so counted as metal on return. The sprues leave without having been sorted between raw and reworked. The notes are not numbered in a continuous series, so nothing proves none is missing. And the return is not traced: the shipment stays open on both sides. None of these mistakes is visible on its own — they are all visible together, at closing, in the form of a gap nobody can explain any more.

Books, registers and supporting documents relating to precious metals are kept for six years from the last transaction they record (article L. 102 B of the French tax procedures code). In practice, a consignment note must remain available long after the piece has been delivered, invoiced and paid for. A counterfoil pad in a drawer rarely survives six years in a state fit to be produced; a note archived with its register entry does.

Three things. Numbering stops depending on who fills in the note that day: the series is continuous by construction. The note and the register entry are no longer two separate acts — the shipment itself writes the outflow and the mirrored intake, at the measured weight and the fineness, the moment it leaves, and replaying the operation never records it twice. Finally the round trip becomes one single story: the reweighed return clears the shipment, the gap reads line by line, and a shipment refused or cancelled comes back through a return entry rather than an eraser. Paper does the first third of the job very well. It does not do the other two.