Ghat is metal that left during the work. Kaat is an amount cut off a figure by agreement. Burada is the filings that came off your gold at the bench, and the filings are still yours.
None of those words is the problem. What a slip leaves out is the basis: which weight the number sits on, at what purity, and whether the metal actually left the shop. Reading a slip is the paperwork half of metal, purity and the bench, and you can learn it in a week once somebody writes the words down.
One habit decides whether any of these words can be argued with: write the purity beside every weight, on both sides of the job. Then you and your karigar are both counting fine metal.
These are trade words with no fixed meaning. The same word can mean one thing in a chain factory, another at a hand-work bench, and something else again in the next town’s sarafa. Your own shop stays the authority on its own slip.
Ghat matlab kya hota hai, and who bears it?
Ghat toh lagta hai, people say: loss happens, the way rain happens, and there is nothing to discuss. Ghat is the loss, the metal that does not come back. It goes into the filings, into the polishing wheel and into the fire while the piece is melted and soldered, and part of it genuinely cannot be recovered by anyone.
What that sentence merges is two different things. One is the metal that actually left, and it is real: no bench files, saws and polishes gold without losing some of it. The other is the figure you agreed to allow, and that one is a negotiation.
Who bears it is whoever agreed to bear it, which puts the figure at the counter while the metal is still on your side of it. There is no normal percentage to quote you here: loss follows the process, not the man, and machine chain, casting and hand cutwork give up metal at three different rates. Agree the figure process by process, and write it on the slip the day the metal goes out.
How is kaat different from ghat on the same slip?
Ask when the number happened and whose hand made it. Ghat happens at the bench. Kaat is a cut, applied on paper, by a person, at a moment you can name.
Across the counter, kaat is the deduction taken off the weight or the purity of old gold before anyone pays for it. On a karigar slip it is what the shop cuts at settlement — weight short of the allowance, a fault in the finish, a stone lost in setting.
The two get mixed up because one number can be written under either word, and a number under the wrong word is charged twice — once as the metal that left, and again as the deduction for the metal that left. Two questions separate them. Did the metal actually leave? And which weight is this percentage worked on?
| Word | What it names | Which way it moves | The question that settles it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ghat | Metal lost during the work | Out of the weight you issued | How much is allowed, on which process |
| Kaat | An amount cut off a figure at settlement | Off the return weight, or off the labour bill | On what weight or value, and for what reason |
| Burada | The filings that came off your metal | Back to you, if you ask for them | Who collects them, and when they come back |
| Chhut | An allowance or a discount, given up by one side | Either way, depending on the shop | Chhut on what, and how much |
| Mazdoori | The hand’s charge for the work | Out of your pocket | Per gram or per piece, and on which weight |
| Dhalai | Casting: melting and pouring to a mould | Out of your pocket, as its own process | Inside the mazdoori, or beside it |
Burada is my gold — can I ask for the filings back?
Ask for them on the day the metal goes out. A request made at issue is procedure; the same request when a piece comes back short sounds like an accusation. Burada is the filings, the dust that comes off in filing, sawing and finishing, caught in the leather apron hung under the bench, and it came off metal you issued, so it sits inside your ghat and it is your gold.
Filings carry steel dust off the file, polish, wax and flux, so they go to a refiner and come back as recovered fine metal, less a melting loss and a refining charge. Get both figures before the lot leaves your hand; the Scrap & Melt Estimator then prices the lot line by line.
Keep sweepings and polishing waste out of the burada bag. They are dirtier, they return less, and mixing them in makes both figures unreadable. Bag each job’s filings against its own job number. On a small lot the refining charge and the flat assay fee can eat much of what those filings are worth. Ask anyway: the point is that the metal gets counted at all.
Chhut, dhalai, mazdoori, patti — which of these is the labour?
Only one of the four is labour. Mazdoori is the hand’s charge for making the piece, quoted per gram or per piece, and the two quotes are not comparable until you know which weight the per-gram figure sits on.
Dhalai is casting: melting the metal and pouring it into a mould. It is a process with its own charge, so ask whether the quote you were given includes it or bills it separately.
Patti is the metal rolled flat: strip or sheet, the form a bangle or a band starts life as. It names a material, and a line reading patti ki mazdoori charges for rolling that strip and stops there.
Chhut is the loosest of the four. It is something given up by one side: an allowance on loss in one shop, a discount off the quoted rate in another, a rounding-off at settlement in a third. A slip usually does not say which way it runs. Ask chhut kis par, and then ask how much.
One arithmetic trap runs under all of it: a wholesaler quotes VA, value addition, as a percentage of the metal value while your karigar quotes mazdoori in rupees per gram, and the two cannot be added until they sit on one scale.
What is the difference between a kachcha slip and a pakka bill?
Weight out, weight in, ghat, mazdoori, a date, sometimes a signature: that is the kachcha slip, the bench’s own note. A pakka bill is an invoice, carrying a number in a series, a GSTIN, an HSN code and the tax lines. Pakka means firm, and firm here means somebody outside the two of you can read it.
The slip settles what you and your karigar owe each other, and it settles nothing with the department, nothing with an insurer, nothing in a dispute over metal that did not come back.
Gold sent to a bench has not been sold, so it travels on a delivery challan and moves as job work under section 143 of the CGST Act. The conditions for metal sent out that way, and the statement the shop sending it files, sit in rule 45 of the CGST Rules. Your CA signs that statement. At the counter what matters is small: write the challan number against the issue entry, so the slip and the document point at each other.
The karigar’s own bill is for his labour, and labour supplied on its own is a service in its own right, so that making charge carries GST at 5%. What settles the rate is the supply, not the layout: a finished piece you hand over ready-made is one supply at 3% on the whole value, making included, however many lines the bill shows it on, and which of the two you are in is a question with a guide of its own. Writing either bill, with metal and making each on their own line, is what the Jewellery GST Invoice Maker is for.
| The paper | What it is for | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| The kachcha slip | Settling weight, loss and labour between you and the karigar | Prove anything to anyone outside that room |
| The delivery challan | Moving metal that is not being sold, and bringing it back | Stand in for a bill — nothing has been sold on it |
| The karigar’s tax invoice | Charging his labour as a service, with the tax on it | Say anything about the metal, which was never his |
Where do tunch, VA and the ratti trap get settled?
Several words on your slip belong to the bill, and each is worked out on its own tool here, because one word with two definitions is worse than a word with none.
Purity is the first. Tunch is the trade’s own word for it, and tunch, 916, 750, 925 and the HUID, which runs to 6 characters, are decoded on the Karat, Tunch & Hallmark Decoder at the top of this guide, the same tool that turns issued grams into fine metal. VA and wastage are the second, and the calculator above puts a percentage and a per-gram quote on one scale.
Units are the third, and they carry a trap. One tola is 11.6638 g, and a slip written in tola, masha or ratti converts on the Tola · Pavan · Bhori Converter. The trap is ratti: the jeweller’s ratti is 0.1215 g and the gem trade’s ratti is 0.182 g, so a slip with stones and metal both written in ratti carries two units under one word.
The rest of the vocabulary, two lines to a word, sits in the words on an Indian jewellery bill. Chhut is left undefined there: its meaning is set by the shop, and no page can settle what your shop means.
How do I write the slip the same way every month?
Next month the same word has to mean the same thing, or none of it is evidence of anything. Six columns, ruled once, do most of that work.
- A date and a job number on every issue, so two jobs never share a line.
- Gross grams and the tunch you are issuing at, written together, so the fine metal can be worked off the line months later.
- Grams beside any traditional unit. Where the book says 5 tola 6 masha, the grams go beside it in the same hand.
- Stones and findings counted and weighed on their own line, because they are not gold and cannot carry a gold percentage.
- The allowed loss for that process, agreed at issue and written at issue.
- The words themselves, once, on the first page of the book, including what your shop means by chhut and by kaat.
The fine-metal line for each of those rows comes off the decoder.
Take the last three slips out of the drawer tonight and write the purity beside every weight in your own hand. Rule the next page of the notebook with those six columns, and put your shop’s meaning of chhut at the top. The slip you write next week is the first one you can argue with.