Handmade Product Costing Calculator

Who this is for

What one item really costs to make. Materials, the minutes you spend on it at your own hourly rate and a share of the overheads add up to a unit cost, and your own markups turn that into a wholesale and a retail price.

Makers pricing a new product, anyone who suspects an old price no longer covers the materials, and sellers moving from friends and family sales to shops and markets.

What this helps you track

• Every material in the item and what the amount used actually costs
• The time each stage of making takes, paid at your own hourly rate
• Your share of overheads such as packaging, electricity, firing or studio rent
• The full cost of one finished item
• Wholesale and retail prices built from your own markup figures

How to use it

1. Write the product name, your hourly rate and the two markup percentages you have chosen.
2. List each material with its cost per unit (per metre, gram, bead or sheet) and the quantity one item uses.
3. Break the making into stages and enter the minutes each takes for one item; the labour cost is worked out from your rate.
4. Enter your overhead per item in the header: studio, packaging and equipment costs spread over what you make, worked out on the overhead cost per item calculator.
5. Read the unit cost, wholesale and retail prices in the summary; on paper, add materials, labour and overhead, then apply your markups by hand.
6. Save a copy per product and revisit it whenever a material price or your rate changes.

Formats

• Printable PDF (A4 and US Letter)
• Fillable PDF with form fields
• Fill in online, saved in your browser
• Excel / Google Sheets workbook

The printable is laid out inside a box that fits both A4 and US Letter, so the two files are identical and neither one is scaled. The fillable PDF has real form fields. The workbook uses plain formulas only — SUM, IF, COUNTIF and the like — so it opens in Excel, LibreOffice and Google Sheets without anything breaking, and every calculated cell is grey so you can see which figures it worked out.

How to print

Download the A4 or US Letter file to match the paper in your printer, open it in a PDF reader and print at 100% — not "fit to page", which shrinks the writing space. Both files leave a 14 mm margin, which clears the unprintable edge on home printers. To print the online version with your entries in it, use the Print this sheet button, which prints only the sheet and none of the page around it. More on printing.

Questions

What hourly rate should I use?

Your own. The sheet does not suggest one. Many makers start from what they would need to earn for the hours they work, but the figure is a decision about your business, and it goes in the header so every labour line uses it.

How are the wholesale and retail prices worked out?

Wholesale is the unit cost plus your wholesale markup percentage. Retail is the wholesale price plus your retail markup percentage. Both percentages are yours, entered in the header; change them and the prices change with them.

What counts as an overhead here?

Costs that are not used up in one item: a firing, a dye bath, electricity, packaging, studio rent or insurance. Spread them over what you make, for example with the overhead cost per item calculator, and enter the result in the header.

Where do I find the cost per unit of a material?

Divide the pack price by the pack quantity. The materials cost per unit sheet does that for every material you buy, and its figures can be copied straight into the materials table here.