Handmade Inventory & Pricing is a handmade pricing spreadsheet in one Excel workbook. It costs each piece from your real material prices, your paid time and your own target margin, then keeps your finished stock counted in the same file. You type into the yellow cells, and the price, the margins and the restock alerts follow.
Illustrative example — the workbook itself is a clean spreadsheet.
The wall is a picture of the idea, not the product: it is the unit cost, built course by course — and the waste allowance grosses up the whole subtotal, so its red soot rims the labor and overhead courses too, never the materials alone. The wall's top line is break-even; the tall chimney is the suggested price and the short one its fixed half, and the flag flies your own price with the margin it really earns. Type in the strip and watch the courses grow brick by brick — then push the waste up and see every rim thicken.
Most handmade prices are decided in a moment. You look at what a similar piece sells for, nudge it until it feels right, and type the number into the listing. A handmade pricing spreadsheet won't take that moment away, but it gives it something solid to stand on.
The trouble is what that number leaves out. The ceramic blank and the box are counted roughly, if at all. The hour at the workbench — cutting, glazing, wrapping — never enters the figure, so your own time is the first thing you give away. And the finished pieces on the shelf are counted from memory, which is how you find out a bestseller has gone: an order arrives for something you no longer have.
Handmade Inventory & Pricing swaps the guessing for a build-up. You list each material once, with its real unit cost. Each product then picks up to three of those materials, adds your labor hours at your own hourly rate, then overhead and packaging, and a waste allowance that covers the whole lot. What comes out is a true unit cost. You choose the margin you want, and the sheet turns it into a suggested price, a wholesale price and, once you set your own price, the margin you are really earning.
The same file keeps the shelf honest. You record what you made and what you sold, and it works out what is on hand, what that stock is worth and which pieces need making before the shelf is bare.
A word about the pictures on this page: the scenes and interactive pieces here are illustrations, made only to show what the workbook is for. The product is the Excel workbook described below, and the illustrations are not part of the file you receive.
Materials live in one library, so a unit cost is typed once and every product that uses it picks it up. Each product draws on up to three materials, each with its own quantity, then adds labor, overhead and packaging. The waste allowance is applied to that whole subtotal, not just the materials, so the unit cost you see is the one that covers a spoiled piece or a lost hour as well.
Labor hours multiply by the hourly rate you set, so time at the bench shows up as a real cost instead of a favor. This is the part feel-based pricing leaves out. When a piece takes longer than you expected, you change one yellow cell and the unit cost and suggested price move with it.
You type the margin you want for each product, and the workbook returns a suggested price from the unit cost. Beside it sits a wholesale price, which is a fixed half of that suggested price, so you have a figure ready for a stockist. Once you settle on your own price, the sheet shows the margin you actually earn at it. Those margins are measured on your price alone, because the workbook holds no marketplace fees.
Inventory takes what you made and what you sold, and works out what is on hand, what each piece cost and what the stock is worth. A product under 15 pieces reads Low, and under 5 it reads RESTOCK, with a small block bar showing the level — one block for every five pieces, up to ten. Those two bands are fixed in the formulas, so you can rely on them and they don't need setting up. And if you record more sold than made, the sheet shows the negative figure and flags it rather than blocking the entry, so a counting slip stays visible instead of being hidden.
The workbook calls its profit total "Projected Profit," but the name promises more than the math does. The figure is your chosen price minus the unit cost, multiplied by units already recorded as sold — a to-date total built from recorded sales, not a prediction of future orders. On the Dashboard that same figure is simply measured against the profit goal you type in.
START HERE shows your total SKUs, units on hand, inventory value and projected profit, with a restock list beneath it — up to eight products under 15 units, lowest stock first. The Dashboard carries the same totals, adds your average actual margin, and holds the profit goal: you type one target — it ships set to $5,000 — and watch progress towards it on a ten-block bar.
The workbook has seven sheets, and the work moves through them in order: START HERE · Dashboard · Materials · Products · Inventory · Lists · Guide. Everything connects by name: material costs flow into product costs, product costs into stock value, and sold counts into each product's estimated profit and the Dashboard's goal progress.
START HERE is the front door. It states the golden rule — yellow cells are the only ones you type in — and lays out five steps, from listing materials to reading the Dashboard. There is nothing to type on it. Its four cards read Total SKUs (the product rows counted on Inventory, not on Products), Units on Hand, Inventory Value and Projected Profit, with the restock list beneath. The Dashboard repeats the three stock-and-value totals, adds Avg Actual Margin — which stays blank until at least one product has a price — and the profit-goal block: one typed target, $5,000 as shipped and accepted between $0 and $99,999,999, with progress shown as a percentage and a ten-block bar. Its product tiles show the first four products only, however many products exist, and its stock alerts repeat the low-stock list with up to six products.
Materials is your price list: a name, a unit chosen from ten — piece, yard, meter, inch, gram, kg, oz, lb, sheet, pack — a unit cost and a supplier for each material, across 900 rows. It ships with three examples (Cotton Fabric at $4.50 per yard, Ceramic Blank at $2.80 per piece and Kraft Box at $0.85 per piece) that you can edit or clear. Materials are a cost reference only, so nothing on that sheet is counted as stock, and making or selling a product never reduces anything on it.
Products is the cost builder, one row per product across 900 rows. Each row picks up to three materials by name from the library — the lookups ignore stray spaces, but a name that matches nothing in the library contributes $0 to the cost, silently, with no warning, so pick from the dropdowns and keep names consistent. Add labor hours at your rate, overhead, packaging and the waste percentage, and the row returns the total unit cost, the suggested price from your target margin, the actual margin at your price, the wholesale price, break-even (the unit cost restated), estimated profit from units already sold, a rank by that profit, and two running columns that keep the Top Product and Top Profit leaders in view all the way down the sheet.
Inventory is where finished pieces are counted, again across 900 rows. You pick the product, type Made and Sold as running totals, and On Hand, status, unit cost and total stock value calculate themselves. A product name that is not found on Products leaves its unit cost blank and shows no stock value, rather than inventing a figure. There are no dates, batches or movement history — just the running totals you keep current.
Lists holds the ten units behind the Materials dropdown; they are labels to choose from, not conversions — the sheet never turns yards into meters or grams into ounces for you, and it never needs editing. Guide explains each sheet in plain language, in five numbered sections. One honest note about how the sheets take your numbers: you type a material's unit cost directly, and labor is entered in hours at an hourly rate — the sheets do not work from pack prices, and they do not take time in minutes. The sheets are protected without a password: only the yellow cells take typing, while sorting, filtering, inserting and deleting rows and columns, and formatting all stay on. Products and Inventory arrive empty, so until you start typing the cards read 0 and the restock lists read "All stocked up". There are no charts anywhere in the workbook.
The front door: the golden rule, five steps, and the four headline cards with the restock list beneath.
The same totals plus your average actual margin, and the profit goal with its ten-block progress bar.
Your price list: name, unit, unit cost and supplier for every material — a cost reference, never stock.
The cost builder: up to three materials per product, plus labor, overhead, packaging and waste.
Finished pieces counted: Made and Sold go in; On Hand, status and stock value come out.
The ten units behind the Materials dropdown — labels to choose from, not conversions.
Every sheet explained in plain language, in five numbered sections.
Working browser cost builder. Separate from the downloadable Handmade Inventory & Pricing workbook. Marketplace fees are not included — and it runs entirely here, so experiments cost nothing.
Build one product's cost the way a Products row does: up to three materials, labor at your rate, overhead and packaging, and a waste percentage over the whole subtotal — then read the suggested price from your target margin, the margin at your own price, and the wholesale price. Percentages are typed as points: 5 means 5%.
Type your own numbers — every result recalculates as you type. A negative or out-of-range entry is refused, and the results it feeds stay blank until it is fixed.
Your entries stay in this tab. Nothing is stored or sent. This miniature costs one product; the workbook itself holds 900 product rows, the Materials library behind them, the finished-stock Inventory, and the START HERE and Dashboard summaries — and it leaves marketplace fees out, exactly as this builder does.
This is for makers and handmade sellers who sell on marketplaces like Etsy and at markets and craft fairs: people whose products are built from bought materials plus their own time, and who want product costing and finished-stock counts kept in the same file.
It is not for you if you want a tool that works out marketplace fees or a fee-inclusive selling price, because the file holds none. It also doesn't cost a product that needs four or more materials in a single row, and it doesn't keep stock of materials or a dated history of what you made and sold.
If marketplace fees are the missing half of your numbers, the Etsy Listing Profit Calculator is a separate workbook that works a listing's price through Etsy's fees and costs to a net profit and break-even price. This workbook deliberately leaves fees out; that one is where they are counted.
You pay once on Etsy, and the file is yours to keep and reuse.
It arrives as an instant download, with nothing shipped and nothing to wait for.
The formulas are built in, so costs, prices and totals calculate as you type.
The workbook is an .xlsx file that opens in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc. The formulas are built in, so costs, prices and totals calculate as you type. It arrives as an instant download when you check out, with nothing shipped and nothing to wait for. You pay once on Etsy, and the file is yours to keep and reuse.
No. There are no marketplace fee rates anywhere in the file, so the suggested price comes from your cost and your target margin only. The actual margin is measured against your own price alone, so read it as a margin before any marketplace charges.
Materials are matched by name. The lookups ignore stray spaces, but nothing else — if a product points to a material that isn't in the library under that name, it counts as $0 and the workbook does not warn you. Pick materials from the dropdown and keep names consistent, and your unit costs will include every material.
No. Despite the label, the figure is built only from units already recorded as sold: your price minus the unit cost, multiplied by those sold units. Nothing in the workbook predicts orders you have not received yet.
You pay once on Etsy, and the file is yours to keep and reuse.
Instant download after checkout. One payment, and the file is yours to keep.