Helping handmade, creative and craft business owners learn to handle their bookkeeping, one step at a time!
Helping handmade, creative and craft business owners learn to handle their bookkeeping, one step at a time!
Confused about pricing or cost of goods sold? You’re not alone. Here you’ll find maker-friendly guides on tracking materials, calculating COGS, and pricing your products with confidence (and profit!).
Materials inventory tracking can feel like a brain-melter for handmade business owners — especially if you’re using spreadsheets. In this post, you’ll learn what you actually need to track (and why), where spreadsheets get complicated fast, and how to make it easier with a system that has the formulas built in.
Inventory is one of the most misunderstood parts of running a handmade business — and it directly affects your expenses, pricing, and taxes. In this post, we’ll break down what inventory actually is, why you can’t deduct materials when you buy them, and which makers truly need to track it. No accounting jargon, no overwhelm — just clear explanations that finally make inventory make sense.
Originally written & published in 2020 – updated in 2026 for clarity.
Overhead expenses are all those behind-the-scenes costs — rent, website hosting, shipping supplies, subscriptions, and more — that keep your handmade business alive… but often get ignored when you price your creations. This post shows you how to gather your expenses, calculate a realistic hourly or per-item overhead cost, and bake that number into your prices so you stop working for free.
Pricing your handmade items for profit and tracking the cost to make them doesn’t have to feel like a math-induced meltdown. In this post, I’m sharing the upgraded Handmade Product Pricing & COGS Calculator — a simple, maker-friendly tool that helps you track materials, remove the guesswork, and finally price your products with confidence. If you’ve ever juggled yarn scraps, sticky notes, and “I’ll figure it out later”… this instantly makes your life easier.
Still using that mythical “Materials x 3′ rule to price your handmade products? You’re not alone. Too many makers price their work based on what “feels right” or what someone else told them to charge. In this post, we’re setting the record straight — and figuring out what your fair hourly wage really is.
Starting August 29, 2025, the de minimis exemption for imports under $800 disappears — meaning more fees, slower shipping, and possible headaches for handmade business owners. Whether you order supplies from overseas, buy from domestic suppliers, or ship internationally, these changes could impact your costs and timelines. Here’s what you need to know and how to adapt.