MadeKeeper is inventory and pricing software for farmstand growers.
You put seed, transplants and amendments into a bed once, and the bunches come out of it all season. Divide the one by the other and a bunch has a cost before you chalk a price.
Free tools, no signup: the fair profit calculator.
free to start, and no card to start. No order-line meters, ever.
$19/mo for the whole back office, kept for as long as you stay. No card to start — MadeKeeper asks for one when you subscribe, not before. The shop stays free for cost a piece and one fair — no product cap. The tax packet, Etsy and Square, and more fairs are the $19.
Produce & farmstand, specifically
Same books underneath — the numbers below are the ones that change.
Sweet corn stand
Sweet corn is the purest count-back business in farming: picked at dawn because the sugars won't wait, sold by the dozen off a tailgate or an honor box, gone by noon on a good Saturday. The season is six weeks and the deer take their cut before you do. MadeKeeper counts the dozens out, the dozens back, and what the morning really paid.
Say you pick 40 dozen at dawn:
- 34 dozen sold @ $7$238.00
- 4 dozen to the seconds cooler @ $4$16.00
- 2 dozen unsold — the deer and the doubtful$0.00
- Attributed growing cost, 40 dozen @ 85¢−$34.00
- Honor-box shortage−$7.00
Against the 5 a.m. pick and the stand hours, that's a real wage for real work — and by August the ledger says whether next year plants five blocks or three.
Pumpkin patch
A pumpkin patch is a year of growing cashed out in six fall weekends: carving pumpkins by the armload, pie pumpkins and gourds on the wagon, cornstalks and straw bales as the upsell. When the season is that short, every Saturday deserves its own bottom line. MadeKeeper counts the patch by the weekend and the year by the patch.
Say the patch has a good mid-October day:
- 62 carving pumpkins @ $6$372.00
- 31 pie pumpkins @ $3$93.00
- 18 cornstalk bundles @ $8$144.00
- Attributed seed, water, and fertilizer−$96.00
- Saturday help−$120.00
Six Saturdays like that is the season — and the ledger's weekend history is what tells you whether next year adds a second planting, a photo spot, or nothing at all.
Herbs
Herbs are the highest-value square feet on a small farm, and the trickiest to count — the same basil bed sells as fresh bunches at Saturday's market, potted starts in May, and dried jars in November. Three products, three prices, one planting. MadeKeeper keeps the three businesses separate on paper the way they never are in the field.
Say you cut and pot for a Saturday:
- 48 basil bunches sold @ $3.50$168.00
- 22 mixed herb bunches @ $3$66.00
- 12 potted starts @ $5$60.00
- Attributed seed, soil, and water−$41.00
- Table fee−$30.00
Three product lines, one table, $223.00 clear — and the channel split shows the potted starts carrying a third of it off one flat. That's the kind of fact that reshapes next spring's seeding.
Mushrooms
Gourmet mushrooms run on flushes: substrate blocks colonize, fruit in waves, and a week's harvest of oysters and lion's mane goes out in clamshells to the market and by the pound to chefs. The grow room hums around the clock and every block has a cost. MadeKeeper divides the room's real numbers across the pounds it actually fruits.
Say 12 blocks flush 38 lb of oysters:
- Substrate and spawn, 12 blocks @ $2.60$31.20
- Grow-room power for the week$6.50
- Clamshells and labels, 38 @ 41¢$15.58
At $12 a pound across market and chef orders, the week grosses $456.00 and keeps $402.72 — and when a batch of blocks contaminates, the same math shows exactly what the loss cost, which beats mourning it vaguely.
Maple syrup
Sugarmaking is a once-a-year harvest with a brutal exchange rate: forty gallons of sap boil down to one gallon of syrup, and the whole season — taps, lines, filters, firewood — rides on however many gallons the trees decide to give. MadeKeeper spreads the season's real costs across the real yield, down to the half-pint on the stand shelf.
Say 40 taps yield 10 gallons of syrup — 80 half-pints:
- Taps, lines, and filters for the season$118.00
- Firewood for the boil$80.00
- 80 half-pint jars @ 78¢$62.40
- 80 labels @ 10¢$8.00
At $12 a half-pint you keep $8.64 each — and in a short sap year, when ten gallons becomes six, the same arithmetic shows the real cost climbing past $5 a jar before you price the shelf. The boil doesn't lie, and now the books don't either.
Your stock is picked the morning you sell it — pounds, bunches, pints — and some of it wilts, bruises, or rides home unsold. Shrink isn't failure at a farmstand; it's Tuesday. MadeKeeper is built for count-back selling: load out, sell the morning, count what's left, and know what the market actually paid you.
How MadeKeeper maps to your stand
MadeKeeper treats the morning harvest as the inventory event
The morning pick logs in pounds, bunches, and eaches. No barcode fantasy — just what went in the truck, counted the way you count it.MadeKeeper counts the truck back instead of ringing every sale
Brought 60 lb, came home with 12 — that's 48 sold. MadeKeeper works from load-out and count-back, the way a market table actually runs.MadeKeeper expects seconds and shrink and prices for them
The seconds basket sells at its own price, and the compost bucket logs as the shrink it is. Your yield numbers stay honest without a guilt trip.MadeKeeper splits stand, market and CSA money
The roadside stand, the Saturday market, and CSA shares each run their own channel — with booth fees and miles counted against market days.One market morning, to the penny
Say you pick 60 lb of tomatoes for Saturday:
- 48 lb sold @ $3.50/lb$168.00
- 8 lb to the seconds basket @ $1.50/lb$12.00
- 4 lb shrink$0.00
- Table fee−$25.00
- 18 round-trip miles @ 76¢−$13.68
Against four hours picked-loaded-sold, that's $35.33 an hour — the number that decides whether this market keeps its Saturday next season.
Selling by weight runs on a certified scale, and MadeKeeper keeps the sales records behind it; note that in most states raw produce and your craft-table items are taxed differently — the app keeps them separated so the records stay clean.
Market Saturday, for farmstand growers
The bench is one half of it. MadeKeeper follows farmstand growers out to the booth as well: it opens on one bar of signal, rings a sale in taps and files it against that day's event, holds that sale on the phone if the signal quits and puts it through when the bars come back, reads the tag you printed, and prints a market-day sheet before you load the truck.
None of that is a card reader. Farmstand growers take payment however they already take it; MadeKeeper only keeps the count honest while you sell. Everything it does at the booth →
Straight about what's live
Materials and true cost per piece, batch "makes" with your labor amortized in, the suggested-price coach, product variants, sales that drain stock, the market-day quick-sale screen, lot tracking, the was-this-fair-worth-it event math, money-insight reports, multi-location consignment, the cure/best-by heads-up engine, mileage, expenses, and the Schedule C tax packet are all in the app today, with guided setup and a full Craftybase history migration to get you started. So are Etsy order sync, Square card sync, your own shop page, a Buy button on your own Square account, and custom-order requests off a piece you already sold. On the $24 MadeKeeper AI plan you also get receipts, shelves and recipe cards read from a photo — photo reads are on that plan; hand entry is how the $19 shop starts. Still building: your own books answered in plain words, buying a shipping label inside the app, and a best-customers report. MadeKeeper does not send marketing email to your buyers and is not going to: every maker here sends from one shared reputation, and a quote that has to arrive matters more than a mailing list. Nothing above is dressed up as done when it is not. See the full live-vs-building list →
Questions farmstand growers ask
Does MadeKeeper expect me to scan every sale?
No. It's built for count-back: log the load-out, count what came home, and the difference is the morning's sales. Per-item logging is there when you want it, not required.
How is shrink handled?
As a normal part of growing. Unsold and unsellable log as shrink without drama, and your season numbers show true yield — useful when you're deciding what to plant more of.
Can it track CSA shares?
Yes — shares log as their own channel with subscription revenue against the season's costs, separate from stand and market sales.
How do I cost corn I grew myself?
Spread the season's real inputs — seed, fertilizer, water, fuel — across the dozens you actually picked. It lands around 75¢ to a dollar a dozen for most small patches, and it turns 'corn money' into a margin you can compare to the sweat.
Does the honor box really work on the books?
Yes — stock counts out, cash counts in, and the difference logs as shrink without drama. Most stands find the box runs 90-something percent honest, and knowing the number beats wondering.
What about the corn that doesn't sell by noon?
The seconds cooler at $4, the food-bank box, or the pigs — all honest ends. Log them as the discount and shrink they are, and the season's yield math stays true enough to plan on.
How do I cost a pumpkin I grew?
Season inputs divided across what you harvested — most small patches land under a dollar a pumpkin. The margin looks generous until the June weeding hours go in, which is exactly why they should.
What about the pumpkins still in the field November 1st?
Shrink, honestly logged — or pig feed, compost, and the smashing bin at a dollar. The patch's true sell-through rate is the planning number for next year's seed order.
Can I track u-pick alongside the stand?
Yes — u-pick sales run as their own channel. Many patches find u-pick moves more pumpkins at a slightly lower price with far less hauling; your ledger will say if yours does.
Why track fresh, potted, and dried separately?
Because they're different margins under different rules from the same bed. The split view is where herb growers usually discover the potted starts out-earn the bunches — and that the dried jars are almost pure margin off plants that were headed to frost anyway.
How do I cost a bunch of basil?
Attribute the bed's real inputs — seed, soil, water — across the season's cuts. It lands in pennies a bunch, which is honest: the cost of herbs is the picking and the market morning, and the hours math covers those.
What about restaurant standing orders?
A chef's weekly basil order runs as its own channel — steady volume at a set price, no table fee, no wilt risk. Most growers find it's the best margin of the week once the ledger shows it plainly.
How do second flushes change the cost?
The block's cost is already paid, so second-flush pounds carry only the week's room costs and packaging — the cheapest mushrooms you'll ever pick. The ledger shows it plainly, which is the argument for patience before the compost pile.
What about selling to restaurants?
Chef orders run as a wholesale channel — steady pounds, no clamshells, no table fee. Most growers find the chef list is the backbone and the market is the marketing; your split will show in a month of records.
How do I handle contaminated blocks?
Log them as losses when they green over. Your real yield per dozen blocks — not the catalog's promise — becomes the number that sets prices and sizes the next substrate run.
How do I cost syrup when the trees set the yield?
Spread the season's real spending across the gallons you actually drew off. Big year, low cost; short year, the honest number — the same arithmetic beekeepers run on the honey pull, and just as clarifying.
Does firewood really belong in the math?
Four cords burned to boil is real money even when you cut it yourself — log it at market value or at zero, but decide on purpose. Propane and oil evaporators make the line item undeniable.
Can I track sugar-on-snow events and value-added products?
Yes — maple cream, candy, and the pancake-breakfast weekend run as their own products and events. Value-added is where small sugarmakers find their margin, and the ledger will show yours plainly.
Ready to see your real numbers?
The app is live. $19/mo, kept for as long as you stay.