MadeKeeper is inventory and pricing software for jewelry makers.
One strand becomes a handful of pieces and a tray of leftovers. Break the beads, clasp and findings down to what each finished piece cost, and every sale, booth or online, reports back against it.
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.
Beaded & assembly jewelry, specifically
Same books underneath — the numbers below are the ones that change.
Polymer clay earrings
Polymer clay runs in bakes: condition three blocks, roll slabs, cut a collection, cure the tray, then sand, drill, and assemble two dozen pairs with posts from the bag of a hundred. The material pennies are small and the drops sell out by colorway. MadeKeeper batches the bake math so restocks and release nights start from real numbers.
Say you cure a tray of 24 pairs:
- 3 blocks of clay @ $3.49$10.47
- 48 posts (per-100 bag @ $8.50)$4.08
- Jump rings$0.85
- Earring cards, 24 @ 9¢$2.16
- Sandpaper and oven share$1.10
At $16 a pair you keep $15.22 before fees — which is why the real question is never materials, it's whether the market's booth fee and your sanding hours divide out to a wage. MadeKeeper answers that one too.
Beaded keychains
Beaded keychains and wristlets are a bulk-bag business: silicone and acrylic beads by the hundred, keyring-and-tassel sets by the fifty, strung into batches that sell at a price nobody negotiates. The pennies per piece are easy to wave off — and a season of markets is thousands of pieces. MadeKeeper counts what the bulk bags hide.
Say you string a batch of 25 wristlet keychains:
- 375 silicone beads @ 6¢ (bulk bags)$22.50
- 25 keyring and tassel sets (per-100)$6.25
- Cord and crimps$1.90
At $10 each you keep $8.77 a piece before fees — so the school-fundraiser ask of '$6 each for 30' still clears $143.10, and now you can say yes or no from a number instead of a gut feeling.
Beads by the strand, findings by the hundred, and a design that explodes into fourteen colorways before lunch. Jewelry is a pennies business in a crowded market, which is exactly why the pennies have to be counted — the maker who knows her cost per pair is the one who survives the table next to the $6 earrings. MadeKeeper counts them.
How MadeKeeper maps to your bead board
MadeKeeper records strands and lots as you bought them
A $6.50 strand of 42 beads is 15.5¢ a bead, and MadeKeeper does that division for every strand, lot, and bag of bead soup you log.MadeKeeper divides findings down from the hundred-pack
Ear wires, headpins, jump rings, clasps — bought by the hundred, costed by the piece, pulled by the pair. The findings drawer stops being a rounding error.MadeKeeper runs one design across every colourway
One earring design in fourteen colorways is one product with variants, each with its own count — so restocking the table is a list, not a memory exercise.MadeKeeper counts earring cards and packaging as cost
Cards, boxes, and bags are per-piece costs like any other. Log them once and every sale carries its packaging instead of donating it.One pair of earrings, to the penny
Say you assemble a pair of drop earrings:
- 4 beads (from a $6.50 strand of 42)$0.62
- Ear wires (pair, from per-100)$0.14
- Headpins$0.06
- Earring card$0.09
At $14 a pair you keep $13.09 before fees — which is why the real question isn't materials, it's whether the fair's booth fee and your Saturday divide out to a wage. MadeKeeper answers that too.
If you describe stones and metals in listings, MadeKeeper keeps your purchase records per material — what a supplier called it and what you paid — so your descriptions have paperwork behind them.
Market Saturday, for jewelry makers
The bench is one half of it. MadeKeeper follows jewelry makers 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. Jewelry makers 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 jewelry makers ask
Is it worth tracking costs this small?
That's the trap — any single pair is pennies, but a season of shows is thousands of pairs, fees, and Saturdays. The pennies decide whether the table paid, and MadeKeeper adds them up without you thinking about it.
How do colorway variants work?
One design, many colorways — each variant keeps its own stock and sales. You'll learn that the terracotta sells three-to-one over the sage, and make next batch accordingly.
Can I track bead soup and mystery lots?
Log a lot at what you paid and cost pieces from it at a fair average. It stays honest without demanding you catalog every bead in the bin.
How do colorway variants work?
One design, several colorways, each with its own count and sales history. Release a drop and by Monday the ledger says which colorway to re-bake — no more guessing from memory of the checkout rush.
Is scrap clay worth tracking?
Scrap slabs log at zero and become marble and terrazzo pairs with near-perfect margins. Seeing that number is usually the argument for a permanent scrap line in the shop.
What about broken pairs and seconds?
The pair that chipped at the drill sells from a seconds tier or logs as a loss — either way the bake's true yield is in the books, and your per-pair cost reflects what actually survived.
Bulk bags make unit costs confusing — how does this help?
Log the bag at its price and count; MadeKeeper holds the per-bead cost from then on. Every design's recipe pulls beads and hardware at true cost, however scrambled the trays get.
How do bulk and fundraiser orders price?
Cost one piece honestly, and a 30-piece order is multiplication — materials against the quoted price, margin visible before you commit the weekend of stringing.
Can I track new shapes and trend beads?
Every new bag logs as its own material, so the trend shape that costs triple shows up in the pieces that use it. When the trend fades, the leftover bag is still on the books, waiting for the clearance batch.
Ready to see your real numbers?
The app is live. $19/mo, kept for as long as you stay.