MadeKeeper is inventory and pricing software for leatherworkers.
Necks and scars mean a wallet eats more square feet than it measures. Cost it at what it really took out of the side, plus the hardware and thread.
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.
You buy hides by the square foot — a side of 8-9 oz veg-tan, a shoulder of bridle — and lose a third of every hide to necks, brands, and scars before a single wallet gets cut. If your cost per piece doesn't know about the waste, your prices are subsidizing the scrap bin. MadeKeeper does the hide math for you.
How MadeKeeper maps to your cutting bench
MadeKeeper sizes leather by square foot and ounce weight
A 22 sq ft side of 8-9 oz veg-tan and a 2-3 oz garment shoulder are different materials at different prices. Log each hide as bought and cut pieces pull square footage down.MadeKeeper builds waste into the yield you actually get
Set a usable-yield factor per hide — 70%, 75%, what your cutting actually runs — and every piece's cost covers the unusable neck and belly, not just the clean bend.MadeKeeper divides a hundred-pack of hardware down to the snap
Snaps, rivets, buckles, and Chicago screws bought in bags of 100 cost pennies each — until they don't get counted. Every piece's recipe pulls its hardware at true cost.MadeKeeper bills tooling and burnishing as your hours
The hours of tooling, stitching, and edge burnishing are the product. Profit-per-hour on every sale keeps your prices anchored to your bench time, not the leather bill.One bifold wallet, to the penny
Say you cut a bifold from a veg-tan side:
- 22 sq ft side @ $9.50/sq ft, 70% usable yield → $13.57/usable sq ft$209.00 the side
- 0.8 sq ft in the wallet @ $13.57$10.86
- Thread and edge paint$0.35
- Snap set$0.55
At $70, you kept $58.24 before fees — and now the sticker price of the next side, good or brutal, flows straight into what every wallet after it must earn.
If you work exotic skins, MadeKeeper keeps the purchase and provenance records that CITES paperwork asks about — in the app instead of a folder of receipts.
Market Saturday, for leatherworkers
The bench is one half of it. MadeKeeper follows leatherworkers 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. Leatherworkers 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 leatherworkers ask
How does MadeKeeper handle hide waste?
You set a usable-yield percentage per hide, and the effective cost per square foot rises to cover the waste. A $9.50/sq ft side at 70% yield really costs $13.57 per usable foot — and now your wallets know it.
Can I track different leathers separately?
Yes — every side, shoulder, and panel logs as its own material with its own weight, temper, and price. Recipes pull from the specific hide, so bridle goods and veg-tan goods cost out separately.
What about custom orders and stamping?
A custom piece logs as a commission with its own materials and hours — including the extra tooling time. You'll see whether customs out-earn your standard line per hour, or just feel like they do.
Ready to see your real numbers?
The app is live. $19/mo, kept for as long as you stay.