MadeKeeper is inventory and pricing software for painters.
An original never gets cheaper by the dozen — the canvas, the stretcher and the varnish all belong to that one piece. Keep them attached to it and a sale tells you what it actually left you.
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.
Painting (originals), specifically
Same books underneath — the numbers below are the ones that change.
Watercolor
A watercolor table is two businesses sharing a tent: originals on the wall at original prices, and the browse bin of matted prints doing steady volume underneath. Cotton paper by the block, mats and cello sleeves by the fifty, and a scan that turns one painting into an open edition. MadeKeeper keeps both sides of the table on one ledger.
Say you paint a 9×12 botanical:
- 140-lb cotton sheet (from a $42 block of 20)$2.10
- Paint, attributed$1.40
- Mat and backing board$3.60
- Cello sleeve$0.35
The original sells at $85 and keeps $77.55 — and the scan becomes an open-edition print that clears $20-something every weekend after. One painting, two incomes, both on the books.
Pet portraits
Pet portraits are commission work almost by definition: a reference photo arrives with a deposit, joins a queue that runs weeks deep, and leaves as the most emotionally loaded purchase on your table. The craft is paint; the business is the queue. MadeKeeper tracks both — deposits, due dates, materials, and what each portrait truly paid per hour.
Say you paint an 8×10 commission:
- 8×10 canvas panel$4.20
- Paint, attributed$3.10
- Kraft backing and sleeve$1.15
- Shipping box and mailer$4.80
At $140 with $50 down, you keep $126.75 before hours — six hours of painting at $21.13 each. When the queue hits five weeks, that number is your case for $175, made for you in advance.
Every original is one-of-a-kind — its own canvas, its own frame, its own cost basis — and half of them aren't even in your studio. They're hanging at galleries on consignment splits, out at a café wall, entered in a show. Knowing who holds what, at what split, since when, is the unglamorous heart of selling paintings. MadeKeeper keeps that ledger.
How MadeKeeper maps to your studio
MadeKeeper carries each original as its own piece
Each painting carries its own canvas, frame, and varnish costs — and its own story. Portfolio mode shows the work; the ledger knows its numbers.MadeKeeper follows work out on consignment and back
Which gallery has which piece, at what split, since when. When the red dot goes up, log the sale at the gallery's percentage and your half lands on the books correctly.MadeKeeper runs a commission from deposit to delivery
A commissioned portrait logs with its deposit, its materials, and its timeline — so custom work stops living in email threads.MadeKeeper compares an open studio, a fair and online
Open-studio weekends, art-fair booths, and online sales each run their own channel, with the booth-fee math on every fair you haul panels to.One original, to the penny
Say you finish a 16" × 20" oil:
- Stretched canvas$9.80
- Paint (attributed to the piece)$6.50
- Varnish$1.20
- Wire and hardware$0.85
It sells at $300 from a gallery at a 50% split: your half is $150.00, and after materials you kept $131.65. Now multiply by a year of shows and splits — that's the number your pricing should be built on.
MadeKeeper keeps your consignment records — who holds what, at what terms, since when — in the app instead of a stack of gallery agreements; several states give consigned art specific protections, and good records are how you use them.
Market Saturday, for painters
The bench is one half of it. MadeKeeper follows painters 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. Painters 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 painters ask
How does consignment tracking work?
A piece placed with a gallery logs where it went, the split, and the date. When it sells, the sale records at the gallery's cut, and your net lands on the books. When it comes back unsold, it's back in your inventory — not lost in a spreadsheet.
Do I have to track every tube of paint?
No. Attribute a fair paint cost per piece and move on — the point is an honest cost basis, not laboratory accounting. Canvas and frames, the real money, log at their receipts.
Can I show my available work?
Yes — portfolio mode lists one-of-a-kind pieces as the individual works they are, marked sold or available, with commissions traceable from deposit to delivery.
Do I track every tube of paint?
No — attribute a fair per-piece paint cost and move on. The real money is paper, mats, and lab prints, and those log at their receipts. The point is an honest basis, not laboratory accounting.
How do prints of an original work?
The original is one product; its prints are another, with per-size lab and mat costs. Sales track separately, so you'll know when a painting has earned more in prints than it did on the wall — a genuinely useful thing to know before pricing the next original.
What about commissions?
A commissioned piece logs with its deposit, its materials, and its hours — house portraits and wedding-bouquet paintings run deposit-to-delivery in the app, not in a text thread.
How do deposits and the queue work?
A commission books with its deposit and joins the queue with a due date. The balance collects at delivery, and the ledger always knows what's promised, what's paid, and what's owed — even when the waitlist is long.
What if a customer goes quiet after the deposit?
The job sits in the queue with its deposit logged and its history attached — nothing lost, nothing forgotten. Your deposit policy is yours; the records that make it fair are automatic.
Should I raise prices when the queue gets long?
A standing queue is the market voting yes. Your profit-per-hour history says how much room you have — most portrait artists find the answer is more than they'd have guessed from guilt alone.
Ready to see your real numbers?
The app is live. $19/mo, kept for as long as you stay.