MadeKeeper is inventory and pricing software for potters.
A kiln load goes in and not all of it comes out. Put the clay, the glaze and the firing share against the batch that survived, and the pieces you sell carry the cost of the ones you lost.
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.
Forty mugs go into the greenware shelf; thirty-four come out of the glaze fire whole. Clay by the 25-lb bag, glazes by the pint or the gram, a kiln load as the natural batch — and loss at every stage that your prices have to carry. MadeKeeper costs your work by what survives, because that's what you actually sell.
How MadeKeeper maps to your studio
MadeKeeper stocks clay and glaze as real materials
Stoneware at $22.50 a bag, glaze at 35¢ an ounce, wax and wadding in the mix. Every thrown piece pulls its share, so a mug knows its materials the day it's trimmed.MadeKeeper makes the kiln load the batch
Bisque, then cone 6 glaze fire — each load spreads its electricity across the pieces inside. A firing's cost stops being invisible.MadeKeeper works stage loss into the price
When 40 thrown become 34 sold, the survivors carry the cost of the whole board. MadeKeeper does that arithmetic so a cracked handle doesn't silently eat your margin.MadeKeeper logs a seconds-shelf sale at what it fetched
The pinholed bowl sells at the seconds table; the kiln-opening sale moves work in one weekend. Both get their own pricing tier and their own honest numbers.One mug, to the penny
Say a kiln load fires 40 mugs and 34 survive:
- 1.25 lb of clay @ 90¢/lb$1.13
- 1.5 oz of glaze @ 35¢/oz$0.53
- Share of a $9.00 kiln load ÷ 40 pieces$0.23
- Survivor math: $1.89 × 40 ÷ 34
At $38 a mug you keep $35.78 before fees and booth costs — and when a bad glaze week drops survival to 28, you'll see the real cost move instead of wondering why the month felt thin.
For functional ware, MadeKeeper keeps your glaze and firing records per batch — which glaze went on what, fired to what cone — written down in the app instead of a studio notebook.
Market Saturday, for potters
The bench is one half of it. MadeKeeper follows potters 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. Potters 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 potters ask
How does MadeKeeper handle kiln losses?
You log what went in and what survived; the survivors carry the full batch cost. It's the honest version of pottery math — the S-crack in the bisque load was never free.
Can I track glazes bought as dry chemicals?
Yes. Log dry materials by weight and your mixed glazes as recipes of them, or keep it simple and log commercial glaze by the pint. Either way, each piece pulls its real glaze cost.
Does it help with fairs and kiln openings?
Every event gets booth fee, miles, and hours against what sold — profit per hour, ranked across your season. A kiln-opening sale at the studio runs the same math with zero booth fee.
Ready to see your real numbers?
The app is live. $19/mo, kept for as long as you stay.