MadeKeeper is inventory and pricing software for sign makers.
Your cutter reports feet of vinyl and nothing else. The transfer tape, the substrate blank underneath, and the sheet you ruined weeding are all part of what that sign really cost.
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.
Sign making, specifically
Same books underneath — the numbers below are the ones that change.
Wreaths & door hangers
A wreath looks like fluff and prices like lumber: two rolls of deco mesh, twelve feet of good ribbon, a grapevine form, picks and stems — forty dollars on the form before the bow is tied. Wreath makers who guess at that number underprice by half. MadeKeeper tracks the ribbon by the foot and the season by the ledger.
Say you build a deco-mesh fall wreath:
- Grapevine form$4.50
- Deco mesh, 2 rolls @ $6.99$13.98
- Ribbon, 12 ft @ 85¢/ft$10.20
- Floral picks and stems$8.40
- Attachment sign blank$5.25
At $95 you keep $52.67 before fees — while the maker pricing at $55 because 'it's just ribbon' clears thirteen dollars for her whole afternoon. Your books make sure that's never you.
Your business runs on blanks and roll goods — wood rounds and rectangles by the piece, vinyl and transfer tape by the foot — turned into made-to-order pieces with someone's name on them. Personalization means almost nothing sits as finished stock; it's blanks, orders, and turnaround. MadeKeeper is built for exactly that shape.
How MadeKeeper maps to your shop
MadeKeeper treats the blank as the inventory
Rounds, planks, and porch-leaners log by the piece at cost. Your stock question isn't "how many finished signs" — it's "how many 18-inch rounds are left," and MadeKeeper answers it.MadeKeeper cuts vinyl cost by the roll-foot
Each color and finish logs by the foot; every order pulls what it used, weeding scraps included in a waste factor. Transfer tape counts too.MadeKeeper posts a custom listing with its turnaround
Each order is its own piece — the blank, the vinyl, the stain, the hours — so a $45 custom listing shows its real margin, and your queue shows what's promised for when.MadeKeeper nets market, Etsy and wholesale out separately
Craft-fair tables, Etsy custom listings, and a boutique wholesale run each track their own channel and fees — with the event math on every market day.One custom sign, to the penny
Say you make an 18" personalized round:
- 18" wood blank$8.25
- 2.4 ft of vinyl @ 55¢/ft$1.32
- Transfer tape$0.48
- Stain and sealer$1.60
At $45 you kept $33.35 before fees. Across a month of custom orders, that per-piece honesty is the difference between a busy shop and a profitable one.
One calm note a lot of sign shops learn the hard way: team logos and licensed marks belong to their owners. MadeKeeper keeps your order history and what-you-made records tidy; what's safe to cut stays your call.
Market Saturday, for sign makers
The bench is one half of it. MadeKeeper follows sign 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. Sign 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 sign makers ask
How do I track vinyl usage?
Rolls log by the foot per color; orders pull their footage with a waste factor for weeding and misfeeds. When a popular color runs low, you'll see it before the order that needed it.
Does MadeKeeper handle made-to-order work?
Yes — it's the natural mode here. Orders queue with their materials and turnaround, blanks draw down as you cut, and finished-goods stock stays near zero like it does in real life.
Can I split market sales from custom orders?
Each channel tracks separately — market-day ready-mades, Etsy customs, wholesale runs — so you can see which side of the shop actually pays for your weekends.
How do I track ribbon across fifty rolls?
Each roll logs at its price and length; wreaths pull feet as you build. When the buffalo-check roll runs low in October, you'll see it before the custom order that needed it.
What about custom and themed orders?
A custom wreath logs as its own piece — the team-colors mesh, the extra picks, the deposit if you take one. Customs usually price higher and cost more; the ledger shows whether the premium covers it.
Is a wreath business really seasonal?
The revenue is; the building isn't. Makers who batch fall wreaths in July win September. MadeKeeper's stock counts and season history make the get-ahead plan concrete: what sold last fall, by the week, at what margin.
Ready to see your real numbers?
The app is live. $19/mo, kept for as long as you stay.