MadeKeeper is inventory and pricing software for soap makers.
Oils, lye, fragrance — one loaf's worth, divided by the bars it cut into. Six weeks later you are pulling from stock that already knows what it cost.
Free tools, no signup: the fair profit calculator · Lye & soap cost 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.
Soap & bath, specifically
Same books underneath — the numbers below are the ones that change.
Goat-milk soap
Goat milk soap is farm soap: milk frozen to slush so the lye never scorches it, oils weighed to the gram, and a herd out back whose feed bill is quietly part of every bar. The 'goat milk' on the label is your whole premium — and it deserves an honest cost under it. MadeKeeper runs the batch from milk-ice to cure rack to market table.
Say you pour a 40-oz frozen-milk batch:
- Oils (olive, coconut, shea), 40 oz blend$8.90
- 12 oz goat milk (attributed feed cost)$1.05
- 5.6 oz lye$1.57
- Fragrance$2.20
At $9 a bar — the price goat milk earns at any market — you keep $7.86 each. The milk cost nine cents a bar and carries the whole premium, which is the kind of arithmetic worth knowing out loud.
Bath bombs
Bath bombs look like baking soda and feel like chemistry: the citric acid costs four times the soda, humidity decides whether a batch sets or crumbles, and every bomb needs its shrink wrap before it meets a market's damp morning. MadeKeeper costs the press batch to the bomb and keeps the batch notes that turn good luck into repeatable process.
Say you press a batch of 20 bombs:
- 6 lb baking soda @ 79¢/lb$4.74
- 3 lb citric acid @ $3.30/lb$9.90
- Fragrance and colorant$3.60
- SLSA and carrier oils$2.85
- Shrink wrap and labels, 20 @ 18¢$3.60
At $7 each you keep $5.77 a bomb before fees — and when citric acid jumps a dollar a pound, the next batch reprices itself and you'll know whether $7 still holds before the market does.
Lip balm
Lip balm is the till-side hero of the bath table: one double-boiler pour fills fifty tubes, the tubes come by the hundred, and the $4 add-on sale quietly pays the booth fee by noon. It only works if the pennies are real. MadeKeeper costs the batch to the tube — beeswax, butters, labels, all of it — so the little product earns like it should.
Say you pour a batch of 50 tubes:
- 4 oz beeswax$2.90
- 8 oz coconut oil and shea$3.75
- Flavor oil$2.40
- 50 tubes (per-100 case @ $14)$7.00
- 50 labels @ 9¢$4.50
At $4 a tube you keep $3.59 each — so the market morning that moves eighteen tubes made $64.62 on the side, which is a booth fee, paid by the smallest thing on the table.
You weigh everything — oils to the gram, lye by the SAP math, fragrance to the batch — and then the loaf sits on the cure rack for six weeks where no spreadsheet can see it. Soap exists-but-unsellable longer than almost any craft. MadeKeeper tracks the batch from trace to cure date to market table, lot number attached the whole way.
How MadeKeeper maps to your soap room
MadeKeeper weighs oils and lye the way the recipe does
Olive, coconut, shea, castor — logged by the ounce or gram at cost, pulled by the batch recipe along with the lye. The scale runs your soap room; the books should match it.MadeKeeper gives every loaf a lot number
One pour, ten to twelve bars, one lot. Costs spread per bar automatically, and the lot number rides every bar to the till — so any question later traces to one batch.MadeKeeper counts the cure rack as inventory
Bars curing for four to six weeks are made but not sellable, and MadeKeeper counts them exactly that way. Your fall-market stock plan starts from the rack, not from hope.MadeKeeper nets markets, Etsy and wholesale apart
Saturday tables, online orders, and wholesale into the local shop each track their own pricing and fees, with the was-it-worth-it math on every market.One loaf, to the penny
Say you pour a 32-oz cold process batch:
- 16 oz olive oil @ 22¢/oz$3.52
- 8 oz coconut oil @ 19¢/oz$1.52
- 4 oz shea butter @ 55¢/oz$2.20
- 4 oz castor oil @ 34¢/oz$1.36
- 4.4 oz lye @ 28¢/oz$1.23
- 2 oz fragrance @ $1.10/oz$2.20
At $8 a bar you keep $6.80 before fees — and those ten bars stay on the cure rack, counted but unsellable, until their date comes up. Superfat it differently next batch and the cost follows the recipe.
MadeKeeper keeps the batch records the paperwork side of soap asks about — lots, dates, and what went into each pour — the same records INCI labeling and MoCRA-era record-keeping lean on, in the app instead of a binder.
Market Saturday, for soap makers
The bench is one half of it. MadeKeeper follows soap 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. Soap 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 soap makers ask
Does MadeKeeper understand cure time?
Yes. A batch logs with its cure date, and its bars count as made but not sellable until then. Your market-day stock number is the rack's real answer, not the loaf count.
Can I track lye and oils by weight?
Everything logs by weight — ounces or grams — at what you paid. Batch recipes pull each oil and the lye by weight, so a recipe tweak or an oil price jump reprices the next loaf automatically.
How do batch and lot numbers work?
Every pour gets a lot; every bar carries it to the sale. If a customer asks about a bar in March, you can say which batch, which date, and which recipe — from the app, not from memory.
How do I cost milk from my own goats?
Attribute it — divide the herd's feed and care across the milk you actually use, or set a fair per-ounce number and stay consistent. Zero is also honest if you treat the herd as a separate enterprise. What matters is that the choice is written down and applied every batch.
Does the frozen-milk method change the tracking?
Only in the notes — milk logs by weight like any liquid, and the batch record keeps your temps and technique alongside the lot. When a batch scorches anyway, the record shows what was different.
Can I track soap and farm products together?
Yes — soap batches, milk-share income, and the market table all run in one ledger with their own channels. Most goat-soap makers are running three small businesses at once; now the books admit it.
Why is my bomb cost so sensitive to citric acid?
Because it's roughly a third of the batch at four times the soda's price — the classic case of one ingredient carrying the cost. MadeKeeper shows the split plainly, which is also your case for buying citric in the 25-lb box.
How do I handle batches that crumble?
Log the loss, or jar the crumbles as bath dust at a seconds price. Both keep your true yield in the books — and a pattern of crumbly batches next to the humidity notes is how the problem finally gets solved.
Do embeds and toys inside change the math?
They're materials like any other — the ring, the color core, the surprise toy logs on the batch and rides the per-bomb cost. Kids' surprise bombs also deserve a look at small-parts safety notes; the judgment stays yours.
Is a 41-cent product worth real bookkeeping?
At fifty tubes a pour and a few hundred tubes a season, yes — the balm line often nets more per hour of making than the soap it rides beside. The batch recipe makes each new pour one entry, so the bookkeeping costs you nothing.
How do flavors track?
As variants of one product — each flavor keeps its own count and sales. Pour decisions come from the ledger, not from remembering which basket emptied first.
What about tins and jars alongside tubes?
Different packaging, different recipe line, same pot. A 2-oz tin costs and prices differently than a tube, and MadeKeeper keeps the two honest side by side.
Ready to see your real numbers?
The app is live. $19/mo, kept for as long as you stay.