MadeKeeper is inventory and pricing software for indie yarn dyers.
Every colorway starts as a stack of undyed bases plus dye and acid. Once the lot dries, that spend splits across the skeins in it, and each one carries a real cost instead of a rounded guess.
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 undyed bases by the bag, dyes by the gram, and sell by colorway — where every kettle day mints a new dye lot and every shop update sells out (or doesn't) in its own way. MadeKeeper tracks base × colorway × lot without the spreadsheet gymnastics, and prices your skeins from what they actually cost to dye.
How MadeKeeper maps to your dye kitchen
MadeKeeper treats bases as raw material and colorways as product
Log undyed merino, sock, and DK bases at cost. A dye day converts base skeins into a colorway with its own lot number — the same skein, now worth what you made it.MadeKeeper weighs dye in grams, the way you mix it
Acid dyes, citric, and soak costs are pennies per skein that add up across a 20-skein kettle. MadeKeeper spreads them across the lot so each skein carries its true cost.MadeKeeper handles a shop update as one batch
A drop that sells 40 skeens in an hour and a festival booth that moves 15 all weekend are different businesses. Log both and the event math tells you where your dye days pay best.MadeKeeper prices club skeins and wholesale off the same cost
Faire orders, LYS wholesale, and sock-club subscriptions each get their own channel — so a wholesale lot at half retail doesn't quietly poison your margin numbers.One dye day, to the penny
Say you dye a 20-skein lot of a new colorway:
- 20 undyed merino bases @ $6.80$136.00
- 38 g of acid dye @ 11¢/g$4.18
- Citric acid and soak$1.20
At $26 a skein in the shop update, each one clears $18.93 before fees — and when a colorway flops, you know exactly what the lesson cost.
MadeKeeper keeps the fiber-content and lot records that yarn labeling asks about — in the app instead of a binder.
Market Saturday, for indie yarn dyers
The bench is one half of it. MadeKeeper follows indie yarn dyers 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. Indie yarn dyers 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 indie yarn dyers ask
Can MadeKeeper keep dye lots separate?
Yes — that's the point. Each dye day creates a lot with its own count and cost, so when a customer needs a second skein from the same bath, you know if one exists and which bin it's in.
How do I cost speckles and multi-dye colorways?
Log the dyes used on the lot in grams, at whatever mix the colorway took. The total spreads across the skeins in that lot, so a dye-heavy speckle costs more than a gentle tonal — as it should.
Does it handle festival prep?
Load-out and count-back: log what you brought, count what came home, and the difference is your sales. The event report subtracts the booth fee, the miles, and the weekend to a plain was-it-worth-it verdict.
Ready to see your real numbers?
The app is live. $19/mo, kept for as long as you stay.