Materials & parts
What you paid, divided by how much came in it, gives the cost of each unit you use. That cost times how much one product uses is the line's cost, plus any waste you add for measured materials.
Maker Calculator
Build it. Cost it. Price it.
Add what goes into one product and see what it costs to make as you type. It's free, and there's no account to make.
These are estimates from the numbers you enter.
All amounts are in US dollars (USD).
Keep every product's costs in one place.
Cajella keeps your material prices, time and machine rates, and works out the cost of every product you make. Free to start.
How it works
The sums behind each number.
Labor
Your hands-on minutes divided by 60, times the hourly rate you want to earn. Time spent on a whole batch is shared across everything you make at once.
Equipment
Machine time in hours times what the machine costs you per hour. When one run makes several products, the run's cost is shared across them. No cost per hour? The helper adds electricity, wear and upkeep per hour.
Packaging
What you paid for the pack, divided by how many came in it, times how many each product uses. Shipping is a selling cost, not packaging.
Cost to make and cost to sell
Cost to make is materials and parts, labor, equipment and packaging added together. Cost to sell is the fees you pay on a sale, the shipping you pay and your share of any event costs.
Profit and margin
Profit is the price plus any shipping you charge, minus the cost to make and the cost to sell. Margin is that profit as a share of what the customer pays. A price is found by working back from your target, rounded up to the cent.
A cost you leave out is never counted as $0. It is listed under "Costs not included", so a total is never mistaken for your full cost.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Soy wax: 7 oz at $0.16/oz | $1.12 |
| Fragrance oil: 0.6 fl oz at $1.50/fl oz | $0.90 |
| Jar | $1.85 |
| Wick | $0.12 |
| Labor: 48 minutes for the batch at $18/hour, shared across 12 | $1.20 |
| Label | $0.30 |
| Cost to make each | $5.49 |
Example numbers. Your costs will be different.
Wax bought as a 10 lb bag for $25.60 and used at 7 oz per candle, fragrance oil bought as 16 fl oz for $24.00, and the rest priced the same way.