Price market bars, shop orders and logo gift orders from your own costs
You enter what your soap studio costs to run once. After that, every bar and every order is priced from your own oils, packaging and hours, not a multiplier someone else uses.
- Know what an hour at the soap pot costs Your studio's share of rent and power, insurance, the stick blender and cutter, plus your own pay, become one break-even rate per making hour.
- Price the whole order, not just the oils Weighing, blending, pouring, cutting, curing, banding and wrapping each get a line next to the ingredients and printed bands.
- Quote per bar at four order sizes One quote shows the price per bar at 48, 144, 288 and 576 bars, so "what about 300?" already has an answer.
- Get paid for the loaf that cracks Test batches, a failed batch, mold liners and store commission sit on a checklist you answer before the quote is ready.
- Send a gift order quote a business will sign A one-page quote with the bar count, price per bar, deposit and soap terms on cure time and logo proofs.
- See which orders paid and which ran long The Job Log keeps every quote, won or lost, and the real hours each order took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns ounces of oil and minutes at the pot into a price per bar
The file has six tabs. You set up the studio once, update oil and fragrance prices when your supplier changes them, and make one quote per order.
- Start HereWhich soap studio numbers go in first, and how the sample gift order was built. Allow one evening.
- Shop SetupYearly studio costs, you and any helper, and the oil warmer, stick blender, cutter, curing racks and shrink sealer, worked into a rate per making hour.
- Price ListOils, butters, lye, fragrance, colorants, labels, bands and boxes by the pound, ounce or piece, each with the date you last confirmed it.
- QuotePick the ounces of each ingredient per bar, time each stage from weighing oils to shrink wrap, answer the don't-forget lines, and read the price per bar at four sizes.
- Customer QuoteThe page a shop or business gets: bars, scents, price per bar, deposit and terms.
- Job LogOnce the order ships, record the real hours and costs to see if it made money.
What is a price per bar? It is the whole order's price, divided by the number of bars. The test batch, logo proof and washing up cost about the same for 48 bars or 576, so small orders carry more of them per bar and the price per bar drops as the order grows. The soap pricing guide works through it.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up soap company and its $1,123 gift order quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The sample studio is the owner and a part-time maker and packer, with a break-even of $36.11 per making hour. The order is 144 bars of 4.5 oz cold process soap for a realty office, two scents of 72, cured 4 to 6 weeks, with a printed logo band, ingredient label and shrink wrap, shipped to their office.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Ingredients, printed bands, labour and equipment | $675 |
| 3 | Easy-to-miss costs | $187 |
| 4 | Markup, cushion and profit | $260 |
| 5 | Price to the customer | $1,123.11, or $7.80 a bar |
The $260 stays after every cost, the owner's wage included, and the order earns about $58.89 per labour hour. At 48 bars the same file quotes $12.28 each, and at 576 it quotes $6.12. The walk-through is on how much to charge for a bar of homemade soap.
$187
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 3 times what the calculator costs. Miss them once and the file has paid for itself.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
Why three times the oils doesn't pay for your soap hours
The common soap rule is to add up oils, lye, scent and packaging and multiply by three. It sounds generous, but it only counts what goes into the mold. The hours at the pot, the cutting and wrapping, the market days and the studio's bills all have to come out of that multiplier.
A simple example: a bar with $2 of ingredients and packaging sells for $6 under the 3x rule. That leaves $4 a bar. If a 16-bar mold takes an hour to make and another hour to cut, cure, label and wrap, that is $64 for two hours of work, before rent, insurance, the failed batch or any selling time. Sell the same bar to a shop at half price and the $4 becomes $1.
This calculator prices the hours and the one-off costs first, then shows you the price per bar at the end. You still get a per-bar number for the customer, and it is one that pays for the order behind it. The markup vs margin guide explains why the multiplier looks bigger than what you keep.
Test batches, failed loaves and store cuts: the soap costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a quote ready until each of these lines has a Yes, No or N/A:
- A small test batch for a new scent, before a fragrance that speeds up or discolors ruins a full loaf.
- The batch that seizes, cracks or separates. Plan for one on each order instead of hoping.
- Mold liners, cups, gloves and paper towels, the disposables used on every batch.
- The ingredient label and the logo proof, with the rounds of messages that come with them.
- Store commission or a consignment cut, when a shop sells your bars for you.
- Your time selling, from market days to calls and samples. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you decide how to count it.
Exactly what you get
An .xlsx file that downloads the moment checkout finishes. It works in Microsoft Excel or in your own Google Drive, and there is no subscription, app or login.
- The six-tab calculator, set up for bars priced by the ounce and the mold.
- A finished sample soap studio, with the 144-bar gift order and its four order sizes to study first.
- Soap terms you can edit, covering a ship date set around the cure, bands printed only after proof approval, and handmade bars that vary a little in weight and swirl.
- A Job Log that shows which orders ran over their hours, the habit covered in job costing.
How it compares
Most owners price a job one of these ways. Here is what each one gives you.
| Copying another company's price | A free estimate template | Estimating software | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from your own costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Makes you answer the easy-to-miss costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Shows which jobs made money | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Works in Excel and Google Sheets | – | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free | Usually a monthly fee | $49.95 once |
Who it's for: soap makers selling at markets, shops and gift orders
It fits home and small soap studios selling at markets and online who are starting to get shop and business gift orders, and makers who price by a times-three rule and want to know what it really covers. Making every bar yourself or running a studio with a few helpers, 48 bars or 576, it works the same way, because the oils, hours and overhead in it are yours.
It is not for recipe formulation, since you still need a lye calculator for that, and not for large manufacturers already costing everything in inventory software. To see what your soap hours cost before buying, try the free true hourly rate calculator and read the true hourly rate guide.
Stop pricing soap at three times the oils. Price every bar and gift order from your own costs, catch the test batches and failed loaves, and see which orders made money.
Soap & Bath Products Pricing Calculator
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