Home Business Costing Kit: Pricing and Made-to-Order Production Planner

Home bakers, tailors, candle and soap makers and jewellery sellers who make to order often price by guesswork and promise dates they cannot meet. This Excel kit works out the true cost of each product, flags prices that lose money, and plans made-to-order work against the hours you actually have.

What's inside

• Home-Business-Costing-Kit-v1.0.xlsx: 13 sheets (Start Here, Settings, Materials, Product Cards, Product Summary, Unit Converter, Orders, Daily Plan, Week View, Can I Take This Order, Dashboard, Calendar, Lists) with a fictional sample bakery (60 materials, 10 product cards, 60 Diwali-month orders), labelled Sample, and steps to clear it
• Home-Business-Costing-Kit-Guide.pdf: a 16-page A4 guide with worked examples for baking, tailoring and craft, and a section on using the file in Google Sheets on your phone

How to use it

1. On Settings, enter your hourly rate, monthly overheads, production hours, working days and holidays.
2. List what you buy on Materials. Pack prices become a cost per gram, ml, piece or metre, with wastage.
3. Build a product card for each product: materials per batch, batch yield, minutes, packaging, failed batch % and lead days. Each card shows the cost per unit split into materials, labour, overheads and packaging, plus the price for your target margin.
4. Type your current prices on Product Summary to see margins and Loss or Under target flags.
5. Log orders with a due date. Each order shows its production hours, the day to start, advance and balance, cost, margin and a Late, Tight or Overloaded risk.
6. Check the 60-day Daily Plan and the 8-week Week View, and use Can I Take This Order before accepting a new order. It gives the earliest date that fits and the margin at your price.

Requirements

• Microsoft Excel 2010 or later. The workbook uses only functions that Google Sheets also supports and is laid out for phones: essentials first, frozen headers and dropdowns. It was built and tested in Microsoft Excel 16.