Cottage Food Record Keeping Requirements, by State

Most state cottage food laws require very little in the way of records: proof that you're registered or permitted, and, because nearly every state caps what you can sell in a year, enough of a sales record to show you're under the cap if anyone asks. A handful of states go further. Washington lists the records you must keep and for how long. Texas requires a batch number and a year of records for pickled, fermented and acidified products. New Jersey's rules let the health authority examine your "books, and records". Below is what eight states say, with the source and the date I read it, then the five records I'd keep in any state, and a one-page form to keep them on.

This is general information, not legal advice. Cottage food rules change most legislative sessions, the caps move with inflation, and your local health department or state agriculture department has the last word. Check the date beside each row before relying on it.

The short version

• Find your state below, then read the source. Rules change, and this table is a snapshot from September 2026.
• Keep a sales log whatever your state says. The cap is the one number every state can ask about.
• Keep a batch log (date, product, quantity, ingredient lots) if you make anything pickled, fermented, acidified or short-dated. I'd keep one anyway; it takes a minute a batch.
• Keep receipts for ingredients, a copy of every label version, and your registration and training papers.
• The form below holds all five on four tabs.

What eight states say

Two patterns. Where a state says nothing about records, it still has a cap and an inspector who can ask how you know you're under it. And the states that do list records list ordinary things: what you sold, what you bought and from where, what you made and when. Nobody is asking a home baker for a HACCP binder. Hawaiʻi's rules are different enough to need their own page.

The five records I'd keep in any state

1. A sales log: date, where you sold, product, quantity, price, total, and a running total for the year against your cap. One line per product per market day is enough.
2. A batch log: date, product, a batch code, how many you made, the best-by date, and the ingredients that went in with their lot numbers, or the store and date for anything without one. This is a batch record in its smallest form.
3. Ingredient purchases: date, where from, item, quantity, the lot number if the package has one, and the cost. Keep the receipts; your tax return wants them anyway.
4. Labels: a copy of each label version with the date you first used it. Every state has a labeling rule, and "which label was on the jar in June" is a question you can't answer from memory.
5. Papers: registration or permit, training certificate, water test, kitchen inspection, each with its expiry.

Download the form: four tabs, one per record, with a month filled in so you can see how it reads. Excel format, opens in Google Sheets, no sign-up.

A month, filled in

A home baker in a state with a $78,000 cap makes sourdough and strawberry jam. September's sales log:

Sales through August were $9,930, so the running total is $11,172 and there's $66,828 of room under the cap. That's the cell an inspector, or your own nerves, can look at.

The batch log for the same month has six lines. One of them:

The batch code is the date plus a letter, written on the jar lid, and the ingredient codes are the store and the date for anything without a printed lot. If the pectin maker recalls lot PK2207 in November, this line says which jars, and the sales log says roughly where they went. That's lot tracking at the scale of a kitchen table, and it took a minute.

Where this stops working

The rules stop mattering at the cap, and so does the notebook. When sales approach the limit, or a store wants to stock you, or you move into a commissary kitchen, the same records become real requirements: lot codes on every unit, batch records an auditor can read, a recall plan, and in some cases registration with FDA and a food safety plan. How long HACCP records are kept is the next page on that road, and a receiving log is usually the first form a shared kitchen hands you. Before then, the notebook fails in smaller ways: the running total that needs a calculator, the batch that didn't get written down because your hands were in dough, and the jam that expired behind newer jam, which is a different sheet.

How TaroStack does it

To be honest about it: a home baker selling at one market with a notebook doesn't need inventory software, and I'd say so to their face. The day you move to a commissary, take a wholesale account, or need to know which batch used which lot without turning pages, the same five records are what TaroStack keeps as a side effect of the work: ingredients received with their lot numbers, batches recorded with the lots they used and a printable batch record, sales orders with the lot on them, and every list exportable to CSV for the accountant or the inspector. Counts happen on a phone, with no signal. Lots, expiry and recalls are part of every plan, from $49 a month; recording batches against recipes is part of Standard.

Questions people also ask

What is a cottage food business?

A food business run from a home kitchen under a state cottage food law, selling foods the state considers low risk (typically baked goods, jams, candies, dried goods) directly to consumers, usually with a list of allowed foods, a labeling rule, and an annual sales cap. The details differ by state, and a few states have no cap.

Do I need to keep sales records for cottage food?

Even where no rule names them, yes, because the cap is the number your state can ask about, and California's statute calls it "verifiable gross annual sales". Washington requires "documentation of gross sales" and keeps it for six months after the permit expires. A one-line-per-market-day log is enough.

Do cottage food products need batch numbers?

In Texas, pickled, fermented and plant-based acidified products must carry a unique batch number with records kept for at least 12 months. Elsewhere it's rarely required. A date-plus-letter code on the lid costs nothing and is the only way to say which jars used which ingredients when a supplier recalls something.

What records should I keep for cottage food taxes?

Income and expense records, which the sales log and the receipts already are. Your return may also ask for the value of ingredients and finished goods you had on hand at the start and end of the year. Your accountant will say how long to keep them; I'd keep the sales log and receipts together, by year, and never throw a year away.