To price a bar of handmade soap you add up its full cost first: the oils, lye and fragrance by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the paper band and label, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one bar costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a 4.5-ounce bar of cold process soap that costs $3.63 to make, a 55% margin after 3% fees means $8.65, rounded up to $8.75. Fragrance is the ingredient that swings the cost: an essential oil blend can cost more than all the base oils together. Wholesale to shops is a different price, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, a North Carolina soap maker prices its bars for markets and a gift shop.
The short version
- Full cost = supplies a bar + your time + band and label + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Weigh oils and fragrance by the batch; fragrance moves the cost most.
- Bars cure for weeks; price them when you make them, not when they sell.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack keeps oils, lye and fragrance counted and costs every batch. More below.
What goes into a bar's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Supplies | The batch's cost ÷ bars a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ bars × your hourly rate |
| Band and label | Per bar |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the bars you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What a soap business looks like over a year is in soap business plan, and wrapping bars in how to package soap bars for sale.
An example: a bar of lavender oatmeal soap
Cedar Hollow Soap Co., a made-up soap maker in Asheville, North Carolina, pours two loaves at a time, 24 bars of about 4.5 ounces:
| Supply | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Olive oil | 3 lb | $10.50 |
| Coconut oil | 2 lb | $5.00 |
| Shea butter | 1 lb | $5.00 |
| Castor oil | 0.5 lb | $1.50 |
| Lye | 0.9 lb | $3.60 |
| Essential oil | 3 oz | $6.00 |
| A batch | $31.60 |
| A bar | Cost |
|---|---|
| Supplies, $31.60 ÷ 24 | $1.32 |
| Time, 120 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 24 | $1.67 |
| Band and label | $0.35 |
| Overhead | $0.30 |
| Full cost | $3.63 |
At a 55% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $3.63 ÷ 0.42 = $8.65, so $8.75. It had been asking $8, which leaves $4.13; at $8.75 each bar leaves $4.85, so the market price went to $8.75. A gift shop asked for bars at $5.00, which leaves $1.22 a bar after full cost, workable for a standing order of three dozen. The lavender essential oil is $6 of the $31.60 batch; a fragrance oil at half the price would take 13 cents off every bar. Lot numbers for each loaf are in how to create batch numbers for soap.
Get the calculator
Download the soap price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's supplies, amounts and costs, the bars it makes, the hands-on minutes, the band and label and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices a bar on paper. Six weeks later, with oils bought at a new price and bars still curing on racks, nobody knows what the shelf of bars really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps oils, lye and fragrance counted, and costs every batch.
Supplies in their units. Oils bought by the gallon are used by the ounce, and lye bought by the pound is weighed to the gram.
Designs as recipes. Each bar is a recipe of its supplies, so a batch takes them off stock and is costed from what they cost, and good and rejected pieces are recorded.
Reordering. Supplies come up on a reorder list in days of cover, worked out from how fast they're used.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Supplies on hand | Count the shelf | Stock in its own units |
| What a batch cost | Prices you type | Costed from what you paid |
| Which loaf a bar came from | Written on the rack | Lots with dates |
| When to reorder | When it's low | Reorder list in days of cover |
Recipes, units, costing and reorder lists are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.