Every maker hits the same wall. You start tracking finished products in a notebook, then realize you also need to know how much wax, how many wicks, and which fragrances you have left. Two inventories, moving in opposite directions every time you make a batch or a sale. Spreadsheets cannot keep both straight for long.
The two-inventory problem
A candle or soap business runs two stock counts at once:
- Raw materials: wax, wicks, fragrance oils, colorants, jars, labels, packaging.
- Finished products: the candles and bars you actually sell.
Every batch you pour turns raw materials into finished goods. Every sale removes a finished good. If you only track one side, you either run out of jars mid-batch or discover you are out of your best seller at a market. The fix is software that links the two with a bill of materials.
What to look for
Bills of materials (BOMs). Define what goes into each product once, for example one 8oz candle equals 200g soy wax, one wick, one jar, and 20g fragrance. Then making or selling that candle draws down the raw materials automatically, so both inventories stay honest without double entry.
Multichannel sync. If you sell on Etsy and Shopify, and maybe a market too, your stock needs to update everywhere from one source so you never sell the same candle twice. Retrofitting this later is painful, so pick it from the start.
Offline mode. Craft fairs, markets, and pop-ups almost never have reliable wifi. You need to record sales and check stock on your phone with no signal, and have it sync when you get home.
Cost tracking. Knowing the true material cost of each product is how you price with confidence instead of guessing. Good software rolls up the BOM cost for you.
Barcode or SKU scanning. Once you pass a couple of hundred variants (scents times sizes), scanning beats scrolling.
How Stockria fits a maker business
Stockria includes all of this on every plan, including free: bills of materials that link raw materials to finished products, sync with Etsy, Shopify, Amazon, and Square, full offline mode for markets and fairs, cost tracking per product, and phone-camera barcode scanning. Plans differ only by size, never by features, so you are not forced up a tier to unlock the BOM or the Etsy sync that a maker actually needs.
It scales with you. Start free at 250 items while it is a side hustle, and the tool does not change shape as you grow into a real production schedule.
Getting started
Put in your raw materials, build a bill of materials for your best-selling product, and connect your Etsy or Shopify shop. From there, pouring a batch and making a sale both keep your counts right on their own, at the workbench and at the market stall.
Start free with 250 items and every feature included.