If you make and sell handmade goods, a simple inventory spreadsheet is the one tool that tells you what you have, what it cost, and whether you're actually making money. You don't need expensive software to start. A free spreadsheet built in Google Sheets or Excel, with a few tabs and a handful of formulas, will track your raw materials, finished products, and sales well enough to run a profitable craft business.
This guide walks you through exactly what a craft business inventory spreadsheet should include and how to build one yourself in about 15 minutes. You'll get the specific columns, the tabs that matter, and the formulas that turn a plain list into a tool that calculates your cost of goods and flags what's running low.
By the end, you'll have a sample spreadsheet structure you can recreate today, plus a clear sense of when it makes sense to graduate to dedicated inventory software.
What You'll Learn
- What Should a Craft Inventory Spreadsheet Include?
- How to Build a Craft Inventory Spreadsheet (Free Template)
- How Do You Track Raw Materials and Supplies?
- How to Track Finished Products and Sales
- How to Calculate Cost of Goods and Set Prices
- Should You Use a Spreadsheet or Inventory Software?
- Tips for Keeping Your Spreadsheet Up to Date
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Should a Craft Inventory Spreadsheet Include?
A good handmade inventory spreadsheet does three jobs at once: it tells you what supplies you have, what finished products you can sell, and what each item actually costs you to make. Most free templates you'll find online cover the basics, but craft businesses have a wrinkle that retail inventory tools don't handle well. You buy raw materials, combine them, and create something new. That means you need to track two layers of inventory, not one.
At a minimum, your spreadsheet should have separate tabs for:
- Raw materials and supplies. Everything you buy to make your products: yarn, beads, wax, fabric, wood, glaze, packaging.
- Finished products. The items you actually sell, with the cost rolled up from the materials that went into them.
- Sales log. A running record of what sold, when, where, and for how much.
Some sellers add a fourth tab for a pricing calculator and a fifth for a craft show inventory checklist they print before each event. Start simple. You can always add tabs as your business grows.
The columns that matter most across these tabs are item name or SKU, description, quantity on hand, unit cost, total value, reorder level, and supplier. Those seven fields are the backbone of nearly every small business inventory template, and they're enough to keep a handmade operation organized.
How to Build a Craft Inventory Spreadsheet (Free Template)
You can build this in Google Sheets (free, syncs to your phone) or Excel. Here's the structure to recreate. Make a copy, type the headers into row 1, and you've got a working template in minutes.
Tab 1: Raw Materials
Set up these columns across the top:
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Material | Name of the supply (e.g. "8oz amber glass jar") |
| SKU | Your own short code, like RM-001 |
| Supplier | Where you buy it |
| Qty on Hand | How many you currently have |
| Unit Cost | What you pay per single unit |
| Total Value | Qty multiplied by Unit Cost |
| Reorder At | The quantity that triggers a reorder |
The Total Value column is your first formula. If Qty on Hand is column D and Unit Cost is column E, then in the Total Value cell type =D2*E2 and drag it down. Now the sheet calculates the value of your supplies automatically.
Tab 2: Finished Products
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Product | Name of the finished item |
| SKU | Code like FP-001 |
| Materials Cost | Cost of supplies used to make one |
| Labor Cost | Your time per unit |
| Total Cost | Materials plus Labor |
| Sale Price | What you charge |
| Profit per Unit | Sale Price minus Total Cost |
| Qty in Stock | How many are ready to sell |
Two formulas here. Total Cost is =C2+D2 (Materials plus Labor), and Profit per Unit is =F2-E2 (Sale Price minus Total Cost). Now every product shows its margin at a glance.
Tab 3: Sales Log
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Date | When it sold |
| Product | What sold |
| Qty | How many |
| Sale Price | Per unit |
| Total | Qty times Sale Price |
| Event/Channel | Which fair, market, or shop |
This tab is gold for spotting your best sellers and your strongest events. Use a pivot table or a simple SUMIF formula to total sales by product or by event whenever you want a quick read.
For a deeper look at tracking what each show actually earns you, see our guide to tracking your craft fair ROI.
How Do You Track Raw Materials and Supplies?
Raw material tracking is where most handmade sellers either thrive or give up. The trick is to log a material once when you buy it, then subtract as you use it, instead of recounting your whole supply shelf every week.
Start by entering every supply you buy on the Raw Materials tab. Each time a shipment arrives, add the new quantity to your Qty on Hand and update the unit cost if the price changed. When you make a batch of products, subtract the materials you used.
A few habits keep this accurate without eating your evenings:
- Update after every batch, not every item. If you make 20 candles, subtract 20 jars and 20 wicks in one entry instead of tracking each candle.
- Use the Reorder At column. Set it to the amount you'd want on hand before you run out mid-batch. When Qty on Hand drops below it, reorder. You can even use conditional formatting to turn the cell red.
- Round your unit costs honestly. If a 100-pack of jars cost $85 with shipping, your unit cost is $0.85, not the $0.70 on the sticker. Including shipping in your material cost is what keeps your pricing accurate.
Tracking raw materials this way also makes tax season far less painful, since you'll have a running record of supply purchases. Our craft fair tax guide covers how that inventory record fits into your deductions.
How to Track Finished Products and Sales
Once your raw materials feed into finished products, the spreadsheet starts paying off. Every time you complete a batch, add it to the Finished Products tab and bump up the Qty in Stock. Every time something sells, log it on the Sales tab and lower the stock count.
The reason to keep these separate from raw materials is profitability. Your Finished Products tab shows the rolled-up cost of each item, so you can see at a glance which products earn $2 a unit and which earn $20. That single view changes how you plan your craft fair table, because you'll naturally bring more of what actually makes money.
A few things to record on each finished product:
- Materials cost pulled from your Raw Materials tab. Add up the unit cost of every supply that goes into one finished piece.
- A realistic labor figure. Decide on an hourly rate and divide by how many you can make per hour. If you value your time at $20 an hour and make 10 items an hour, that's $2 of labor per item.
- Current stock. Knowing you have 14 lavender soaps and 2 oatmeal soaps before a show tells you exactly what to make next.
Before each event, filter or copy your Finished Products tab into a simple packing checklist so you know precisely what's loaded in the car. For more on dialing in the right quantities, read our guide to craft fair inventory management.
How to Calculate Cost of Goods and Set Prices
Cost of goods sold, or COGS, is the total it costs you to make the products you sell. Your inventory spreadsheet already has the pieces, so adding a pricing view is easy and it's the difference between a hobby that loses money and a business that doesn't.
For any single product, your true cost is materials plus labor plus a slice of overhead. Materials and labor live on your Finished Products tab. Overhead covers things like booth fees, packaging, and card processing fees spread across your sales.
A common pricing formula handmade sellers use looks like this:
- Base cost = Materials + Labor
- Wholesale price = Base cost multiplied by 2
- Retail price = Wholesale multiplied by 2, or Base cost multiplied by 4
That 4x retail multiplier sounds steep until you remember it has to absorb your booth fee, the items that don't sell, your packaging, and your time running the booth. Plenty of profitable vendors land between 2.5x and 4x depending on their materials and market.
Add a column on your Finished Products tab called "Target Price" with a formula like =E2*4 (Total Cost times 4) so you have a starting number to sanity-check against what you actually charge. For the full breakdown of multipliers, markups, and reading your local market, see our complete guide to pricing products for craft fairs.
Should You Use a Spreadsheet or Inventory Software?
A spreadsheet is the right starting point for almost every new handmade seller. It's free, it's flexible, and it forces you to understand your own numbers. For a business selling at a handful of fairs a year with a few dozen products, a well-built spreadsheet does everything you need.
You might outgrow it when:
- Your product count climbs past 100 SKUs and manual updates start eating real time.
- You sell across multiple channels (craft fairs, Etsy, a Shopify store, wholesale) and need stock to sync so you don't oversell.
- Your raw material math gets complex, with shared supplies feeding many products and frequent price changes you want auto-calculated.
- Tax and COGS reporting become a headache you'd rather hand to software.
At that point, dedicated craft inventory tools like Craftybase, or general small business inventory apps, can automate the batch-to-product math and channel syncing. There's no rush. Many sellers run six-figure handmade businesses on a spreadsheet because they know it cold. Switch when the spreadsheet costs you more time than it saves, not before.
Tips for Keeping Your Spreadsheet Up to Date
The best inventory spreadsheet is the one you actually maintain. A perfect template you update twice a year is worse than a simple one you touch every week. These habits keep it useful:
- Pick a weekly update slot. Fifteen minutes every Sunday to log the week's sales and material purchases keeps the whole thing accurate.
- Update sales the night of each fair. While the receipts and memory are fresh, enter your sales log before you unpack. It takes 10 minutes and saves hours of guessing later.
- Use data validation for repeated entries. A dropdown list for product names and event names prevents typos that break your
SUMIFtotals. - Back it up. Google Sheets saves automatically and syncs across devices, which is why many sellers prefer it over a local Excel file that lives on one laptop.
- Do a physical count quarterly. Once every three months, count your actual stock and reconcile it against the sheet. This catches the small errors that creep in over time.
If you're still setting up the basics of your handmade operation, our guide to starting a craft business from home covers the wider picture your inventory system fits into.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free inventory spreadsheet for a craft business?
The best free option is one you build yourself in Google Sheets with three tabs: raw materials, finished products, and a sales log. It costs nothing, syncs to your phone, and fits your exact products. Free pre-made templates from sites like Craftybase and Spreadsheet Daddy work too if you'd rather start from a download.
How do I track inventory for my handmade business?
Track inventory in two layers: raw materials you buy and finished products you make. Log each material when it arrives, subtract it when you use it in a batch, then add the finished items to a separate tab. Record every sale in a log so your stock counts and profit stay accurate.
What columns should an inventory spreadsheet have?
The core columns are item name or SKU, description, quantity on hand, unit cost, total value, reorder level, and supplier. Craft businesses should add materials cost, labor cost, sale price, and profit per unit on a finished-products tab so each item shows its margin.
Do I need inventory software or is a spreadsheet enough?
A spreadsheet is enough for most new and small handmade sellers, especially under 100 products and a few sales channels. Consider dedicated inventory software once you sell across multiple platforms, need stock to sync automatically, or your batch-to-product cost math gets too complex to maintain by hand.
How often should I update my craft inventory spreadsheet?
Update sales the night of each fair while details are fresh, and set aside 15 minutes weekly to log material purchases and stock changes. Do a full physical count and reconciliation once a quarter to catch small errors before they add up.
A craft business inventory spreadsheet isn't busywork. It's the difference between guessing and knowing whether your handmade business is profitable. Start with three tabs, a handful of formulas, and a weekly habit. You'll always know what you have, what it cost, and which products are worth bringing to your next show.
Ready to put that inventory to work? Browse upcoming craft fairs on TheCraftMap and find the right events to sell your handmade goods in 2026.