Pricing Calculator: Finding Your Right Price
What This Page Does
The Pricing Calculator tells you what to charge so every sale pays for your ingredients, your packaging, your time and the cost of running the business, and still leaves a profit. No more pricing from the gut and hoping.
Every plan, including Starter.
First Time: Your Business Costs
Press Set up my business costs. It asks about your monthly bills, what you pay yourself an hour, and the hours you spend on everything that isn’t making. Do it once and every recipe uses it.
Pricing Something
Press + Price something new. Six short steps walk you through what you are making, how many a batch makes, what goes in it, packaging, and how long a batch takes.
Then you get your answer: Charge at least $X per item, with a Where that comes from card showing exactly how it adds up.
The one that trips people up — Fill in how long a batch takes, even as a rough guess. Your wage and overheads are charged by the hour, so a blank time means neither gets counted, and the price looks lovely and is wrong.
The Tabs
- My Prices — every recipe with a status: Healthy, Below target, Losing money, Incomplete or Not linked.
- Business Costs — your monthly bills, what you pay yourself, and the fees that come out of each sale.
- Reports — whether you are busy enough to cover your overheads, and the profit a batch and an hour for each recipe.
- Alerts — shop products whose price has slipped below cost or below your target.
On the answer screen, use Which shop product is this? to link the recipe to what you sell, so Alerts can keep an eye on its price.
What Margin Should I Aim For?
The calculator starts you at 20%, and for most cottage food makers 15–25% is the right neighbourhood. That can sound low if you have heard “aim for 55%”, but here your cost already includes your wage and your overheads. The margin is the business’s money on top of you being paid.
A Note on Pricing Confidently
People who love handmade, local food aren’t shopping with you because you are the cheapest. They are shopping with you because of you. Price your work so it lasts. The calculator won’t judge you for wanting to make a living; it will just show you the number.
