Cost per sellable bar of soap, with the end cuts counted
The free soap calculator quoted in part G asks for eight figures, and one of them is a single bars-per-batch number you type yourself. Its own copy says cold process soap regularly produces end cuts, cracked tops, and cosmetic rejects that can’t be sold, and tells you to reduce that bars-per-batch input by 10 to 15 per cent to allow for it. Where this page has four counts — the bars you cut, the firsts, the seconds you keep, the ones you binned — it has that one box, and it has no field at all for what a second fetches, so whichever number you type into it, nothing there tells you what the reduction did to your cost. This page takes the four counts and the price your ends fetch, and prints both costs side by side with every line of the subtraction shown. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
This page covers cost only. It carries nothing about safety or regulation of any kind.
The walkthrough is on. Each part says what its figures mean and where to find them. Turn it off at the top once you know your way around. The figures in the blanks are a worked example so the page shows a real result before you touch it; replace them with yours.
Cost a bar, every bar you cut$5.22
Cost a bar you can sell as a first$5.97
The cost a bar you cut is understated by14.37%
The gap on this batch$8.25
The gap on a month of batches like this one$88.36
A
The batch, and what it weighed
The four material costs are four of the eight figures the calculator in part G asks for. The two weights are grams or ounces, whichever your scale reads, and the conversion is shown on the line that uses it.
Oils and butters, lye, fragrance, colorant
What this batch used, at what you paid for it. Take each from the invoice for the container it came out of, divided down to what this batch took.
Batter weight
What came out of the pot, on your scale, before it went into the mould. If you did not weigh it, leave it empty: the page then prints no cost a gram and no money against the batter that did not fit, and every other line still holds.
One bar’s weight
What one cut bar weighs. It gives the bars the batter would fill, which is a different number from the bars the mould holds and from the bars you counted.
Oils and butters
Lye
Fragrance or essential oil
Colorant
Batter weight what came out of the pot
One bar’s weight
B
Packaging, time and overhead
Packaging a bar, and minutes at an hourly rate, are three more of those eight figures. A monthly overhead is not one of them, and it is here because rent does not stop for a batch: one month of it, spread over the bars you make in a month.
Packaging a bar
Wrap, band, box, sticker: what one bar’s packaging costs. It is charged on every bar you cut, including the ones that turn out to be ends, because you wrapped them before you knew.
Minutes and your hourly rate
Minutes for the whole batch, not per bar, and whatever you pay yourself. The page prints the hours it turned that into, so the multiplication is yours to check.
Monthly overhead and bars a month
Rent, insurance, a stall fee, the subscription you forgot: one month of it, divided by the bars a month you actually make. If you enter an overhead and no bars a month, the page stops and says so rather than dividing by nothing.
Packaging a bar
Minutes for the batch
Your hourly rate
Monthly overhead
Bars a month
C
The mould, and the bars you actually cut
The mould figure is here for one reason: it is the number most makers reach for when a form asks for bars per batch, and it is the number the quoted page’s own copy tells you to reduce. It is context on this page and nothing more. No figure on this page divides by the mould’s count. If the mould figure and the count you cut disagree, the page says so and names both, and the glossary says which figure each cost is divided by.
A loaf, or cavities
A loaf takes its length and the thickness you cut at, in inches or centimetres, and the conversion is shown. A cavity mould takes the number of cavities.
Bars cut
Counted on the cutting board, ends included. Not the mould’s figure, not the recipe’s, not a number reduced by a percentage somebody published.
How the batch was moulded
Loaf length
Thickness you cut at
Cavities in the mould
Bars cut counted, ends included
D
What happened to those bars
The three counts have to come to the bars you cut: firsts plus seconds plus scrapped equals bars cut, and the page prints no cost a first until they do. The two price figures below are the ones that calculator has no field for: what an end actually sells for, and the fee the channel takes off it.
Firsts
Bars you sell at full price.
Seconds
End cuts, cracked tops, the ones with a wobble: kept, and sold at a discount or in a bundle. Counted here, not thrown away.
Scrapped
Binned. Nothing comes back.
What a second sells for
What one of them actually fetches, not what you hope. Zero is a real answer, and the page treats a second at zero exactly like a scrapped bar, which is what it is.
Channel fee
The percentage your channel takes. You type it, so nothing on this page can go stale when somebody changes their rates.
Batter that did not fit the mould
Weighed, if you weighed it. It is used for one line only: how much of your materials money is sitting in it. That money is already inside the materials figure in part A and is not added again.
Sold as firsts
Kept as seconds end cuts, cracked tops
Scrapped
What one second sells for
Channel fee per cent of what you are paid
Batter that did not fit the mould
E
The working, one line at a time
Every line is computed from the figures printed beside it. Money is worked to the cent, weights to a tenth of a gram, lengths to a hundredth of a centimetre, which is what a scale, an invoice and a ruler read. The lines printed in parts A, B and C are steps 1 onwards, beside the figures they are worked from; the numbering runs on from there, so the working is one list and no line of it is printed twice.
Where your counts leave a first, and a first costs more than nothing, the cost of one is printed twice: once as the batch cost less what the seconds gave back over the firsts, and once by the other road, the batch cost over the bars your sellable share comes to. They are the same number to the cent, and seeing the two agree is how you check this page rather than trust it. The share is worked out from what a second gives back against what a bar costs, so a second at full price counts as a whole bar and a second at nothing counts as none. Two rarer states get a line rather than a silence: if the two roads ever fail to agree exactly, a line below names the difference; and if your counts leave a first that costs zero or below, a line below says why the other road is not printed.
This page costs one batch of soap. The full cost version, with repeatable material rows and a channel block, is a page called Cost per sellable candle, and it is not published yet: there is no link here until there is something to link to.
F
The break-even line
One figure, and it is labelled exactly what it is: the price at which this batch reaches the margin you entered. It is not a recommendation, it is not a floor anybody here thinks you should hold, and this page has no view on what your margin ought to be. Type a margin and the arithmetic follows; type a different one and a different figure follows.
Margin you entered per cent of the price
G
What the free calculator asks for, and what it does not
One page, opened and read on 2026-09-30, quoted as written. It is free to use. Three quotations from one page are one source, not three. The words are theirs; the point they make against their own field list is the reason this page exists.
Quoted to the page it came from, with the date that page was read.
The eight figures it asks for Oils & Butters Cost, Lye Cost, Fragrance / Essential Oil Cost, Colorant Cost, Number of Bars per Batch, Packaging Cost per Bar, Time to Make Batch (minutes), Your Hourly Rate. There is no ninth.craftybase.com soap making cost calculator, no article date shown, read 2026-09-30
What the same page says about the bars that cannot be sold Cold process soap regularly produces end cuts, cracked tops, and cosmetic rejects that can't be sold.craftybase.com soap making cost calculator, no article date shown, read 2026-09-30
What it asks you to do about them A common approach is to reduce your 'bars per batch' input by 10-15% to reflect expected waste, so a recipe that fills 12 bar cavities might realistically yield 10-11 sellable bars.craftybase.com soap making cost calculator, no article date shown, read 2026-09-30
And what it says about the batter that did not fit Batch overrun (soap batter that doesn't fit the mold) should be counted as waste unless you consistently sell soap ends.craftybase.com soap making cost calculator, no article date shown, read 2026-09-30
Its own sentence raises the case its form has no field for: the ends you do sell. This page has the field, and the figure it changes is the one at the top. Where the original prints an en dash between two numbers, the quotations above use a plain hyphen; no word is changed.
This page ships no waste percentage of its own, and it does not say what yours should be. Your four counts are the measurement; the 10 to 15 per cent above is somebody else’s figure and is quoted, not adopted.
H
Words that come up
First
A bar you sell at full price. Not an end cut, not a cracked top, not binned.
Second
A bar with a cosmetic flaw that you keep and sell at a discount. What it fetches is credited against the batch on this page, which is the half the calculator in part G has no field for.
Bars cut
What you counted on the board, ends included. The count the other three have to add to, and the divisor for the comparison figure.
Cost a bar, every bar you cut
Batch cost divided by bars cut. What one bars-per-batch field gives you when you type the count you cut into it, and nothing is credited back for a second. On this page for comparison.
Cost a bar you can sell as a first
Batch cost, less what the seconds gave back after the channel fee, divided by the firsts.
Understated by
How much higher the cost a bar you can sell as a first is than the cost a bar, every bar you cut, as a percentage of the cost a bar, every bar you cut.
Defect rate
Seconds plus scrapped, over bars cut. Yours, measured, not a percentage from a blog.
Sellable share
The fraction of the bars you cut that the batch really has to be paid for by, once a second is counted for what it recovers and a scrapped bar for nothing. Printed wherever a first costs more than nothing.
The other road
The same cost of a first, reached the other way: the batch cost divided by the bars that share comes to. Printed beside the first figure wherever a first costs more than nothing, so the two can be compared rather than taken on trust.
The figures print with it. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is saved except whether the walkthrough is on.