Why it fits
The number tax season asks for, without the spreadsheet
Every maker eventually gets asked what one of these costs to make. Most have a rough number in their head; very few have one they could defend. This is how Intakes gets you one.
One run, start to finish
Materials become finished goods without losing their cost history.
- Materials arrive with quantities and costs, bought through the same intake as everything else.
- A recipe says what one batch takes; a work order runs it and records what actually came off the line.
- Each finished item carries its share of the materials and the run’s own costs.
- Reprice the material’s purchase later and every finished item reprices with it.
Recipe
Yield 3 sweatersDog sweater — olive / L
- Fleece, olive 2.4 yd × $8.96 / yd
- $21.50
- Thread, olive 90 m × $0.024 / m
- $2.16
- Materials per batch
- $23.66
Materials bought through an ordinary intake, freight included — 238.75 yd of fleece and 2,000 m of thread in stock.
Work order 38
6 of 6 made
- Fleece, olive · 4.8 yd
- $43.01
- Thread, olive · 180 m
- $4.32
- Sewing time · 2 batches
- $30.00
- Cost of the run
- $77.33
Each of the six sweaters cost $12.89 — $7.89 in fleece and thread, $5.00 in sewing time. Reprice the fleece intake later, and the sweaters reprice with it.
Recipes and work orders
Recipes define, work orders execute
The recipe holds the standing formula — what one batch is made from and how much it yields — and pre-fills the run. What actually happens on the bench is what gets costed: the materials you really used, the batches you really made.
- Record output as it comes off the line — three today, four tomorrow, sellable straight away.
- A run that ends short is finished where it stands, and the plan stays beside it so the yield is readable a year later.
- A product can have more than one recipe, because there is often more than one way to make it — sewn from fabric, or reworked from the long-sleeved one.
Family recipes
Fifty variants are one construction and a few substitutions
An item family is not fifty different products — it is one, with the fabric following the colour and the yardage following the size. So you state it once, as a grid: a row per variant, a column per ingredient, and an amount in each cell.
- Narrow the grid by the family’s own attributes and fill a whole column at once — filter to olive and set the fabric for every olive variant, then type only the yardages that actually differ.
- Each row is saved as that variant’s own recipe, applied by a work order exactly like one you wrote by hand — so a run draws that variant’s materials, and its cost is that variant’s.
- Come back and change a cell and only the rows that changed are rewritten; the page says how many. Recipes you wrote by hand on a single variant are never touched.
- A family can hold more than one grid — one per way the product is made — and a variant that cannot be produced yet is named before you fill anything in.
Dog Sweater
Family recipe · 50 members
| Member | Fleece, olive + Fill column | Thread, olive |
|---|---|---|
| Dog Sweater Olive S | 0.9 yd | 60 m |
| Dog Sweater Olive M | 1.1 yd | 70 m |
| Dog Sweater Olive L | 1.3 yd | 80 m |
Planning and make-to-order
The order comes in; the run plans itself
Record the sale first, even for goods that do not exist yet. One click on it works out what you are short of across every line, picks the recipe for each thing — silently where there is one, asking you where there are several — and hands you the run to plan.
- The two documents are linked both ways: the sale lists the runs making its goods and how far along they are, and the run names the sale it is for.
- Give a run a day it has to be finished by — pre-filled from the sale’s own ship-by — and the list counts down to it, marking a run due after the goods have to ship.
- Plan the week on a board: drag a run onto a day, or spread twenty at four a day, and the days fill in as you record what came off the line.
- When the run closes it offers to reserve the waiting sale, so the stock is claimed before anything else can take it.
Materials and products
Fabric by the yard, sweaters by the piece — together
Materials are measured — yards, grams, metres — and the things you make are counted. Intakes tracks both on the same purchase and in the same stock — and the labels and mailer boxes you only ever count are kept as lots too, not one record apiece. A lot can be split, merged and transferred without losing a cent of its cost history.
- Sizes, colours and grades as your own attributes, with a matrix that mints a whole item family at once.
- A low-stock watch on the materials you restock, with an email when they run out.
- Packaging is stock too, and its cost lands on the sale it shipped in.
Profit you can defend
Per finished product, per channel, per size
Because every finished piece carries its true cost, profit is real at every grain — and the profit & loss statement matches the dashboard to the cent, with write-offs and returns on their own lines below it.
- A report of what your runs were charged beside the materials — labor, kiln time, a subcontracted step — by the name you gave each.
- A sales rollup on every product family, variant by variant.
- Bestsellers ranked by money, with what never sold at the bottom.