Price jars, tins and wholesale orders from your own costs
You enter what your candle studio costs to run once. After that, every order for a store, a market weekend or a custom gift is priced from your own wax, jars and hours.
- Know what an hour of pouring really costs Studio space, insurance, booth fees, test burns and wages, yours included, become one break-even rate per pouring hour.
- Price the whole candle, not just the wax Wax and fragrance oil by the ounce, then the jar, lid, wick, labels and box, then the pouring, labelling and packing time.
- Still quote per candle You get the price for each candle and the order total at four order sizes, so a store asking about 12 or 144 gets an answer on the spot.
- Stop losing the freight and the testing Supply shipping, burn tests, seconds and label proofs sit on a checklist that has to be answered before the quote is ready.
- Send a store a proper wholesale quote A one-page quote with the price per candle, the deposit, the ship date and your terms, ready to print or save as a PDF.
- Find out which orders made money The Job Log tracks every quote, won or lost, and the real hours each order took.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns wax ounces, jars and pour time into a wholesale quote
The file has six tabs. You set up your studio once, update supply prices when your wax or jar supplier changes them, and make one quote per order.
- Start HereWhich yellow cells a candle studio fills first, and how the sample boutique order was built. One evening covers it.
- Shop SetupYour studio's yearly costs, you and any pourer, and gear like the wax melter, heat gun and label printer, turned into one break-even rate per pouring hour.
- Price ListWax, fragrance oil, jars, lids, wicks, labels and shipping boxes at landed cost, meaning what you paid plus the freight to get them to you, each dated so old prices stand out.
- QuotePick the wax and oil by the ounce and the jar, lid and labels by the piece, add the minutes for each step, answer the checklist, and it prices the candle at four order sizes.
- Customer QuoteThe one page the store sees: candles, scents, price each, deposit and terms.
- Job LogOnce the cases ship, log the real pouring and packing hours to see if the order paid.
What is a break-even rate? It is what one hour of pouring, labelling and packing has to bring in to cover your wages and every other cost of the studio, before any profit. The hours spent on markets, photos and emailing stores are paid for by those pouring hours, which is why the rate sits well above a wage. The true hourly rate guide explains it in more detail.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up candle company and its $850.96 wholesale quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The sample studio is an owner and a part-time pourer, with a break-even of $43.55 per pouring hour. Its quote is a boutique's opening order: 48 candles of 9 oz soy wax in a glass jar with a gold lid, four scents of 12, with the store's own label, shipped in four boxes to the store.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Wax, oil, jars, labour and shipping to the store | $580.72 |
| 3 | Easy-to-miss costs | $102.34 |
| 4 | Markup, cushion and profit | $167.90 |
| 5 | Price to the store | $850.96 |
That is $17.73 a candle wholesale, so the store's shelf price at double is about $35.46. The $167.90 is kept after every cost, the owner's own pay included, and the order earns about $74.62 per labour hour. The same candle quotes at $32.49 each for 12 and $14.45 each for 144. The full walk-through is on how much to charge for candles.
$102
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 2 times what the calculator costs. Miss them once and the file has paid for itself.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
Why wax, oil and a jar times three stops paying at wholesale
Most candle prices start from the materials multiplied by three or four. That can look fine at a market table, where you keep the whole retail price. Then a store asks for four scents at half of retail, and the same candle has to cover your pouring hours, the freight and the label artwork out of half the money.
Here is the simple math. A candle with $5 of materials sold at 3x retail is $15. The store pays half, $7.50, which leaves $2.50 for your time, your studio and your profit. Pour, label and pack a dozen and that $30 is gone before you have paid for the booth fee or the test burns.
This calculator works the other way round. It prices the wholesale order from your real costs first, and suggested retail is double that. If double comes out higher than your market price, you know your retail price was too low for wholesale, before you say yes to the store.
Burn tests, supply freight and the other candle costs it catches
The Quote tab won't mark a quote ready until each of these lines has a Yes, No or N/A:
- Burn testing a new scent or vessel, with a test candle at the recommended wick, one size up and one size down.
- Freight on wax, oil and glass coming in. It only goes N/A once your Price List holds landed costs.
- Supplies priced at a sale price. Use the normal price, because the next reorder won't be on sale.
- Seconds and breakage: cracked jars, spills and candles that don't pass your own check.
- The store's label proof, the artwork back and forth before a custom label is printed.
- Free samples and testers for the store. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you decide what a tester costs you.
Exactly what you get
One spreadsheet file, sent as an instant download the moment you pay. It opens in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. No subscription, no app and no login.
- The six-tab calculator, ready for your own studio's numbers.
- A complete example candle studio, with a finished 48-candle wholesale order you can study before you start.
- Candle customer terms you can edit, covering suggested retail, a ship date set around the cure, and billing label reprints after the store approves its proof.
- A Job Log that shows your win rate and which orders ran over their hours; in the sample, a 100-candle closing gift order took 22 hours against 13 planned and lost money. The habit is covered in job costing.
How it compares
Most owners price a job one of these ways. Here is what each one gives you.
| Copying another company's price | A free estimate template | Estimating software | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from your own costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Makes you answer the easy-to-miss costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Shows which jobs made money | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Works in Excel and Google Sheets | – | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free | Usually a monthly fee | $49.95 once |
Who it's for: candle makers selling to stores, markets and online
It fits home and small candle studios of about 1 to 15 people: makers starting wholesale who need to know if half of retail still pays them, market sellers who sell out a weekend and wonder what they earned per hour, and anyone taking custom orders like wedding favors or realtor closing gifts. One maker at the kitchen stove or a studio with a few pourers, a dozen tins or a thousand jars, it works the same way, because every number in it is yours.
It is not for large candle brands already running inventory software with full costing, anyone who wants a list of what other makers charge, or hobby makers giving candles away who don't need to cover their time. To see your rate before buying, try the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing candles from wax, oil and a jar times three. Price every order from your own costs, catch the freight and testing that usually get missed, and see which orders made money.
Candle Making Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
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