New Product Pricing Checklist
A step-by-step checklist for costing and pricing one handmade product before it goes live, so the listing price covers materials, packaging, fees, postage, your time, and a share of overhead.
Reviewed for 2026, updated September 8, 2026.
Most underpriced handmade products were priced once, in a hurry, from a materials receipt and a feeling about what the market would bear. The gaps are predictable: bulk purchases never broken down to a per-item amount, packaging left out, the non-making time (photos, listings, messages, the drop-off trip) never counted, and fees estimated from memory. This checklist walks through every input for a single product in the order the numbers depend on each other, so by the end you have a loaded unit cost, a price floor, and a price you chose on purpose. The reasoning behind each step is in the guide at /guide/ and in the article on materials at /blog/materials-costing-done-right/.
Work through it once per product, or per variant when size or materials change the cost meaningfully, and keep the filled-in version with the date. When you reach the price checks near the end, run the figures through the Handmade Order Profit Calculator at /tools/handmade-order-profit/ to see net profit, margin, hourly rate, and the break-even item price for one typical order. If you are deciding between charging shipping separately and folding it into the price, the Shipping-Included Price Calculator at /tools/free-shipping-switch/ shows what the listing price needs to become. None of this has to be precise to the cent. It has to be written down and repeatable.
- Write the product name and a short spec (size, materials, variant) at the top so the costing matches one exact item, not a whole family of them.
- List every component that leaves with the customer: primary material, secondary materials, findings, thread, glue, finish, and the hang tag.
- Price each component at replacement cost, meaning what it would cost to buy again today, not the deal you got last year or the sale you hope to catch.
- Break bulk purchases down to the amount one item actually consumes, and add an allowance for offcuts, spills, and pieces that fail quality control.
- Add consumables that are used up in production but never ship, such as sandpaper, blades, needles, brushes, and finish rags.
- Cost the packaging per order: box or mailer, tissue, tape, label paper, insert card, and any protective fill.
- Time three complete cycles with a stopwatch, including sourcing, making, photographing, listing, answering messages, packing, and the trip to drop off.
- Choose an hourly rate you would accept from an employer for skilled work and multiply it by the average minutes one item consumes.
- Add a share of monthly overhead per item: rent or home workspace, utilities, software subscriptions, insurance, bank fees, and equipment wear.
- Look up the fees your selling channel takes (listing, transaction, payment processing, advertising) and note which ones are charged on shipping and tax as well as on the item price.
- Weigh a fully packed sample and measure the box so you can get a real postage quote for a nearby zone and for the farthest zone you ship to.
- Decide whether shipping will be charged separately or folded into the price, and compare both versions at /tools/free-shipping-switch/.
- Add materials, consumables, packaging, labor, and overhead to get your loaded unit cost, and write it down somewhere you will find it again.
- Set a price floor: the item price at which one typical order breaks even after fees and postage. The break-even figure at /tools/handmade-order-profit/ gives you this directly.
- Check the market ceiling by noting what comparable handmade items list for, and decide where in that range your quality, story, and photography place you.
- Choose a price between floor and ceiling, then confirm that the net profit and the hourly rate on a typical order are numbers you can live with.
- Test the price against a discounted order (a sale code or a repeat-customer discount) to make sure promotions never push it below the floor.
- Test the price against a multi-item order and against the farthest shipping zone so you have seen the best case and the worst case.
- If wholesale is a possibility, check that the retail price leaves room for a wholesale price that still sits above your loaded unit cost.
- Record every input (component costs, minutes, hourly rate, fee percentage, postage quotes) on one sheet with today's date.
- Set a review date no more than one season away, and re-run the numbers any time a material price, postage rate, fee schedule, or your hourly rate changes.
- Add the finished product to your Per-Order Profit Log so real orders can confirm or correct the estimate over the next few weeks.
https://makerledgr.com/templates/new-product-pricing-checklist/Use it in your business, share it with your team, or link to it from your own site.
Also from MakerLedgr
- Per-Order Profit Log: A running log for recording what each handmade order really paid, what it cost in fees, materials, packaging, and postage, how long it took, and what was left, so profit can be rolled up by product instead of guessed from monthly totals.
- Free calculators