Creative Business Tool Inventory.....

As I have mentioned before I am putting together of tools that I have discovered and/or use. I thought to make it more interesting I should do one tool per post.

So today I will be talking about CraftyBase. 

This is the perfect tool for us the creative. Their mantra is Keep track of what you make! I so agree, who has time to be calculating material costs and labour cost.

The tool can help in making decisions such as:

“ How much should I sell my handmade products for? ”

• Automatically calculate your exact material costs per product
• Keep track of your labor and time
• Incorporate postage and other expenses
• See your profit margins on each sale made

 “ How much did I spend to make my products this month? ”

• Log all costs involved in producing your products
• Associate purchases with projects and inventory items
• Import your Etsy listing, renewal and commission fees instantly
• Filter by date and view graphically to see trends

 “ How much profit in total did I make this year? ”

• Track your sales from all channels - online and offline
• Instant profitability calculations
• Easy to understand graphs and charts
• Find out your busy months so you can prepare in advance

It also helps to keep on top of other part of your business such as:

• Stock and inventory tracking - Keep tabs on what you have in stock and what you need to reorder
• Time tracking - Track how long it takes you to make each item you sell.
• Importing your Etsy Data - Import your sales, Etsy fees and listings at the touch of a button.
• Calculating cost of goods sold - makes things a snap at tax time.

You can try it for 30 days for free and see how much you like, but then it is US$ 7.99/month.

I have been using it extensively this month only but I've had it for more than 6 months and so far I like the clean interface and the ease of use. The only issue I have with it so far is that once you've imported your data from Etsy you still have to edit them again as they are created as new projects.

So let's say you've created your account or you've logged in then the first thing to do is to go to the Settings and change your currency and country to Australia. This is where you will also have to set your hourly rate in dollars. Then you can either import your Etsy shop or start adding materials for your inventory, which will then be used for making items that are added into projects.

I find that it is easier to create the projects first for all the kind of items you make, e.g. I have this new Small Bright Card collection that is a small 4in card with a matching handmade envelope. The only difference is that the colour of the envelope changes so I made one project for each of the colour change. Then I added the materials that will be used for creating those cards. I do not add things such as glue and ink for printing or even the envelope template that I used as these items are the core tools for my whole process so there is no need to add it to the price of each product. But it is all up to you how detailed you want to go to.

I reckon the best way to use this tool is try it out, test different ways of doing things until you find the method that works for your business and your way of doing things.

Wow this was meant to be a small post, but I've been so engrossed in giving a good review that I've gone on and on. I hope I have given you guys enough details to get you interested and get you to actually give the tool a try....what can you loose it is for free for 30 days.....go on I know you wanna

Until next time

Francesca