How to price your handmade work (with or without a parts list)

Have you ever priced a piece by guessing? Or by looking at what someone else charges and going a little lower?

You're not alone. Most of us start that way. The trouble is, a guess doesn't know how long the piece took you, or what the silver cost this month. So it quietly leaves money on the table.

I'm Fred. My wife Margaret is a jewelry artist, and we built AMS to help her run her business. Pricing was one of the first things we fixed, and this post walks through how we do it now.

Prefer to watch? The full 10-minute walkthrough is at the bottom of this post, or on YouTube.

The four numbers behind every price

A price that pays you comes down to four things:

1. Your time. What an hour of your work is worth, and how long the piece takes.
2. Your materials. What goes into the piece.
3. Your markup. What you multiply your cost by to get a retail price.
4. Where you sell. A shop that buys wholesale or takes a commission keeps part of the price, so you need to know what's left for you.

Get those four right and your price takes care of itself.

Set your numbers once

In AMS, pricing starts in My Business → Business Properties, under Pricing Defaults. You set three numbers there, once:

• Labor rate: what an hour of your time is worth. In the video, it's $50.
• Markup: in the video, three and a half times.
• Wholesale discount: in the video, 50%.

Every new product starts with these numbers, so you don't type them again.

Pricing a piece without a parts list

You don't need to track every bead to get a good price. For a pair of moonstone drop earrings, I skipped the parts list and used a rough number:

• 15 minutes of work at $50 an hour is $12.50 of labor.
• About $6 of materials.
• That makes the cost to make them $18.50.
• Times the 3.5 markup, AMS suggests $64.75.

That's a starting point, not a rule. These earrings sell well at $68, so that's the price I set. AMS then shows the wholesale price ($34) and what I keep: $15.50 if a shop buys them wholesale, $49.50 if I sell them myself.

Pricing a piece from its parts

When you do want the detail, list your parts once under Inventory → Components. Each part gets a cost for whatever unit makes sense: per gram, per piece, per inch. Our sterling silver sheet is $2.30 a gram. A stone, a chain, a jump ring and a gift box each get their own entry too.

Then build a piece from those parts. For a labradorite pendant:

• 4 grams of silver, one stone, a chain, two jump rings and a gift box come to $23.10 in materials.
• 45 minutes of work brings the cost to make it to $60.60.
• AMS suggests $212.10. That's not a round number, so I set $216.

Here's where a parts list earns its keep. Say my stone supplier raises the price from $8 to $10. I change the stone's cost once, and the pendant's suggested price goes up to $219.10. My $216 price doesn't move on its own. It stays until I decide to change it, and now I can see it's time to look.

See what you keep wherever you sell

At the bottom of each piece's Pricing Worksheet, AMS shows what you keep from a sale in three places:

• Consignment: what's left after the shop's commission. At a 30% commission the pendant earns me $88.60. Bump the commission to 40% and it drops to $67.
• Wholesale: what's left after the wholesale discount. It uses the 50% you set, and you can change it for any one piece. For the pendant, $45.40.
• Online: your full price minus your cost to make it. For the pendant, $153.40. That's before any card or shop fees.

If a number turns red, that place is losing you money on that piece. It's much better to spot that here than after a season of sales.

Keep a hand-set price steady

If you change your markup for the whole shop, AMS re-prices every product to match. That's handy most of the time. For a piece you've priced by hand, tick Lock Markup Rate on its worksheet, and it keeps the values you gave it.

Try ideas without changing anything

Not sure about a price? Open Inventory → Pricing Calculator. It's a sandbox: add parts, set your time, and try prices as much as you like. Nothing is saved to your products.

In the video, I rebuilt the pendant there from the same parts and the same 45 minutes. Every profit number stayed red until I tried $220, and then they all turned green.

Your turn

Your time, your materials, your markup, and where you sell. Get those four right, and you'll know every price is paying you.

Try it on one of your own pieces this week. Your first month of AMS is free, with no credit card needed.