Your time is a cost layer.
Forty minutes at the bench is not free. Put an hourly number on it.
Labor on one candle
$14.67
Forty minutes at $22 an hour, before wax, wick, or a label. That is the line most makers still treat as a favor to the SKU.
Journal · Labor
Forty minutes at the bench is not a gift to the candle. If you would not do that hour for a stranger for free, it is not free for the SKU.
Makers skip this line because it does not show up on a receipt. Wax has an invoice. Your Tuesday does not. The unit still used the Tuesday. The story usually goes: it only takes ten minutes once I am in the rhythm. The rhythm started at 7:40, when you turned the pot on, and it did not end when the wax hit the tin.
Cost the day you actually live, not the middle three minutes of the pour. Below is a Tuesday that looks ordinary. It is also a labor sheet if you let it be one.
Tuesday, written as a clock
7:40 a.m.
Heat and setup
Cover on the table, pitcher out, scale zeroed, twelve tins in a row, wicks clipped. Eighteen minutes before anything fragrant happens.
8:05 a.m.
Melt
Two pours of wax, thermometer, waiting on 185. Waiting is still you in the room. You cannot list that hour as free because you answered a text in it.
8:40 a.m.
Fragrance, pour, wick check
The part people mean when they say ten minutes. It is closer to twenty-five when you count the stir, the weigh, and the tin that needed a redo.
9:20 a.m.
The wait you pretend is not work
Cure on the rack. You cleaned the pitcher, wiped the scale, and recut six wicks. Cleanup is the pour. It is not a personality trait.
11:10 a.m.
Trim, label, photograph
Twelve tins. Labels crooked on two. Phone shots against the window because the listing needs a new angle. That is still the SKU.
12:35 p.m.
Pack the three that sold overnight
Mailers, tape, the note, the walk to the mailbox. If you cost only the pour, this hour vanished. The buyer still got a box.
Add the minutes that were honestly on those twelve tins. Not every minute of being a person. The minutes the SKU required.
Fourteen minutes of batch labor on every tin, plus eight minutes when one actually ships. At $22 an hour that is $5.13 in the batch and $2.93 in the mailer, and that is before you count the listing hour you did last Thursday. The $14.67 at the top of this page is a fuller process: a maker who also cuts labels, weighs fragrance by hand, and does not have a helper. Use your minutes. Do not use a fantasy ten.
Count these
- Heat, measure, pour, wait in the room
- Wick, trim, label, stamp
- Wash, scrape, restock lids
- Photograph and write the listing
- Pack, tape, drop
Do not pretend these are zero
- The redo tin
- The customer message about burn time
- Inventory counts before a market
- Driving to pick up jars
- The hour you recosted nothing and just made more
Pick a rate you would pay a neighbor
Write an hourly number you would actually pay someone to do the same work. Not a celebrity potter rate. Not zero because you like the smell. Twenty-two dollars an hour is not a fantasy wage in most of the country for skilled, messy, timed work. If your area is lower, write lower. If you already pay a helper $18, you already have the number. Use it on your own hours too.
The only formula
Minutes on the unit ÷ 60 × hourly rate = labor on the unit.
40 ÷ 60 × $22 = $14.67
People want a more spiritual version. There is not one. If the process changes, recost the minutes. If you bought a pour pot that cuts melt time in half, the labor line should fall. If you added hand-dipping and a wax seal, the labor line should rise. The workbook does not care which story you prefer. It cares that the minutes are written next to the wax.
Cleanup is the line makers fight. Washing bowls, scraping the pitcher, restocking lids. Those minutes belong on the batch, then on the unit. If you skip them, you are costing a studio that only exists in the middle of the pour. Real studios have a sink. The sink is on the SKU.
Listing and customer messages are fuzzier. A reasonable method: when you build a new listing, split that hour across the first batch that listing will sell. When messages are a daily drip, add a small monthly minutes number and divide by units shipped that month. Do not let fuzz become zero. Zero is how shops look busy and still cannot pay the maker.
What labor does to the sticker
Once labor is on the page, a lot of $14 candles stop making sense. That is the point. You are not required to keep a SKU that only works if you donate the Tuesday. You can raise the price. You can simplify the finish. You can sell fewer, slower objects at a number that holds. You can keep a loss-leader only if you know it is a loss and another SKU carries it. What you cannot do is call $3.80 the cost and $14.67 a vibe.
The workbook has a labor line. Use it once per SKU. Use it again when the process changes, not when you feel busy. Pair it with the materials note if you still think the jar is the whole story.
All journal Materials is not the unit The booth fee belongs in the bar
Put the minutes in the workbook.
