for makers

You make it by hand. The numbers shouldn't be done by hand too.

Masto Control is inventory, recipes and production tracking for people who make things in small batches: candles, soap, cosmetics, food, jewellery. Track materials by batch and expiry, know what every piece really costs, and stop rebuilding the same spreadsheet every season.

14 days, full access, no card needed
Masto Control recipe screen showing a product bill of materials with per-unit cost
the moment it breaks

A spreadsheet works fine until it doesn't

One product, one supplier, one price: a spreadsheet is genuinely the right tool. It stops being the right tool at a specific and recognisable point.

When one material is in twenty recipes

The wax price goes up. Now twenty products cost something different, and you have to find and edit every one of them. Most people just don't, and quietly sell at last year's margins.

When batches have dates

Two deliveries of the same oil, different prices, different expiry. A spreadsheet cell holds one number. It cannot tell you which batch you are actually using, or which one is about to turn.

When you sell in more than one place

A market stall, your own shop, an Etsy listing. Different packaging, different commission, and one average price that hides which of them is actually paying you.

what you get

Made for the way a workshop actually works

Everything below is on every plan. No modules to buy, no per-material limits.

what you make

The same problem wears different clothes

Candles and soap

Wax and fragrance bought by the kilo, dosed by the gram and millilitre, spread across dozens of scents. The cost of a candle moves every time a wax delivery arrives at a new price, and with one material in twenty recipes that is twenty costs changing at once. Try your own numbers in the candle pricing calculator.

Cosmetics and skincare

Actives and preservatives with expiry dates that must not be exceeded, formulations that get adjusted, and small percentages of expensive ingredients where a costing error hides easily. Batch tracking is not paperwork here, it is the point.

Food and drink

Short shelf lives, batch numbers you may need to trace back, and packaging that is itself a material you can run out of mid-run. Oldest batch first is not an accounting preference when the ingredient has a date on it.

Jewellery and accessories

Many small components per finished piece, findings bought in bulk and used in ones and twos. Individually too fiddly to cost by hand; collectively the difference between a healthy margin and an imaginary one.

Textiles and leather

Material bought by the metre or the hide and used in offcuts, where waste is real and worth putting into the recipe rather than pretending it away.

Woodwork and homeware

Sheet material and fittings in metres and pieces, with production runs that should reserve stock before the work starts so two orders cannot promise themselves the same board.

honest limits

What this is not

Worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on it rather than after.

It does not hold the stopwatch

Labour is costed by time: you set what an hour of a job is worth, put the minutes on the product card, and the arithmetic is done for you. What the software will not do is measure the afternoon of pouring - there is no timer and no per-worker time log, so the minutes are your estimate.

It is not an ERP

No capacity scheduling, no machine routing, no shop-floor terminals, no implementation project. If you need those, you need something else and it will cost you a great deal more.

It is not a warehouse system

It handles multiple locations and transfers between them, but it is not built for pallet racking, pick paths or a distribution centre. It is sized for a workshop.

FAQ

Common questions

Is this too much software for a one-person workshop?

It is built for one to ten people. There is no implementation project and no consultant - you import your materials from Excel, write your recipes, and start recording production. Most makers are running the same afternoon they sign up.

Can it handle grams and millilitres, not just whole pieces?

Yes. Materials can be measured in grams, kilograms, millilitres, litres, millimetres, centimetres, metres or pieces. A recipe using 12.5 g of one thing and 3 pieces of another works without rounding tricks, which is the point at which most general inventory tools stop being usable for makers.

Does it track batch numbers and expiry dates?

Yes. Every material purchase forms its own batch with its own purchase date and expiry, and production consumes the oldest batch first. That matters if you make cosmetics or food and need to know which batch of an ingredient went into which batch of product.

Does it connect to Etsy?

Yes. Etsy orders come in automatically, deduct the finished item and its packaging from stock, and carry the channel commission into the margin figure so you can see what an Etsy sale actually leaves you.

Does the cost include my own time?

Yes. Set what an hour of a role or an operation costs, then put the minutes it takes on the product card - the two are multiplied out for you and carried into unit cost, channel margins and the reports, next to materials and packaging counted from what you actually paid. Studio overhead goes in as your own expense type, a fixed amount per unit or a percentage. What the software will not do is time you: there is no stopwatch and no per-worker time log, so the minutes are your estimate of the work.

I sell at markets and online. Can it handle both?

Yes. Packaging is set per sales channel, because a posted order needs a mailer and a market stall does not, and each channel carries its own commission. The same product can show a different margin depending on where it sold.

read next

Related pages

Five tools compared →

Masto, Stocksmith, Katana, inFlow and Zoho, with dated prices.

Etsy fee calculator →

Free tool: every fee on one order, and what you keep.

Pricing handmade candles →

Etsy's real cut, and the price that hits your margin.

Small batch production →

Production runs, reservations and what happens to stock.

Product costing →

What a piece really costs, and what it earns per channel.

Costing your materials →

The formula, worked through on a 180 ml candle.

Candle pricing calculator →

Free tool: cost per candle, Etsy fees, what to charge.

Etsy inventory →

What happens to stock when an Etsy order lands.

Craftybase alternative →

Craftybase is now Stocksmith. How it compares, with dated sources.

Tracking raw materials →

Batches, expiry and oldest-first consumption.

Try it on one product first

Import your materials, write one recipe, see what it really costs. 14 days, full access, no card needed.

Get started →