Costs
Part of Production studies and youth ceramics records agree on one habit: keep notes
How to track home pottery costs with a three sheet spreadsheet
A three sheet spreadsheet for home pottery costs: income, expenses and a summary, plus a year of entries and categories that reveal cost per pot.
Pricing supplies is a records problem before it is an arithmetic problem. The arithmetic is trivial once the entries exist and impossible without them.
What to take away
- Three sheets are enoughincome, expense, and a summary that subtracts one from the other.
- Year-to-year records are what let you repeat what worked.
- Track quantity alongside cost. Cost per pot needs both.
The simplest structure that works
Extension guidance on financial records for small producers describes exactly three sheets. The source is the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Its guide, Using an Excel Spreadsheet for Farm Financial Records, is built as income, expense and a profit summary.
The first sheet records deposits and all types of income. The second records expenses of all types. The third summarizes the first two and calculates profit or loss for the year.
Three-sheet record system
- Sheet 1: deposits and all income
- Sheet 2: expenses of all types
- Sheet 3: summary and profit or loss
- Pottery categories: clay, glaze, firing, kiln consumables
- Also: tools, packaging, fees, travel, sales
The guidance notes that spreadsheets can be set up in many ways for many purposes and should suit the operation. Its own layout follows the tax schedule a small producer would file.
That is the whole system. Adapt the categories to pottery and it becomes clay, glaze, firing, kiln consumables, tools, packaging, fees and travel on one side, and sales on the other. Eight expense categories is enough granularity to see a pattern and few enough that you will keep entering them.
Why the categories matter more than the totals
Guidance for small producers on recordkeeping comes from University of Georgia Cooperative Extension. It says good records show where money goes, not what it adds up to, and reveal where profits or losses occur across products.
The guidance recommends recording inputs, costs and dates for each product line, and keeping thorough labor records for everyone involved. Use year-to-year records to learn from mistakes or repeat successes.
Translated to a studio, that means logging clay by body, firing by load, and hours by project. The month you discover that firing costs more than clay is the month your decisions change.
A pottery version of the three sheets
| Sheet | Columns | One filled-in row |
|---|---|---|
| Expense | Date, category, item, quantity, cost, which batch | 12 March, clay, stoneware, 25 lb, $32, batch 4 |
| Income | Date, venue, item, price, quantity sold | 4 May, spring market, mug, $28, 6 sold |
| Summary | Cost per firing, cost per surviving pot, loss rate, margin | $8 per firing, $7.97 per surviving pot, 15% lost |
The quantity column on the expense sheet is what makes the summary possible. Twenty-five pounds of clay and the number of pots it produced are two facts that only mean something together.
Typical US ranges for the three largest lines, before shipping:
| Line | Typical range | What pushes it up |
|---|---|---|
| Stoneware clay, 25 lb bag | $25 to $45 | body, supplier, freight |
| Commercial glaze, pint | $15 to $35 | brand, finish, color |
| Firing, one electric kiln load | $5 to $20 | kiln size, load density, power rate |
Compare list prices at suppliers such as Sheffield Pottery and Seattle Pottery Supply before you fix a number. Freight on clay is heavy and can add as much per bag as the clay itself.
A shared studio membership is usually a monthly fee, often $75 to $250, covering shelf space, wheels and kiln access. Make it its own category and divide it by the pots you made that month.
What a year of entries tells you
Track which glaze you use and how many pots a bag yields at your wall thickness. Also track what proportion you lose and where, and whether firing or clay dominates spending.
That prices work, settles renting versus owning a kiln, and flags the month costs rose.
One example year of entries, rounded: 120 pots thrown, 102 survived. Clay, glaze and kiln consumables cost $1,150. Fourteen firings cost $112 in electricity. A studio membership cost $900. One market fee cost $85. Total costs of $2,247 against $3,060 of sales left $813, or $7.97 per surviving pot.
The record discipline that makes a firing repeatable, applied to money, settles what to buy next.
Common questions
Do I need accounting software?
Not at this scale. A spreadsheet with three sheets covers a home practice, and you can move to software later with the categories already defined.
How do I split a kiln's cost across pots?
Divide the purchase price over the firings you realistically expect from it across its life, then divide each firing's share by the pots that survived that firing.
Should I record my own labor?
Yes, in hours, on the expense sheet without a rate if you prefer. You can price the hours later; you cannot recover the count.
What if I never sell anything?
Keep the expense sheet anyway. It answers the only question that matters for a hobby budget, which is what the year actually cost.
