Craftybase Reviews

Affordable inventory management for makers

Comments: I wish I had Craftybase when I started making in 2011 because it's daunting trying to start from scratch with so many products that contain components I make as well as common materials. Adding new components with new products would be more manageable. All my items include components I manufacture myself (laser cutting. painting) so having to enter "recipes" for all components individually is tedious. For example, I can copy a recipe for an ornament (three different components, ribbon, tag) but when I create components, I can't copy the recipe from a similar component (cardboard shape, primer paint, color paint, topcoat) and this gets really slow with all the colors I have. Recently a new client ordered $800 of obsolete items I hadn't entered into Craftybase. It took 10 hours to enter component recipes for 2 products x 4 colorways, some of which had common components and many had common materials. I assumed I'd be able to generate a pick list to total the common components & materials. Nope! Back to the spreadsheet to group common components... but I didn't try to automate the paint required, so I wasted a lot of time going to the hardware store for more primer. Probably not making minimum wage on this order.

Pros:

Designed for solo crafters or small businesses Affordable pricing Accommodates both raw materials and components I manufacture (many small business products are for retailers who buy and resell finished goods)

Cons:

Does not permit copying recipes for components, just final products Does not generate pick lists to manufacture orders Must set up for either creating batches for inventory or creating products for specific orders, and I have different product lines that fit one model or the other but can't justify dual subscriptions to set them up as separate businesses Not integrated with Xero for accounting

Enjoy using

Pros:

I like how easy it is to use and helps with product manufacturing, inventory control, sales and expenses.

Cons:

Sometimes it can be very detailed, and while that is good, at first it was something I had a hard time with.

Expensive buggy

Comments: I regret spending time on it. Don't use it as you get use to that will be harder to leave

Pros:

It promises a lot. Looks nice simple and clean

Cons:

Expensive, poor integrations, no cuctomizations at all. Simple errors not fixed tru years

Fantastic for inventory management and finding true value

Comments: Overall it has been great, just some technical difficulties that aren't intuitive to fix.

Pros:

Craftybase allows me to track manufactures, material inventory, and product inventory, and finding the true value of each. It also makes pricing suggestions for products and see how much I make each order.

Cons:

The components and auto-manufacturing feature is a bit tricky to setup. I also have some products that I sell individually AND as a set where it must be a component, but the inventory is always off since I manufacture them as one and sell them the same way. It's a major hassle trying to correct.

Didn't take long to learn, and help was easily available

Comments: So far, I am loving Craftybase. It is exactly what I was looking for for my business to help me streamline and be able to order materials more efficiently, make components and products more efficiently and be able to add expiry dates/lot #'s to track. The more I learn, the better it gets. I have to say that I am also very impressed with the customer service as each time I have needed to contact them for any questions or issues that have come up, they have always answered within the timeline that they have laid out in their response emails, and they have asked pertinent questions to help figure out how to solve my problem.

Pros:

I like how there was a checklist available to help on where to start. I have reached out to the support desk a few times and have had great help and I didn't have to wait long for someone to answer my questions. I love the quick at-a-glance dashboard that shows me my products and materials and stock levels as well as the graph that shows profit margins and expenses.

Cons:

I would really like to be able to delete products that I no longer have (discontinued) to sell instead of only being able to archive them.

Solid Product with a Moderate Learning Curve

Comments: Overall it's been good. I would recommend it to any other vendor if asked. There is absolutely some time required upfront to get it going but once that's done the automation saves me an hour hour or two each and every event we do. My time has value and even at minimum wage in my area I don't need but an event or three to have paid for the subscription each month. I've been that vendor making paper notes of sales at events then taking them home to file and process and after setting this up I wouldn't go back.Craftybase also tracking my COGS, inventory, helping with tax forms and tracking my expenses is just icing on the cake. Absolute time savers that free me up for other tasks to help grow my business. Each piece by itself doesn't sound like much of a savings but they add up and they add up faster than I thought they would. For us increasing our sales almost 100% over last year just means we buy more materials and setup a few extra manufactures to deepen our stock levels. The actual paperwork did not increase 100%. For the system auto-importing 200 sales a month is the same as 100 sales a month. The more sales we make the more time Crafybase saves us.

Pros:

Sales integration and inventory are the biggest winners. Put some thought into and setup the SKU's correctly across your channels and a majority of the paperwork is taken care of for you. That's worth hours after each event. If you have relatively static items building a recipe for manufacturing inventory is almost as easy. Once those are seeded correctly it's just a minute to record that you made X number of an item. COGS is updated, stocks are updated and expenses are tracked.

Cons:

Learning curve was moderately steep. This wasn't unexpected as my day job is in setting up production systems so I have an idea of the complexity that is needed. Expect to spend a moderate amount of time building and then probably heavily modifying what you setup that you thought was correct. You just don't know what you don't know until you start using it and realizing how it actually goes together as an entire system.Depending on your business type some shortcuts might be needed. We do jewelry sales and a variety of categories needed to be combined for our sanity. If I tracked each and every bead, gem or finding that we used we would have nearly 2,000 unique entries in the materials tab. As an example in our case some additional thought and planning had to be devised to combine all the generic ear hook styles together and build them as a trackable unit in grams. This would be repeated for the several hundred bead styles we use. Glass, gemstone, crystal, wood, 4mm, 6mm, 8mm, 10mm etc. We aren't trying to track the 10's of thousands of beads we inventory so they are categorized by price points and then inventoried and tracked by weight.These aren't quite con's just a reality of having moved into an inventory system after a year of not having a proper one and the width of material options that we had. A business that sold soap might only have a couple dozen oil options, some jars and wicks to track. This would be much easier to directly track specific items.

Craftybase keeps me on track

Comments: Craftybase is excellent and any problems I have had have been of my own creation. Keeping things up to date and adding in all of the details of purchases, recipes, manufactures, etc keeps things running great. Not entering all of those details leaves one in a bind. That's not the fault of the software!

Pros:

Excellent, reliable software Highly detailed Integrates with my Shopify store Powerful even at lower subscription level

Cons:

Sometimes not intuitive; it's not their fault that I am new to all of this.

Craftybase is our go-to Inventory management!

Comments: We have loved the overall experience, and haven't found anything even close to what Craftybase is capable of. It is an essential part of our workflow, and helping us maintain inventory, and recipes. We truly value Craftybase and would recommend to anyone that is a maker, crafter, or in need of solid inventory management.

Pros:

We love the ease of use with Craftybase. We have a ton of items that we sell indiviually as ingredients, as well as combined to make other products on our shelves. Craftybase allows us to build these "components" as well keeping track of each individual ingredient. This is by far the most accurate and easiest way we've found to keep track of inventory, and recipes.

Cons:

There is a bit of a learning curve when first starting out, but that is mostly because we had to learn the terms that Craftybase uses, and the functionality behind some of the features. There are tons of good walk-throughs in the system, as well as good examples. Customer service isn't the most reachable. If you have a question, it may take a day to hear back, and they only have email. There is no live chat, or phone support. There's no onboarding calls or dedicated support staff to really help you hit the ground running, so you'll have to spend some time really learning the system, and try and send questions that you don't need immediate answers to.

Craftybase Review

Pros:

I like being able to cost product with a recipe and for the general works of business management.

Cons:

The cost due to exchange rate. Wish I could find a product the same but not have to pay double the subscription price.

Craftybase is a seriously useful tool for makers

Pros:

What I like most about Craftybase is it calculates COGS based on all data, in real time. So if the price of your materials rises, Craftybase will automatically reflect those increases in your COGS. If you have more than a handful of products, this can really save you time and ensure you have the most accurate understanding of your COGS so that you can ensure to price your products profitably.

Cons:

This is not the quickest/easiest software to use, and maybe that's to be expected when dealing with something as complex as manufacturing handmade items that require various materials. I'm busy with a ton of different things going on, so I still haven't made time to do a full set up of everything in Craftybase yet, and it's been months (this is not an issue with the software itself).My least favorite thing about Craftybase is it's price. I was automatically upgraded to a higher subscription plan when reaching my max limit for my monthly order line item limit, when it didn't seem to me like I was making so many sales that it justified that price.

So powerful! It's worth the money.

Comments: Helps me organize my hundreds and hundreds of styles/types/colors of materials. Integrates nicely with multiple sales platforms.

Pros:

The power in this is amazing! I can search through all my materials by color or fiber content or size or date purchased, etc. It's a lifesaver for me to be able to see my materials with photos and all the data I need. The recipes/manufactures and the way it calculates COGS is super powerful. I can start typing the name of the material and enter the amount — and it calculates the actual cost of materials used based on date of manufacture. Very helpful for makers who have some supply left of an old lower price and new supply purchased at a higher price. Craftybase will average the cost to figure out what your current COGS is.

Cons:

Being a cloud software, it requires a subscription, which is a bit pricey. And there have been periods of downtime (though they communicate well about outages in the Facebook group). It takes a while to set everything up, and there is a bit of a learning curve.

The Sudsy

Comments: Good. Great help when needed

Pros:

I love the materials and recipe and product screens. I also love the reports but wish that instead of just taxes it would have gst pst for Canadian.

Cons:

I wish it would update products into Shopify. Sharing both ways

Invaluable for my small business

Pros:

Allows me to track, price and log my materials, products and sales with ease in one place. Saves me time and multiple spreadsheets abs helps me keep on track of my small business

Cons:

It takes a while to work out how best to use the system and it can be time consuming logging materials, products and manufactures

Craftybase is very helpful!

Comments: Overall we are happy with the program. It has helped us in so many ways!

Pros:

Everything works great so far. The ability to build bundles of products is helpful. Being able to assign and track lot number is great. It has really helped us track inventory and especially the actual cost to make products.

Cons:

Setting up the bundling is a bit complex plus you have to store all the inventory info in the components instead of as a product. It is also quite complicated to merge products and variations/options if you have multiple sites integrated.

Great Inventory Management for Batch Makers

Pros:

Craftybase was easy to set up and has thus far been pretty intuitive to learn. I was manually entering inventory into a spreadsheet before this, so switching over to Craftybase has saved me SO much time. The automations make inventory management for my jewelry business super easy.

Cons:

There were one or two things that I couldn’t quite grasp initially, there was also an issue with my sales channel not updating but their help team has always been able to explain or fix any problems with efficiency and kindness.

Review for Craftybase

Pros:

Lot tracking for material used and dashboard

Cons:

Can’t connect to Individual Amazon seller’s account nor Facebook and instagram shop.

Good producr

Pros:

I like recipe function as it's necessary for my gift boxing business.

Cons:

The price is a bit much for what I use it for *solely inventory management - not for COGS or anything.

Excellent Way to Keep Up with COGS, Inventory and Profit Margins

Comments: I love this program and recommend it frequently! I don't know of any other programs that let you keep track of inventory the way a crafter needs to, especially if you make some of your own components for the items you sell. It's amazing!

Pros:

I love that you can set up everything to auto-manufacture so you don't have to go in and manually do it after every sale. It's pretty much on auto-pilot which saves a TON of time. It's also great that if you have two Etsy shops that still only counts as one Sales Channel.

Cons:

I wish it didn't automatically import everything on the next import after you sign up. It would have been very helpful to just be able to import a little bit at a time to make sure everything is set up and functioning properly. There is a pretty big learning curve, but only because it is dealing with SO MUCH information. Auto manufacture is amazing, but a lot of us don't keep everything we need on hand. If I have to order something and don't have it when the auto manufacture happens, everything is calculated incorrectly. If we could set the auto-manufacture to happen x days after the sale (or x days before it ships), it would help a ton, and I wouldn't have to go back in and manually change everything. Also on the auto-manufacturing, say I run out of product stickers. And I manufacture 100 items before I buy more. It's just a small thing, so I just don't include the stickers in those 100 orders. But when I do buy more stickers, the 100 items I already made (but didn't include stickers) still count against my total. It screws up everything and I have to manually go back and change the manufacture for each sale. It would be nice if we could set it up somehow so if we're out of something, and we still manufacture the item, it doesn't count against the inventory of that item since it wasn't used. I know that sounds like a lot of stuff, but it's really just little things here and there. The program is amazing and really does a ton of work for you.

The only usable software for makers

Comments: Overall, Craftybase is the best software for my business. There is no other comparable program to track manufacturing of handmade goods in the way this software does. Is it perfect? No. But they are always making improvements based on user suggestions so I think it's only a matter of time until it does everything that I need it to. And the price? Totally reasonable for what it does.

Pros:

This software allows me to track the costs of my materials and labor to accurately price my products. It also keeps track of all my expenses, manufacturing, inventory, tax info and more. It is super detailed and useful.

Cons:

It doesn't have an option for tracking sales of services in the same way that it does for physical products. As someone who often does design and printing and other services with my products as well as workshops...there isn't a good way to designate which items are manufactured products and which are just services and don't have a cost of goods sold associated with them.

Craftybase is a good fit for soap and cosmetic micro biz owners.

Comments: Craftybase is geared toward small craft businesses, but you aren't likely to outgrow it overnight. And the customer service is some of the best I've ever experienced, so if you run into issues or limitations, they will work with you towards a fix. The dashboard gives a snapshot of orders, expenses, stock levels, and profitability. And, a series of tabs lets you navigate to specific sections intuitively to input new activity or access info. It is a cloud-based, so it’s great those who need to access inventory information away from home base, or those who find that alternatives don't work on their favorite device. While some user may miss accounting and formulating features, the granular sales and inventory tracking alone make Craftybase worth the price.

Pros:

-solid inventory tracking for raw materials, masterbatches, and finished product -COGS and tracking -pricing guidance -recipe archive -traceability tools for GMP compliance -order management -interfaces with several popular e-commerce solutions

Cons:

-lacks robust accounting features -subscription software (instead of a one-time software fee) -requires internet connection to utilize -lacks formulating features specific to soap and cosmetics makers -no banking integrations -product bundle tracking is clunky

A must have for handmade business

Comments: If you have a business that is already operational, it may take time to get up and running in the software. But Craftybase is by far the best solution for managing my inventory.

Pros:

My absolute favorite thing about the software is the ease of tracking inventory levels. Not only finished products but also supplies.

Cons:

It's not possible to change a classification/category once you create it. Inventoriable vs non-inventoriable or one product type vs another

Great Service! Very quick response time

Comments: Very good. I would recommend it to friends.

Pros:

All my Etsy information automatically filters in. I can easily keep track of my expenses and revenue and know exactly where I am for the month. I love the ability to build recipes for a product before I actually make it to see where I would need to price it to be profitable.

Cons:

Shipping cost are not allocated to the order automatically. I would love to be able to add packing materials to the cost of the order and to be able to keep track of the packing material inventory at the same time.

Couldn't work without it.

Pros:

Craftybase is really easy to use and integrates with Shopify. Their accounting program makes tax time really easy. I love that I can manage all of my material and manufacturing costs as well as sales in one platform. I really spend so much time looking at where my business is financially in craftybase that I don't know what I would do without it. I'd highly recommend the program.

Cons:

Sometimes they'll run updates without giving much notice so it'll take a bit of getting used to but is never too difficult.

Life saving platform

Comments: Overall I'm extremely happy with this platform, makes keeping track of orders and products so easy

Pros:

Best way I've found to keep track of inventory, orders and products I have for sale. Using multiple websites to sell is definitely easier with this program

Cons:

Have had a few issues that I've needed help with and contacted customer support, good response time but sometimes quicker would be nice

I don't know what I'd do with out Craftybase

Pros:

Great functionality! It has everything I need to run my handcrafted skincare business. I can sync my eCommerce channels with my inventory and keep track of raw materials and packaging materials, whole loaves of soap (product components) down to individual bars(products). Craftybase also gives me monthly reports for local sales tax purposes. Thank you for making my life easier!

Cons:

It takes a little getting used to, but once you have everything set up it runs smoothly. Searching the help section is easy and you can always reach out and ask for help.