Using Airtable to Track Your Supplies and Sales. My Organizing System
If you're starting your journey into the world of homemade cosmetics you might find yourself overwhelmed with loads of information: recipes, tips, suppliers, equipment, ingredients, prices, packaging are going to come shooting right at you from every corner. In this situation not losing your mind trying to keep track of everything you see and hear could be very challenging. That's coming from my personal experience. I can't even tell you how many notebooks and screenshots and saved links I went through before I have found my perfect system.
These are my recent notebooks. The butterfly one is mostly bout bath bombs lol
My organizing system consists of three vital parts:
1. Airtable - inventory, packaging, suppliers, products I make, pictures, notes, etc.
2. Spreadsheets - formulas broken down in % and batch size calculations.
3. Notebook - for writing quick and short notes while I'm making bath bombs, lotions, sugar scrubs, and stuff like that.
1. Airtable - is a cloud-based data base fuzed with spreadsheet functions. Here's a very useful post "What is Airtable" (not mine) about this service and how it works.
If you've never worked with my kind of database system it could be a little bit too much right up front. But just with a little bit of patience and time, everything comes together perfectly creating one place for all of your inventory, notes, label, pictures, prices, etc. And, because I know that many of you don't have much time to spend at the computer figuring out "What happens if I press that button" and " How do I create INCI Name column?" I've decided to create a simple, basic but still very useful base as a useful tool in your bath &skincare journey. I provide the access to this database without any charges and costs, just make sure to read the instructions carefully. You'll have to copy the base I share with your Workspace in order to start inserting your data.
Here we go.
STEP 1.
Open this link. If you don't have an account yet you'll have to sign up.
STEP 2
Duplicating my Database into your Workspace.
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2.
STEP 3
Once the base is copied into your work it becomes YOUR base. No one else can see it unless you share it with your coworker or family members. You can rename it, add more tables and fields, delete things you don't like. You can add formula fields and automize your calculations. The possibilities of Airtable are endless.
For example, I created Price per Gram Field in the Ingredients Table and it calculates how much 1g of a certain ingredient cost which is very handy when you start figuring out how much it cost you to make a 200g batch of bath bombs.
There are many Youtube tutorials on the Airtable channel out there which could be helpful just in case you would like to expand your knowledge on this subject.
3. Notebooks - I mainly use my notebook in my working area. When I am making products and I accidentally add too much of a certain ingredient, or I use a different bender attachment and I get a runny lotion I would always make a note and later transfer it to Airtable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=horgow_F0Dg&list=PL-fah_Rs6s4hupfWD7KpBEicFZ7Mo5_Ym
daisy-warren-airtable-instructions-
That's my simple and quite effective system of keeping everything organized. How do you keep track of your inventory and recipes? Let me know in the comments down below! See you next time!
