A recipe tells you what a batch should cost. A run tells you what it did cost. The gap between those two numbers is where most small-batch margins quietly leak.
Take a soy-wax candle line. The recipe says a 48-unit pour needs 12 kg of soy wax, 360 ml of fragrance oil, 48 wicks, and 48 tins. With standard labour factored in, the recipe builder shows $6.41 per unit. That number is clean and repeatable. It is also almost certainly wrong for any specific batch.
What the recipe does not know
The recipe costs at the average material price. But the 12 kg you actually pulled might come from a lot that cost $11.40 / kg, not the $10.80 / kg average. Your fragrance oil might be the last 400 ml of a bottle that was $92 / L, not the $78 / L you paid for the newer stock. A run in Batchmade pins the recipe version and records the actual lots consumed, so the cost report reflects what happened, not what the formula predicted.
| Line | Recipe estimate | Run actual |
|---|---|---|
| Soy wax, 12 kg | $129.60 | $136.80 |
| Fragrance oil, 360 ml | $28.08 | $33.12 |
| Wicks, 48 units | $9.60 | $9.60 |
| Tins, 48 units | $52.80 | $52.80 |
| Labour, 3.5 h @ $25 / h | $87.50 | $87.50 |
| Unit cost (48 units) | $6.41 | $6.66 |
The pre-flight check
Before a run starts, Batchmade checks whether you have enough of every material on hand for the recipe and target quantity. Not enough soy wax? The check tells you before anything is created. That saves a trip to the shelf halfway through a pour, and it means you never start a batch that cannot finish.
The check runs against the shelf as it stands right now, not against a number in a spreadsheet that might be three deliveries out of date. Because every delivery creates lots and every run consumes from them, the on-hand total is always current. That accuracy is what makes the pre-flight check worth running.
What the cost report shows
When a run finishes, the cost report breaks down what it consumed: materials by lot, labour by hours and rate, and a unit cost for the finished goods received. That unit cost stays attached to the finished-goods lot. When you sell those candles, the profit report pulls the cost of the specific lot they came from, not a blended average across everything you have ever poured.
I used to price from my recipe card. Three months of run reports showed me my worst-selling fragrance was actually my best margin.
Averages are fine for planning. They are not fine for pricing. The run report replaces a number you assumed with a number you can trace back to the lots on the shelf, the hours at the bench, and the yield that came out the other end.