Materials, on hand, and average cost

A material is anything you buy to make with — wax, soap base, flour, findings, jars, labels. Each one carries what you have on hand and what it costs you for one unit of it.

That cost is an average. Every purchase goes into the same pot: buy ten pounds of wax at one price and ten pounds at another, and the material carries the blended cost of the twenty pounds you hold. Your recipes, your margins and your reports all read that one number.

Record a purchase with the quantity you bought and what you paid for it, and both halves move at once — more on hand, and a new average. Open a material to read its history back: every purchase, batch and order that touched it, newest first.

Each material can carry a restock line and can be archived when you stop buying it. Archiving is reversible, and nothing you costed with it is lost.

On hand can go below zero, and Batchnook says so without stopping you. It usually means a purchase you have not logged yet — log it and the number settles.

Change a material price by hand and Batchnook shows the ripple before you save: which products move, and by how much.