A recipe, or bill of materials (BOM), is the list of materials and quantities needed to make one product or one batch. For handmade products it might list ingredients, components, containers, labels and packaging. A recipe is what lets stock and cost follow automatically from production.
A recipe lists what a product needs
A recipe or bill of materials, often shortened to BOM, is the list of materials and quantities needed to make a product.
For a handmade product, that might include ingredients, components, containers, labels, and packaging rather than industrial parts. For example, a body butter recipe might list shea butter, oils, a preservative, a jar, a lid, a label and a box.
Recipe or BOM: is there a difference?
For makers, "recipe" is often the friendliest term. "BOM" describes the same practical idea: what you need, how much you use, and what it costs. Recipes in food, soap and skincare tend to be written per batch; BOMs in assembly work are often per unit. Either way, the recipe should say how many sellable units it produces, which is called the yield.
Recipes support consistent production
A clear recipe gives you a repeatable starting point for each batch. It helps you prepare the right materials and understand how much finished stock a batch should create.
Recipes connect stock and cost
When materials and quantities are attached to a product, the same recipe can support stock deductions and product cost estimates.
That connection is what makes a recipe more useful than a note stored separately from inventory. It lets you answer practical questions:
- How many of this product can I make with the stock I have?
- Which material is limiting the batch?
- What does one unit cost to make at today's prices?
- Which products are affected if this material runs out or gets more expensive?
The first question has a simple method, shown step by step in how many products you can make with your current materials.
What to put in a recipe
- Every material that is consumed in making one batch, with the quantity in the unit you actually weigh or count.
- Packaging that is part of the sellable unit, such as the jar, label and box.
- The yield: how many units, or how much weight, a batch produces.
- Optionally, other costs for the batch such as labor or overhead, if you want them in the cost per unit.
Separate recipes for variants that use different materials, and reuse shared components when that reflects how you work.
Keep recipes easy to update
Handmade products evolve. Packaging changes, suppliers change, and formulas are refined. A structured recipe makes those updates visible and keeps production information in one place. When you make a significant change, keep the old version in your history rather than overwriting it, so you can see what changed in cost.
Cost out a recipe before you build it in Loomenio
Want to see what a recipe would cost before setting it up? The free product cost calculator lets you list materials and quantities for one product and get a cost per unit in a couple of minutes (no signup required). Then read how to calculate product cost for the full method.
How Loomenio uses recipes
In Loomenio, each product can have an active recipe. The recipe gives the product its cost, tells Production how many units you can make from current stock, and defines what a batch deducts. Recipes are versioned, so a significant edit to an active recipe creates a new version and keeps the previous one in history. You can import recipe ingredient lines from CSV for products that already exist. See the pages for candle, soap and skincare makers.