Craft Seller Startup Checklist
A printable 8-page checklist for makers, bakers, and creators getting a craft business off the ground. Organized into the three pillars every craft business has to get right: inventory setup, pricing, and the legal essentials (entity, permits, sales tax, insurance). Some items are one-time setup tasks, some are habits — none are optional if you want a business that lasts.
- Inventory setup: cataloging materials, units of measure, reorder thresholds, counting cadence
- Pricing checklist: true material cost, honest labor time, overhead allocation, marketplace and processing fees
- A simple pricing formula with retail and wholesale multipliers
- Legal & tax essentials: entity choice, DBA, EIN, business banking, licenses, sales tax permits, nexus
- Cottage food, zoning, product liability insurance, and trademark guidance
- Print it, mark it up, and work through it at your own pace
Or skip the spreadsheet entirely
A checklist on its own won't run your business. Ardent Seller is the system that tracks every spool, every batch, and every sale — and tells you exactly what each product is really costing you to make.
Inventory management
Catalog raw materials, set units of measure, capture supplier and lead time, and trigger reorder alerts at the threshold you set.
Recipe costing & pricing tiers
Roll material, labor, and overhead into a true unit cost, then apply retail and wholesale markups in one click.
Guided stocktake
Turn the monthly counting habit into a 15-minute workflow with a defensible audit trail.
Related resources
Small Business Tax Deduction Cheat Sheet
Every Schedule C line that matters to a maker — what belongs, what doesn't, and the mistakes that cost money.
Spreadsheet vs Inventory Software: The Decision Guide
When a spreadsheet is enough, when it stops working, and how to tell the difference before it costs you.