Using Bench Price

Bench Price prices handmade products from your real costs. You enter your materials as you buy them, build each product from them, add your time and overhead, and the app shows the cost per item, the lowest price that reaches your target margin and what you keep after fees. It works from the numbers you enter. It does not manage stock, orders, invoices, tax or accounting, and it does not connect to any shop account. Check fees, shipping and taxes yourself.

Materials

Open the Materials tab and choose Add material. Enter the name, the pack size, the unit and the pack price you paid, with the date. The app works out the cost of one unit and converts between units of the same kind, such as pounds and ounces, kilograms and grams, or yards and meters.

Products

Open the Products tab or the Price book and choose Add product. Add a line for each material with the amount a batch uses, then enter what a batch makes, the time a batch takes, your hourly rate and the overhead for each item. The hourly rate starts from the default in the More tab, and each product keeps its own. Choose a fee profile, a target margin and a price ending (.99, .95, .50, .00 or none). The product shows its cost, the lowest price that reaches your target margin and the margin at the price you set.

• Cost: what one item costs to make (materials, time and overhead), before fees.
• Fees: your own fee percent and fixed fee, worked out in whole cents each time you sell.
• Keep: the price minus the fees minus the cost.
• Margin: what you keep as a share of the price, after fees.
• Lowest price: the smallest whole-cent price whose margin reaches your target.

If your fee percent and your target margin add up to a hundred percent or more, no price can reach that margin, so the app says so and shows no price.

Fee profiles and currency

Open the More tab to set the default hourly rate and your fee profiles. The profiles that come with the app are examples only: the app does not know what any seller charges, so enter your own fee percent and fixed fee. Amounts use the currency of your phone’s region where the app supports it, and US dollars elsewhere. There is one currency for the whole book and no exchange rates.

When a supplier raises a price

Open the material and save a new pack price. If it changes the cost of products, the price-rise check opens. It lists first the products that are now below their target margin, each with the price that restores it. Choose Apply to set those prices in one step, or Keep current prices. The new cost is recorded either way. Old pack prices are never overwritten: each material keeps a dated price history, and you can enter a past price with its date. Each product’s Price and cost history shows what changed and when.

Included from the start, and Bench Price Pro

Included from the start: the materials library, up to three products, the price-rise check, price history, and backup and restore. Bench Price Pro is a one-time purchase handled by Google Play that adds unlimited products, a wholesale price for each product beside the retail price, CSV export and a price sheet. There is no subscription and no ads. Everything included from the start keeps working with or without Pro. When you try something that Pro adds, the app shows what it adds, and what you entered stays as it is until you choose.

CSV export and the price sheet

With Pro, the More tab has Materials CSV and Products CSV, which save one file each for a spreadsheet, and Price sheet, which saves a picture of your product names and retail prices for a market stall or a shop, with no costs or margins. When a product has a wholesale price, Include wholesale prices adds the wholesale prices to the sheet. The app asks where to save each file and writes it only there.

Restore a purchase

Open the More tab, choose See Bench Price Pro, and then Already bought? Restore purchase. Use the Google Play account that bought Pro and keep the device online while it checks. If checkout was interrupted, use Restore purchase or Check again before you try to buy again, and do not start another purchase while one is pending.

Back up and restore

Open the More tab, find Backup and choose Save a backup file. The app asks where to save it; it is written only there. A backup holds your materials, products, prices, history and settings, and never your purchase status. To restore, choose Restore from a file and pick the backup. After you confirm, it replaces what is on this phone, so make a new backup first if you want to keep what is there. A backup is a single JSON file from Bench Price; other files are refused.

Delete all data

In the More tab, Delete all data removes every material, product, price and history entry and your settings from this phone. A saved backup file is not touched, and your Pro purchase stays. The privacy policy has the details.

Storage trouble

If a save fails, what you were entering stays on screen so you can try again. Check the free storage on the device. Do not clear app data to fix a save problem: that removes your data. Save a backup first if you can.

Contact

Email pierdo.dev@gmail.com with the app version (shown at the bottom of the More tab), your Android version, what happened and the steps to reproduce it. Only send a backup or an export if you choose to share it to explain the issue. Never send passwords or payment-card details.