How much Christmas stock can you still make?

The short answer

• "As much as you can" is a number: pours left before the last pour date, times batch size.
• Count back from the last shipping day: a six-week cure puts the last pour in early November.
• Per product: last year's units, minus what is on the shelf, rounded up to whole batches.
• Order materials first: their deadline comes before the pour.

Ask a room of soap makers how much to make for Christmas and the answer is "as much as you can". It is good advice, and it is also a number. The cure fixes the last day you can pour, the calendar fixes how many pours fit before it, and your batch size turns pours into bars. Everything else, what to make of which product and what to order, follows from that ceiling. If you are reading this in September with a six-week cure, you have about seven Sundays.

When is the last day you can pour Christmas stock?

Your last shipping day minus your cure time. For cold-process soap, Soap Queen puts the cure at "about 4 to 6 weeks" (checked 2026-09-20); take the long end unless you know your recipe better. Six weeks is 42 days. If the last day you can post a parcel and trust it to arrive is Friday 18 December, the last pour that can still be Christmas stock is 42 days earlier: Friday 6 November. A bar poured on 7 November is January stock.

The carrier decides the shipping date, not you. USPS publishes its recommended send-by dates at usps.com/holiday each autumn; when this was written (2026-09-20) that page still pointed at the homepage, so 18 December is an assumption in this example, and you should swap in the real date when it appears. A craft fair is simpler: the fair's date is the shipping date.

Nobody buys the last bar on the last day, so the second date is the one to plan around. You want the shelf full when the buying starts, and for a maker selling online in the US that is usually the weekend after Thanksgiving, which in 2026 is Friday 27 November. Subtract 42 days from that and the pour-by date is Friday 16 October. Anything poured between 16 October and 6 November arrives during the selling window rather than before it, which is useful for restocking whatever sells first.

Date	What it is	Minus 42 days
Friday 27 November	Shelf full for the first weekend	Pour by Friday 16 October
Friday 18 December	Last day to ship (your carrier's date)	Last pour Friday 6 November

Candles are the same arithmetic with a shorter number. CandleScience recommends letting soy candles "cure for at least one week and up to two weeks" (checked 2026-09-20), so a candle maker's last pour is about a month later than a soap maker's. Jewellery and food gifts have no cure, but they have a lead time on components, and the last section handles that the same way.

How many bars can you still make?

The number of pours left before your last pour date, times the bars in a batch. It is the number "as much as you can" was pointing at.

Take a maker who pours on Sundays, two batches a session, 48 bars a batch. From Sunday 20 September to Friday 6 November there are seven Sundays: 20 and 27 September, 4, 11, 18 and 25 October, and 1 November.

Six hundred and seventy-two bars is the most this maker can have on the shelf by Christmas without changing something: a third batch on some Sundays, a weekday pour, a bigger mould. Any of those raises the ceiling and each of them costs something, and it is better to decide that in September than to discover in November that the ceiling was 672.

How much should you make of each product?

Last year's units for that product, less what is already on the shelf, rounded up to whole batches. Last year's number is the only demand figure you own; a rule of thumb from another shop describes that shop's demand.

Pull the units sold per product from last year's orders, October to December. If you sold out of something, that number is a floor. Then count what is cured and on the shelf today, because that stock needs no pour.

Product	Sold last Q4	On the shelf now	To make	÷ 48, rounded up
Lavender	190	36	154	4 batches (192)
Oatmeal and honey	130	20	110	3 batches (144)
Peppermint	95	0	95	2 batches (96)
Total	415	56	359	9 batches (432)

154 ÷ 48 = 3.21, and three batches is 144 bars, ten short of last year, so lavender gets four. Rounding up puts 38 spare lavender bars on the shelf, and that is fine: cured soap keeps, and a bar that does not sell in December sells in January. Rounding down puts you ten bars short of last year's demand in the second week of December, which is the one week you cannot make it up.

Nine batches against a ceiling of fourteen. The plan fits, with five pours in hand for a wholesale order, a second fair, or the product that surprises you.

Which Sunday does each batch go in?

Biggest product first, earliest Sunday first, and write the sellable date next to every pour. Pour date plus 42 days is the day that batch can be sold, and the list of those dates is your Christmas stock arriving.

Sunday	Batches	Sellable from
20 September	Lavender, lavender	1 November
27 September	Lavender, lavender	8 November
4 October	Oatmeal, oatmeal	15 November
11 October	Oatmeal, peppermint	22 November
18 October	Peppermint	29 November

Eight of the nine batches are cured by 22 November. The ninth, the second peppermint batch, is sellable on 29 November, two days after the shelf was meant to be full. Seen in September, that is a choice: pour three batches on 11 October, or accept that half the peppermint arrives on the Sunday after the first weekend. The cure does not move, so the pour has to.

What do you need to order, and by when?

Every material the nine batches consume, less what is on the shelf, and it has to arrive before the first pour that needs it.

The recipe per 48-bar batch uses 4 lb of olive oil, 2.5 lb of coconut oil and 1.1 lb of lye, and each scent takes 6 oz of its fragrance oil. Multiply by the nine batches (two of them peppermint), subtract the shelf, and round up to what the supplier sells: 7 lb pails of oil, 2 lb bags of lye, 16 oz bottles of fragrance.

Material	Needed	On hand	Short	Order
Olive oil	36 lb	16 lb	20 lb	3 pails, 21 lb
Coconut oil	22.5 lb	10 lb	12.5 lb	2 pails, 14 lb
Lye	9.9 lb	4.4 lb	5.5 lb	3 bags, 6 lb
Peppermint fragrance	12 oz	0	12 oz	1 bottle, 16 oz

Lavender and oatmeal fragrance are covered from the shelf and do not appear.

Now the timing. Sixteen pounds of olive oil covers exactly four batches, and so do 10 lb of coconut oil and 4.4 lb of lye. Four batches is the 20 and 27 September pours. The first pour on 4 October needs oil from the new order. If the supplier takes ten days from order to doorstep, an order placed on 20 September lands on 30 September, four days clear. An order placed on 27 September lands on 7 October, the 4 October pour slips a week, its sellable date moves from 15 to 22 November, and every batch behind it moves with it.

The materials have their own deadline, and it comes before the pour. Ordering on the day you plan is the cheap way to meet it. A bigger order also spreads the shipping charge over more bars, which is its own small saving.

What if this is your first Christmas?

Then the ceiling is your number. Without last year's units there is nothing to subtract from, and "as much as you can" stops being advice and becomes the plan: fourteen pours, 672 bars, split across products by whatever you already know sells in the shop. Unsold cured soap is January stock, so the cost of making too much is cash tied up on a shelf for a few weeks, while the cost of making too little is a sale that happens somewhere else.

In Trackost the two halves of this sit on the same screen. A recipe carries its cure days, so when you schedule a batch for a Sunday the run shows the date it becomes sellable, and the production calendar lists the pours you have planned with those dates beside them. Last year's units per product come from the product report over October to December. For the materials, the manufacture picklist takes one recipe at the quantity you plan to make and lists what it needs against what is on hand, line by line, with the short lines flagged; run it once per product and the shortfalls are your order. The low-stock list then watches the threshold you set on each material, netting out anything already on order.

Questions

When should I start making Christmas soap?

Count 42 days back from the last day you can ship and that is your last pour; count 42 days back from the day you want the shelf full and that is your pour-by date. With a six-week cure and a shelf-full date of 27 November, pour by 16 October, which means starting in September if you need more than a few batches.

How much soap should I bring to a craft fair?

Everything you have cured that can be sold there, up to what fits on the table and in the car. The question to answer beforehand is how much to make, and for a fair the fair's date is your shipping date: pour by that date minus your cure.

Does this work for candles?

Yes, with a shorter cure. Soy candles are usually cured for one to two weeks, so a candle maker's last pour is about a month later than a soap maker's. The rest is identical: pours left times candles per pour, last year's units less what is on the shelf, and the wax order before the first pour that needs it.

What do I do with the stock that does not sell?

Sell it in January. Cured soap keeps, and rounding up to whole batches always leaves a few dozen spare bars. The extra is cash on a shelf for a few weeks, which is cheaper than the sale you could not make.