Soapmaker 3

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Kamahido

Paladin of Soap
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
1,062
Reaction score
639
Location
Wyoming, MI
I was just wondering what people have to say about the program Soapmaker 3. Someday I hope to be a skilled enough soap maker to sell my wares. But if this program does what it says, I figure I should get used to using it now. Thoughts?
 
Seconded. It takes some time to set up (specific gravity, suppliers etc) but each time is a little easier as your database grows.

Right from day one I found it indispensable. My recipes, made on dates and batch variations are all in one place (I'm hopeless with tracking, always losing the paper/notebooks I use) and I can see how much my cost is as I'm making a recipe.
 
I think it is good for the soap maker who has enough experience to want a good software program that inventories and keeps track of sales etc.
 
I am just setting up my SMP3 and I read that, if you will always use measurements by weight then I can just enter a SG of 1 for everything. As I always do measure by weight and not by volume, is it safe to do so? Or are there other benefits of entering the correct SG value?
 
There are definitely advantages to using SG. Although you may always use weight as your measurement, specific gravity comes in when you buy items. If you're buying three gallons of oil and using one pound in a recipe, the program needs to know the specific gravity to track both your inventory and your costs.

If you never plan on using these features it's probably not important, but this is what makes the program for me!
 
Look up the SG of all of your liquid ingredients as most suppliers sell by fluid ounce and you are using it by gram.
 
Am i missing something? If i enter all my supplies based on all prior purchases, do i then have to enter all recipes that have ever been made & all sales as well, in order to get a completely accurate inventory?

This seems so extravagant. Is there another way?
 
No, you'll want to do an audit of your stock quantities.

For example. I ordered 4L of avocado oil. I enter it as a purchase and record the price etc. In your situation you want to record that you've used 2L already (for example) without having to document every recipe.

Open your supplies window, click on the item in question (avocado in this example) and then click purchases. Now highlight the purchase and click edit. From that window you can change the amount you have in stock.

This is only really important if you use the stock tracking features of the program. It wont effect the pricing aspects as long as those are recorded properly.
 
Please excuse the change of topic- mods please tell me to start a new thread if I need to.

Can anyone tell me where I can input lye strength in SM3? I feel like I entered something in my setup? But I could be wrong, and I can't find it to make adjustments.
 
You did set up a preference in your intial Setup. to change it go Tools, Preferences, Solid Soap Tab, Adjust water amount by. In each recipe on the Lye/Water tab you can set you Lye Discount, and water can be set by discount or Lye Solution Strength.
 
You did set up a preference in your intial Setup. to change it go Tools, Preferences, Solid Soap Tab, Adjust water amount by. In each recipe on the Lye/Water tab you can set you Lye Discount, and water can be set by discount or Lye Solution Strength.

Thank you for responding. I found the water discount section, but I was wondering whether SM3 had a base assumption about the strength of the NaOH being used. Some NaOH is 90%, some is 93%. Do you know whether SM3 assumes a 100% NaOH strength (purity)? If so, I would have to adjust my superfat to a negative number in order to get the superfat level that I want. For example, if my NaOH is 90%, but SM3 assumes 100%, then I would need to use -7 superfat in order to get 3% superfat. I wonder if I am overthinking it...
 
From Soapmaker:
Solid Soap Recipes

SoapMaker calculates the water needed as 2.33 times the undiscounted lye amount. This gives a lye solution strength of 30% when you have a zero lye discount.
When you discount the lye, the water amount does not change - you can discount that independently. And you have the choice of specifying the desired water by a discount (which can be positive or negative), or by entering the desired lye solution strength. For example, if you want to maintain the 30% solution strength after discounting your lye, you can enter that solution percentage in the water area.

I couldn't find an answer to your purity question, but I can tell you that I have gone to the website and asked a question and it got answered within an hour.

I personally use a 5% Lye Discount and use a -10 water discount, which gives me a 27% Lye Solution.
 
Back
Top