After Completing a 5,000-Candle Order, How Do I Compare Estimated Versus Actual Raw-Material Consumption to Improve the Next Quotation?

The order you are reviewing, as numbers

The title gives one figure, 5,000 candles, and that is your number. Everything else here is a labelled worked example, chosen so the review has something real to compare: 160 g of finished mix per candle at 8% on the total-weight basis (12.8 g oil + 147.2 g wax) in the clear 200ml Salsa jar, with the 160 g fill set by a weighed test pour (the page states "The 200ml capacity" and no fill weight; a 200 ml jar holds well under 200 g of wax). Natural Soy Pearl Wax, 3,000 candles in Eucalyptus Spearmint and 2,000 in Bergamot Amber, one Eco C2 wick, one Corrugated Box each.

The estimate is what your quote assumed, before the first melt. Most makers can reconstruct it from the purchase sheet; if you cannot, that is the first finding of the review. The worked quote assumed 20 retained candles (10 per scent), 3% rejects, 1% of the mix left as heel in the melter and pitchers, 2% jar breakage and wick defects, a 1% box spare, 5.5 hands-on minutes per pour and 26 working days from advance to dispatch.

Two rows already show judgement. The Bergamot Amber was bought as 500 g packs because its 1 kg costs one rupee more than two 500 g, and the wax was bought to the kilo: Pearl is ₹424.80 a kilo from 5 kg to 50 kg, so the only premium was ₹25.20 on each of the four 1 kg packs. The totals exclude labour, freight, GST and your labels. The box fit is worth a sample check too: the box page says 11 x 11 x 8 cm without saying inside or outside, and the jar page states no height.

Reconcile first: what you bought against what is left

The per-batch log (if you kept one, as in the post on tracking consumption after every batch) tells you where things went during the run. The review needs one more number the log cannot give: the closing count. Consumption = opening stock + everything you bought for the order, including top-ups − what is physically left. If the two disagree, the count wins, and the gap is a finding in itself: unlogged spills, an unrecorded remelt, or stock borrowed for website orders.

Five top-ups for ₹16,653.80. Only one cost more per unit than the original packs: the Eucalyptus Spearmint 500 g at ₹3.30 a gram against ₹3.07 in the 1 kg bottles; the wax, Bergamot Amber, jars and wicks are flat at the pack sizes used. What the top-ups really cost was five interruptions, five waits for dispatch, and five days on which a missing line could have stopped the pouring table. That is the first lesson of the review, before any percentage: an estimate that is thin on every line touched by rejects will run out on all of them at once, late in the order.

The review table, line by line

Read it from the bottom up. The rejects line is the root: 230 against 150 planned. Every reject consumes a jar, a wick, 147.2 g of wax and 12.8 g of oil, so a reject overrun shows up on every material line at once, which is exactly the pattern in the table. The two piece lines that were favourable on their own causes (breakage 61 against 100 planned, wick defects 38 against 100) still went over, because the extra rejects ate the spare.

Where the wax went

A material line needs its own small breakdown before you change its standard, because the cause decides the fix. The worked wax overrun of 23.41 kg splits like this:

An unexplained remainder under half a kilo on nearly 800 kg is a reconciliation that worked. If yours is several kilos, stop and find it before you change any standard; the investigation list (overfills, top-up pours, heels, rejects, spills, test pours, scale error) is in the post on wax consumption above the BOM. Whether a 3% overrun is reasonable for your process is the 4% variance post, and splitting a variance into price and usage, which matters when your supplier changes prices mid-order, is the post on separate material variances. In the worked order, prices did not change during the run, so every rupee in the table is usage.

Labour and lead time: the lines most reviews skip

The worked quote assumed 5.5 hands-on minutes per pour; the order ran at 6.3. That gap is 551.25 hours against 473.92, ₹9,666.67 at the worked ₹125.00 an hour, which is your own rate to substitute. Per good candle, labour went from ₹11.85 to ₹13.78, and minutes from 5.69 to 6.62 once rejects are spread over the candles you could sell. That is about half the net material overrun of ₹18,744.83, and unlike the materials it never appears on a supplier invoice.

Time is the second invisible line. 30 working days against 26: two days lost to reject remakes and two to waiting for top-ups. The order still went out on time because the client's date was 32 working days away; the internal buffer absorbed it. On the next quote, the honest lead time is the one you achieved plus a buffer, not the one you hoped for, and the cure and burn-check days stay calendar time however many people you add (both oil pages state a soy cure of 48-72 hours; many makers test later than that).

This is the settling number of the review: ₹5.68 per good candle. If your quote carried a margin above that, the order still made money, just less than planned. If it did not, the order lost money while every individual line looked "only a few per cent out". Either way, the repeat cannot be quoted on the old cost.

Update the standard BOM

Your standard BOM says how much of each material one good candle consumes, losses included. The review gives you that directly: consumed ÷ good candles delivered. The decision rule we use (practical judgement): change a material standard when the actual differs from the estimate by more than 1%; change the reject, labour or lead-time assumption when it differs by more than 10%. Below those bands, the difference is noise from one order.

The reject line is where judgement starts. In the worked order, most extra rejects came from wet spots in week 1 (cold jars on a cool morning, fixed by pre-warming) and one overheated melt. If those causes are fixed, carrying the full 4.6% into every future BOM over-buys and over-prices; if they recur, leaving it at 3% repeats the five top-ups. Separating one-off causes from systematic loss, setting a standard loss % per material and applying it with the divide-by-(1 − loss) method is the post on incorporating a 5% variance into future BOMs; this review gives that post its inputs.

Write the new standard on one page and date it: per good candle, wax 158.41 g, Eucalyptus Spearmint 13.82 g, Bergamot Amber 13.71 g, jars 1.0622, wicks 1.0576, boxes 1.0064, 6.62 hands-on minutes, plus the formula itself (wax, oil, load, wick, jar, pour temperature from the wax page or your own approved figure). That page is what the next purchase sheet multiplies. Keep the old one; after three orders you will see whether the numbers settle or drift. If you plan to change the wax or oil supplier to recover the margin, that is a formula change with its own testing, covered in the post on what to retest after a wax-supplier change.

Update the quote template

The quote template should pull from the standard, not hold its own numbers. When the standard changes, the template changes with it. For a 5,000-candle repeat in the same formula, the worked figures move like this:

Three template changes protect the next order commercially, and none of them is a price rise in itself. First, a validity date, because your supplier's prices can move; CSI's did not change between 1 and 7 October 2026, but we cannot promise they will not. Second, a line saying the quote covers this formula, this jar and this pack: a change of scent, colour or jar is re-quoted, because it means new testing and calendar time. Third, an advance covering any client-specific materials before you buy them. These are practical business judgement, not legal advice; put them in a written order the client signs or emails back.

Then the lead time. The worked order took 30 working days; the next quote offers 33. If the client needs less, the honest options are a smaller first delivery, a second pair of hands at the pouring table, or a later date, not a shorter cure. If the repeat changes nothing in the formula, it needs no new development, but confirm the jar batch and oil lots before you commit the date: lots can differ, and a new lot gets a side-by-side check before it goes into an order (the lot-check post).

Argued against our own interest: the review may tell you to quote higher, and a higher quote can lose the repeat. That is still the right answer. A repeat at the old price would have cost ₹28,411.49 of margin again; you are better off losing an order you would have run at a loss than buying another 769 kg of wax for it.

The materials behind the review

The worked order's materials, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026. For each one, the card shows what the review changed and where pack size does or does not save money.

The honest summary: at CSI's prices, most top-ups cost no more per unit than the original packs: Pearl is flat from 5 kg, Bergamot Amber is flat from 500 g, the jar is flat from 50 and the wick is flat at every pack. Eucalyptus Spearmint is the exception, cheaper per gram in 1 kg bottles. So the review is not about buying bigger packs; it is about buying the right quantity once, and quoting from what the order really took.

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