My Supplier Prices Include GST but Some Packaging Prices Do Not — How Should I Calculate a Consistent Raw-Material Cost Per Candle for Internal Costing?

Why a mixed-basis sheet is not slightly wrong

Start with what actually goes wrong, because the fix follows from it. Your wax, fragrance, wick and vessel come from a supplier whose prices include tax. Your labels come from a printer who quotes before tax. Your boxes come from a packaging supplier who quotes "plus taxes as applicable". You put all of them in one column and add them up. The total is now a mixture: some rows are what you paid, some rows are less than what you paid, and the sheet carries no record of which is which.

The size of the error is exactly the tax charged on the mismatched rows — no more, no less. That sounds containable until you notice three things about it. It is invisible, because every individual number on the sheet is a real number off a real document. It is unstable, because it changes whenever you switch a supplier or one of them changes how they quote. And it is directional in the worst way: an understated cost feeds a price that looks profitable and is not. Unlike a wrong wax rate, it will never show up when you compare suppliers, because it is not in the wax rate. It shows up as a margin that keeps failing to arrive.

The fix is one decision and one label. Decide which basis your internal sheet runs on — what you paid, or the amount net of tax — and write that decision at the top of the sheet in words. Then put every row on it. A cost sheet is an instrument for comparing things, and an instrument with two scales on it measures nothing.

The two bases, and how to tell which one a price is on

The inclusive basis records what left your bank for each input. It is the simplest to maintain, it reconciles against your bank statement without translation, and it is the basis most small makers should start on. The net basis records each input at its amount before tax. It is the basis a larger business usually keeps, because it separates the cost of the thing from the tax on it. Which one suits you depends on your registration and your circumstances — a question for your accountant, and genuinely not one a supplier's page should answer for you. What this page can tell you is how to build either one without guessing.

Start by reading what each supplier actually wrote. CSI store prices are inclusive of applicable taxes, as stated on the Luxury Soy Wax Chunks page, and GST invoicing is available on request through WhatsApp, so a CSI line needs no interpretation for the inclusive basis and needs the invoice for the net one. A quote that says "plus taxes as applicable" is incomplete by construction: the amount is known and the tax is not, so it belongs to neither basis until the invoice arrives. A quote that says "all inclusive" is on the inclusive basis. A quote with no wording at all is the dangerous case, and the answer is to ask, in writing, before the number enters your sheet.

Restate from the invoice, never from a rate you assume

Moving a line from one basis to the other is not a calculation you should be performing from memory. An invoice already carries the three amounts involved — what the goods came to, what tax was charged, and the total — and those are the amounts to use. Going up is an addition: the before-tax amount plus the tax shown equals the inclusive row. Going down is a subtraction: the total minus the tax shown equals the net row. Neither direction requires you to know, remember or assume a percentage, and that is the entire point.

The failure mode this avoids is specific and common. A maker remembers a rate, applies it to a tax-inclusive price to recover a before-tax amount, and gets a number that is close but not right — because the rate they remembered was for a different category of goods, or had changed, or because the invoice charged tax in more than one component. The resulting figure is wrong in a way that is impossible to trace, since it matches no document anywhere. A cost sheet should contain only amounts that appear on paper somewhere. If a row cannot be pointed at on an invoice, it does not belong in the sheet.

This page does not name a tax rate, calculate a tax amount or work out your position, and it will not tell you which basis your business should be on — those are matters for your own accountant, who knows your registration and your circumstances. CSI's part is narrower and it is stated plainly: store prices are inclusive of applicable taxes, and GST invoicing is available on request so that the breakdown is on paper when your accountant asks for it. Ask for it at the time of the order rather than at the end of the year.

The worked stack, with every line labelled

Here is the whole thing done on live CSI materials in September 2026, on the inclusive basis, with the series convention stated: a fragrance load is a percentage of wax weight, so 200 g of wax at 8% carries 16 g of oil and 216 g of fill goes into the vessel. That is the reading this page carries throughout. If your 200 g is the finished weight instead, the split is 185.19 g of wax and 14.81 g of oil and every wax and fragrance figure below moves; the basis argument does not change at all, which is the point of separating the two questions.

The vessel row is worth pausing on, because it is where the basis question usually bites a candle maker. Glass is the component most often bought locally, from a supplier who quotes before tax and sometimes in cash. If you buy the vessel from CSI it is ₹47.20 on the same basis as everything else and the row needs no thought. If you buy it from a local glass merchant, that row has to be restated from their invoice before it joins the other three, and without the vessel your CSI materials come to ₹174.22. The same logic applies to lids, to anything you buy at a wholesale market, and to the printer who does your labels.

The lines CSI cannot price for you

CSI sells wax, fragrance oil, vessels, wicks and tools, so those lines can be priced from a live store with a stated basis. Labels, boxes, inserts, ribbon, the courier that takes your finished candle to your own customer, gateway and marketplace fees, electricity and your hours are not CSI products, and no honest number for them exists on this page. They each get a row and a blank, and the blank carries a note saying which basis their invoice is on — because that is exactly the information that goes missing.

Two of those rows deserve a sentence. The vessel bought locally is the row most likely to be on the wrong basis, because glass is the one component makers habitually source outside their main supplier and market purchases are the least likely to come with paperwork. If you cannot get an invoice for something, you can still cost it — you simply record what you paid, which puts it on the inclusive basis, and you note that it can never move to the net one. Your labour is the row makers leave blank longest, and leaving it blank is a decision rather than a neutral act: a candle that costs ₹221.42 in materials and forty minutes of your evening is not a ₹221.42 candle.

Keeping the basis stable as things change

The sheet is right on the day you build it. What breaks it is ordinary business: a new printer whose quotes read differently, a vessel bought in a hurry from a different merchant, a price list reissued with new wording. None of those feels like an accounting event, which is precisely why each one quietly reopens the problem. Three habits close it for good.

Re-read the header whenever a supplier changes. One new row on the wrong basis is enough to make the total meaningless, and a new supplier is the moment it happens. Keep the invoices together, by month. A cost sheet is only as auditable as the folder behind it, and "I remember what it cost" is not a basis. Rebuild rather than edit. Once a quarter, build the sheet again from that quarter's invoices instead of amending last quarter's; the rebuild takes twenty minutes and catches every row that drifted. On CSI orders, ask for the GST invoice at the time of ordering so that the folder is complete without a hunt at the end of the year.

One last point, and it is the one that makes the discipline worth it. A correctly labelled cost is the only cost you can compare against anything — last quarter, a second supplier, a different format, a wholesale enquiry. The ₹221.42 on this page is comparable to next month's ₹221.42 because both sit on a named basis with the month attached. A cost without a basis is a number you happen to have, and it will not survive the first argument it is used in.

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