A Wedding Client Increased Their Order from 500 to 750 Candles After I Purchased Raw Materials — How Do I Calculate the Additional Wax, Fragrance, Wick and Jar Requirement?

What you planned and bought for 500

Here is the example. The couple ordered 500 favours in the Golden Aluminium Tin, filled to its published 85 g, scented with Neroli at 8%. Each tin holds 6.80 g of oil and 78.20 g of wax. You planned 5% backups (25 tins) and 6 test tins, so 531 poured, and added 3% for pour loss. Then you rounded to packs and bought.

The column that matters for a top-up is the fifth one. Every line was rounded up to packs, so you already hold a little more than 500 needed: a few grams of oil, a couple of hundred grams of wax, nine spare tins, two spare wicks. That spare is not waste. It is the first part of your top-up, already paid for.

The whole order at 750

Now recalculate the entire job at the new quantity, as if it were a fresh order, with two changes that matter. Backups are recalculated on 750: 5% of 750 rounded up is 38, not the old 25 plus 5% of 250. And the 6 test tins stay at 6, because the formula has already been tested and approved. Nothing about the wax, the oil, the tin or the wick has changed.

The last column is the need difference. It is not what you buy, because it ignores what you already hold from rounding. It is useful as a sanity check: the top-up should come out a little below it on every line.

The top-up, line by line

Across the whole job you will have spent ₹1,04,593.80 on materials for 750 favours, about ₹139.46 per delivered tin. One finished tin costs ₹45.26 of Neroli at the 1 kg rate, ₹46.84 of wax, ₹30.00 for the tin and ₹5.90 for the wick: ₹128.00 before labour, lids, labels, packaging, freight and GST. When you re-quote the couple for 750, the per-unit figure is the one to use; the increase is not cheaper to make per favour just because the tests are already paid for.

On wax, the 5 kg Chunks bag (₹2,995.00, ₹599.00 a kilo) is fractionally cheaper per kilo than the 10 kg (₹5,999.00, ₹599.90), so the top-up uses 5 kg bags. On oil, Neroli is priced flat at ₹6.66 a gram from 100 g to 1 kg, so the top-up combines sizes to land just above the need. Its 15 g is ₹7.87 a gram and its 50 g ₹6.84.

Three wrong ways to top up

None of the wrong methods is dramatic on its own. Each adds some grams of oil and some hundreds of grams of wax. After rounding to packs, the difference can be a whole extra bottle or bag. On a wedding order with a tight margin, that extra bottle is often most of the profit on the increase.

If you have already started pouring

Suppose the increase arrives after you have poured the 6 test tins and the first 300 favours. The purchase record no longer tells you what you hold, because some of it is now in tins. Instead, count or weigh what is left and compare it with what is still to be poured. Here the remaining pour is 794 − 306 = 488 tins. We assume the first 306 used exactly the planned 3% loss; in practice, weigh what is left.

The top-up comes out the same as before, and it should. Material poured into tins has moved from the "on hand" column to finished stock, and the "still needed" column has shrunk by exactly the same amount. The stock-count method has one advantage over the purchase record: it catches losses you did not plan. If the jug and bench took 5% instead of 3%, your weighed on-hand figure will be lower and your top-up correctly larger.

Keeping 750 favours identical

The arithmetic is only half of a top-up. The guests at table 70 get favours poured from the second purchase, and they should smell and look the same as table 1. Three habits help.

Same product, confirmed. Order the same Neroli listing and the same wax, and say on WhatsApp that it is a top-up for a running order. CSI does not publish lot-to-lot data, so if matching matters, ask. Blend the old and the new. A common practice is to combine what is left of the first oil with the new bottle in one closed container before pouring the rest, so the final 450 tins all come from one mix. Compare against a retained sample. Pour one tin from the new stock, cure it alongside a retained tin from the first batch, and compare them before committing the remaining pour.

If the client has only said the order might grow, the decision is different: whether to buy ahead or wait. My Client May Increase a 1,000-Candle Order by 20% at the Last Minute — Should I Buy Additional Raw Materials Now or Wait for Confirmation? works through that for a possible 20% increase on 1,000 candles. For the original four-material calculation, see the hub, 300 × 80 g wedding order. If the increase also adds a scent, give it its own line as in I Have a 500-Candle Wedding Order Split Between 200 Lavender, 200 Rose and 100 Oud — How Much of Each Fragrance Should I Buy at 8% Load?.

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