How Do I Record Manufacturing Dates, Fragrance Oil Lots and Finished Candle Batch Numbers to Investigate Ageing Complaints?

An ageing complaint is a question about time

When a customer says a candle smells weak, flat or slightly off, three different stories can sit behind the same words. The candle may simply be old. The oil lot used for that batch may differ from the lot you approved. Or the candle may have spent weeks somewhere hot, under a metal roof or in a courier van. Each story needs a different fix, and only records separate them. Batch-code systems built for traceability usually answer one question: which raw materials went in. For ageing complaints you also need to answer a second: how long, and where, has this candle been since it was poured.

So the record you keep has two halves. The material half links a finished candle to the exact wax lot, fragrance oil lot, wick, jar and dye used. The time half records the pour date, the cure release date, where the batch was stored, when it was dispatched and when the customer received it. A code on the jar is the key that opens both halves.

A batch code you can read in two seconds

Keep the code short, printed on the base label of every candle and on the carton. One workable pattern is formula code, pour date and a batch letter: LAV8-261008-A means Lavender formula version 8, poured on 8 October 2026, first batch of the day. The formula code points to a written formulation (oil, load, wax, wick, jar, lid). The date gives you age at a glance, so when a complaint arrives you know immediately whether you are looking at a three-week-old candle or a five-month-old one.

Do not put the oil lot inside the visible code. Supplier lot numbers are long and change often, and a customer does not need them. Keep them on the batch sheet, which the short code points to. If you ever change oil lot mid-day, start a new batch letter rather than mixing two lots under one code.

The fields that actually solve ageing complaints

A spreadsheet is enough. One row per batch, one column per field, and a second tab for the storage log with a dated reading per rack each week. What matters is that the row is filled in on the day of pouring by the person who poured, not reconstructed at the end of the month from bills and memory.

Two fields carry most of the weight in an ageing case: the oil lot and the storage log. The oil lot is what lets you say whether two candles that smell different were even made from the same material. The storage log is what lets you say whether a batch spent a summer week at a shelf temperature you would never have chosen. Neither can be reconstructed afterwards from memory.

Worked example: one batch, end to end

Say batch LAV8-261008-A uses a full 10 kg bag of CSI 464. At 200 g per candle and 8% fragrance load by total weight, each candle takes 184 g of wax and 16 g of oil. That gives 10,000 ÷ 184 = 54 candles (54.3, rounded down). The oil needed is 54 × 16 = 864 g. At the 1 kg Lavender price, 864 g × ₹5.221 = ₹4,510.94 of oil, and the wax actually used is 9,936 g × ₹0.5074 = ₹5,041.53, both excluding packaging, labels, labour and GST.

Now suppose a customer writes in February about a candle with that code. You know the candle was poured four months earlier. Your batch sheet shows which oil lot it used, that the oil was opened six days before pouring, and that the batch sat on a mid-shelf rack whose weekly maximum readings were within your normal range. You pull one of the two retained candles from the same batch and a fresh candle made from the retained oil sample, and assess all three side by side. In ten minutes you have moved from opinion to evidence on a batch holding ₹4,510.94 + ₹5,041.53 = ₹9,552.47 of wax and oil alone.

Tracing a complaint in five steps

Tools, documents and what to buy

The system needs very little equipment: a scale you trust for every oil weighing, a separate thermometer because melter displays can deviate, sealed jars for retained candles and small clean, well-sealed containers for retained oil. CSI sells the Candle Making Weighing Scale at ₹354.00 and the Pen Thermometer at ₹354.00; capacity, resolution, range and accuracy are not published on those pages, so check them against something you trust before relying on them.

For documents, ask CSI on WhatsApp (+91 7397976926) for the IFRA certificate and MSDS for each oil you use, and for any storage or shelf-life guidance for that oil and lot. The product pages publish none, so file the written reply with the lot on your batch sheet. And if your records show that a fragrance's complaints cluster in older batches, the honest response is often to buy that oil in smaller, more frequent quantities rather than a larger order at a better per-gram price.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page answers one fragrance-ageing decision; these cover the neighbouring questions:

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