Free spreadsheet · for candle, soap and craft sellers
Free Holiday Shipping-Deadline Countdown
This free sheet counts eleven holiday shipping deadlines backwards — from each service's published cutoff, back through transit, packing and curing — to the one date that actually governs your bench: the day the work has to be finished. Knowing the December cutoffs is the easy half; the backwards arithmetic is the part that rarely gets done, and with a cold-process soap cure running around four weeks it is the difference between a November bench and a December scramble. It opens already filled in on the 2026 season, every cutoff on an editable row carrying the year it was published, plus a one-page card you can print and pin above the workbench.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Computes a ship-by for every service — the earlier of two dates: the service's published cutoff, and the last day your own transit time still lands the parcel before your arrive-by date.
- Takes off your handling and packing days for a pack-by — the day the parcel has to be boxed, labeled and ready to hand over.
- Takes off curing and finishing for a make-by — the day that batch has to be finished. It is never the day you start making it.
- Arrives pre-filled with eleven services — USPS Ground Advantage, First-Class, Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express and Priority Mail International, UPS Ground, 3 Day Select and 2nd Day Air, FedEx Ground/Home Delivery and 2Day, plus your own local pickup or market handover day — each on an editable row carrying the season its date was published for, and each with a note saying what it is good for.
- Counts down live off today's date and gives every row a color-coded status — Ahead, Soon, This week or Passed — so opening the file in October and opening it in December tell you two different things.
- Re-dates itself from one field: type a new season year and every cutoff, the arrive-by date and the whole chain move with it, so nothing in the file expires with a past year.
- Comes as a working spreadsheet for Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice, plus a printable countdown card — one page to pin up, inside a four-page PDF that shows the method behind it — worked out for the example season. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing saved anywhere but your own copy.
Related reading
- How to Plan Your Handmade Holiday Season The whole season worked backwards, of which the carrier cutoffs are the last link.
- Holiday Production Planning: How Much Can You Actually Make? Whether the hours you have can build what you have already promised.
- Spreadsheet vs Craft Production Planner App A file you own against a subscription that bills monthly for as long as you use it.
- Small-Batch Production Planning Playbook (free, on Ardent Seller) Our sister site's free PDF on how to plan a small batch run. It teaches the method and hands you blank worksheets; this sheet computes the dates.
- Templates for makers The rest of the bench-and-market side of the catalog, paid and free.
Own it, don't rent it
Want a make-by date for every product, not one for all of them?
This free sheet gives every product you make the same cure time — one global figure, set to the longest thing on your bench. That is the honest simplification, and it is also the thing that costs you weeks: it hands a four-day-cure soy jar candle the cold-process soap's twenty-eight-day deadline, over three weeks early. The full planner gives every product its own — a 27-day spread between the soap and the body butter in the worked example — and then keeps going across eleven connected tabs. One holiday forecast per product, spread over the season on a demand curve you can edit, drives three things at once: a build-ahead schedule that turns the plan into making hours and sets them against the hours you actually have, flagging every week that asks for more than you can give; a 57-line bill of materials that explodes into quantities, adds your waste buffer, nets out what is already on the shelf and works back from each supplier's lead time to the last day you can place that order; and a market and fair calendar that prices every event down to break-even in units and nets the stock you carry there out of what is free to sell online. A promo and discount checker names the largest discount each product can survive after unit cost, channel fees, the postage you absorb and your ad spend. A post-season review closes the loop with sell-through, carry cost and next season's opening forecast. 1,665 formula cells, 831 of them reaching across tabs, plus five PDFs across 41 pages and a one-click Google Sheets copy.
A one-time purchase you own — Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice, nothing locked, no seats and no monthly bill. One season-year field re-dates the whole workbook next year.
Ardent Workshop is not affiliated with USPS, UPS or FedEx. The cutoff dates ship as the carriers' published 2025 holiday dates, on editable rows that carry the year they were published for — they are planning estimates, not guarantees, and four of them are not a single flat date (UPS Ground varies by origin and destination, FedEx Ground is published per transit band, USPS Ground Advantage closes a day earlier for Alaska, Hawaii and the territories, and Priority Mail International closes earlier again for Central and South America). Re-check every row against the carrier's own current schedule each September and correct anything that moved. Nettlecote Candle & Soap Co. is an invented brand used to illustrate the arithmetic, not a customer. This is a planning worksheet, not shipping, tax or business advice.