Smart Packing List

How much inventory to bring to a craft fair or farmers market

Know before you load the car.

Running out of your best seller by noon and hauling home boxes of what didn't move are the same problem: guessing. TentTally suggests how many of each item to pack, based on what actually sold at that market.

Get Started Free

How it works

  1. Pick the market

    Suggestions are per market, because a Saturday farmers market and a holiday craft fair don't sell the same things. With load history, choose how many past market days to look back over.

  2. See suggested quantities

    Each product gets a suggested count from what it has sold at that market, rounded up to your batch size. A buffer slider adds headroom — 20% by default.

  3. Check it against your stock

    Next to each suggestion: how many you've already made and how many you still need to make before market day.

  4. Take it to the load sheet

    Use for Event opens the load sheet for an upcoming market day, where you log what you actually packed.

TentTally Smart Packing Estimator: suggested quantities per product for the next market, with sell-through, average sold, trend, confidence, stock already made, and how many still need making.

What goes into a suggestion

  • Starts working after your first market there — at first, a suggestion is the average of what sold at that market.
  • Gets sharper with Load Tracking: log what you packed and what came home, convert the load to sales, and it adds sell-through — what share of what you brought actually sold.
  • With that load history, it also weights your latest markets more heavily than older ones and shows whether each product is trending up or down.
  • And it flags seasonality — for example, "Sales in September tend to run higher than your overall average."
  • Shows a confidence level for each product: Low after one market there, Medium after three, High after five.

Questions

What if it's my first market?
There's nothing to go on yet, so you won't see suggestions for a market until you've sold there once — bring what you'd be comfortable carrying home. From your first market on, TentTally has real numbers, and its confidence grows with each market you add.
Why is a suggestion a round number like 24?
Suggestions round up to the product's batch size. If you pour candles in batches of 12, TentTally suggests 12 or 24, not 17 — the number you'd actually make.
What's the buffer slider for?
It adds headroom on top of the suggestion so a busier-than-usual day doesn't sell you out. It starts at 20%; slide it down for a market where you'd rather bring home less.
Does it know what I've already made?
Yes. If you log production batches in TentTally, the packing list shows your current stock next to each suggestion and how many more you need to make.

Try it at your next market.

Set up takes minutes, and it all runs in your phone's browser.

Get Started Free