What you have to write down

A small amount of writing that does three separate jobs, which is why it survives when other housekeeping does not.

Three reasons, only one of them regulatory

To explain a batch that went wrong six weeks after you made it, which is the everyday reason.

To satisfy a wholesale buyer, an insurer, or a market organizer that you are a manufacturer rather than a hobby.

And to meet obligations that attach where the product is a cosmetic, which under MoCRA include safety substantiation and adverse event records.

Exempt soap carries no cosmetic record obligation, and the first two reasons still apply in full.

The batch record

Batch number and date. Recipe version. Every material with its supplier and lot. Quantities as actually weighed rather than as planned.

Temperatures, trace, whether it gelled, mold and pour depth.

Cut date, cure location, cured weight, bars cut and bars sellable.

Anything unusual, written at the time, because that is the note you will want and never reconstruct.

The label record

Keep a copy of every label version with the dates it was in use, and which batches carried it.

Which matters here more than elsewhere, because the label is part of the category determination: if the wording changes, the category may have changed.

Keep the ingredient declaration against the recipe version it belongs to.

And keep the fragrance documentation, since a reformulation changes both the batch behavior and the declaration.

How long to keep it

Longer than the product lasts, which for soap means years rather than months.

Any specific retention period that applies to cosmetic records applies on its own terms and should be read rather than guessed.

Paper in a folder is fine. A spreadsheet is better. A photograph of a handwritten sheet, backed up, is better than nothing and is what makers often actually do.

References