Building one formula in PerfuMate, start to finish

This is how one formula gets built in PerfuMate, in the order it actually happens at the bench: shelf first, then lines, then the numbers and charts that form as you add them, then compliance, then versions, then a weighed batch. The bench opens in the browser, free, with no account, so every step below can be followed along rather than imagined. What the category is for as a whole is covered on the software page, and what the AI does on the AI page; this one is just the work.

1. How do I stock the shelf?

Everything starts from your shelf: the set of materials you actually own, which is what formulas are composed from and what every suggestion is grounded on. You do not type materials in as blank rows. You add them from a catalog of 1,581 described materials, so each one arrives with its odour description, its olfactive families in dominance order and its impact and substantivity already filled, and a typical working dilution where one is known. If your supplier printed a different name on the bottle, the importer matches it through 4,308 supplier synonyms and finds the row anyway, and whole formulas import from PDF, CSV or pasted text. Dilutions are first-class: a 10% solution is its own bottle on the shelf, and the arithmetic downstream knows what strength it is.

2. How do I add lines to the formula?

A formula is a list of lines: a material, an amount, and which bottle it comes from on the shelf. As lines land, the totals and percentages recompute live, and the percentages are honest about dilution: a line weighed from a 10% solution contributes a tenth of the aromatic mass the same gram of neat material would. Concentration is a derived, adjustable quantity, so the alcohol is not a cell you maintain by hand: adjust the concentration and the solvent moves with it, and the same holds later when the batch scales.

3. When do the profile and the pyramid appear?

Beside the lines, the scent profile and the pyramid build themselves from the same arithmetic: every note weighted by its dilution-adjusted aromatic mass, families nested with their sub-categories. Under the profile sits a drydown slider covering the first 24 hours, and it is drawn in impact rather than in quantity: the grams in the bottle never change, so what the slider shows is how much of each material is reaching a nose at that hour, from how fast it leaves and how strong it is. The chart is absolute, so notes genuinely fade rather than being rescaled to keep the picture full. Every predicted number prints a computed confidence beside it, from 40% when nothing about your materials is measured to 95% when everything is, and it never prints 100.

4. When does the IFRA check run?

Compliance is not an export-time report, it is a live check while you type. Each line is judged against the IFRA limit at your chosen concentration, adjusted for the dilution the material is actually weighed at, and the same restricted molecule arriving from several naturals at once is summed once across all of them, which is what the constituent tables are for. The data is Category 4, fine fragrance on skin, fixed at the 51st Amendment, and indicative: a working figure to compose against, to be verified against the official standards before anything is sold. Where it comes from and how far to trust it.

5. How do I try a direction I might retreat from?

Ordinary edits change the version you are working in, so before trying a direction you might retreat from, take a snapshot. A snapshot records its parent, and the history draws as a tree you can pan: any version diffs against the one it was born from, and any version can be restored or branched again. Two deterministic tools carry the heavy lifting of iteration when you want them: the Scent Equalizer turns "more mossy, less smoky" into concrete gram moves from bottles you own, applied as a new branch, and the substitute engine finds a replacement for a material you have run out of, with an honest no-match when nothing is close. Both are described here.

6. How do I scale it and weigh it?

When a version is worth making, scale it to any batch size, exact to the milligram, off the same formula. Then bench mode takes over at the weighing station, and it is free: one material at a time in type readable at arm's length, the screen kept awake, four weighing orders to choose from, and the first overpour offers to rescale everything still to come rather than ruining the batch. Logging the batch deducts what it consumed from the stock ledger, and the batch record points at the formula version it was made from, printing supplier and lot number per line out of that ledger where you have them. A maturation timeline dates itself from the day the batch was made, shake and aerate, rest, chill and filter, with reminders on a phone as each milestone comes due.

That is the whole path, and all of it is on the free tier: an unlimited shelf and 3 formulas, every tool included, no card and no expiry. The paid version is a one-time purchase, not a subscription; what they sell is room. Open the bench and build the first one.