Matching Your INCI List to Your Formula Percentages Cleanly

Every notification I've reviewed that got kicked back for clarification had the same root cause: the batch sheet and the INCI declaration told two different stories. Not because the maker did anything careless, but because a batch sheet and an INCI list are built for different jobs, and translating one into the other has a few places where errors like to hide.

The batch sheet speaks in grams, the INCI list speaks in names

Your production sheet probably lists ingredients as trade names, weights, or "Phase A / Phase B" groupings, because that's how you actually measure and mix. An INCI declaration needs standardized ingredient names in descending order of concentration (with some exceptions for minor ingredients depending on the market). Turning one into the other means three separate conversions have to all be correct at once: trade name to INCI name, weight to percentage, and grouped phases to a single flat list.

Start by expanding every blend

This is where most reconciliation errors happen. If your formula includes a supplier blend such as a preservative system or an emulsifying wax, that blend is itself made of several INCI ingredients. You cannot declare "Preservative Blend XYZ" on a notification. You need its component parts.

Say you use 1% of a preservative blend that the supplier's documentation shows is 60% Phenoxyethanol and 40% Ethylhexylglycerin. The real concentrations in your finished product are:

• Phenoxyethanol: 1% x 60% = 0.6%
• Ethylhexylglycerin: 1% x 40% = 0.4%

Do this for every blend before you try to reconcile anything else. If you skip this step and declare the blend at its whole 1% under one ingredient name, your percentages won't add up and a reviewer will notice.

Build a single reconciliation table

Once every blend is expanded, lay the whole thing out in one table with four columns: trade name (if any), INCI name, weight in the batch, and percent of total batch weight. This is tedious to build the first time but it catches almost everything.

Trade/common name	INCI name	Weight (g)	% of batch
Water	Aqua	600	60.0%
Emulsifying wax NF	Cetearyl Alcohol, Ceteareth-20	40	4.0%
Shea butter	Butyrospermum Parkii Butter	50	5.0%
Vitamin E oil	Tocopherol	5	0.5%
Fragrance oil "Lavender Fields"	Parfum, Linalool, Limonene	10	1.0%

Notice the fragrance oil row. A single fragrance product almost always maps to several INCI entries once the base parfum and any declarable allergens are broken out. That's a separate expansion, similar in spirit to the blend expansion above.

Reconcile the totals before you file anything

Add up your percent column. It should land at 100%, allowing for small rounding. If it doesn't, one of a few things is usually wrong:

1. A double-count. An ingredient appears once under its trade name and again under its INCI name because it got entered twice during the conversion.
2. A dropped minor ingredient. Something small, like a chelating agent at 0.1%, got left off the batch sheet's summary view even though it's in the actual formula.
3. A phase total that doesn't match the batch total. If your batch sheet lists Phase A and Phase B separately, make sure their sum equals your total batch weight, including any water lost to evaporation that you're not supposed to count.

Order matters, not just amounts

Once your percentages reconcile, check that you've listed ingredients in descending concentration order, not in the order they appear on your production sheet. It's common for a batch sheet to list ingredients by the order you add them during mixing, which is rarely the same as descending concentration. A reviewer checking your declaration against a formula that's out of order will assume something else is wrong even if the percentages are fine.

Keep the reconciliation table, don't just keep the answer

Save that four-column table alongside your formula documentation. When you tweak the formula later, a small adjustment to one ingredient, you'll want to redo the math rather than guess at what changed. It also becomes useful if a regulator or a retail buyer asks you to substantiate a specific ingredient's concentration.

This kind of reconciliation is exactly the tedious-but-critical work Cosmetic Comply automates: it takes your ingredient list, matches each item to its INCI name and CAS number, expands supplier blends into their real components, and carries the percentages through so the numbers actually add up before anything gets filed.