Looking for a simple app to manage my home baking orders and costs

[didicakebaker]

Hi everyone,

I bake cakes from home and I’m looking for a simple app or tool to help me keep everything in one place.

I don’t run a big bakery or company, so I really don’t need a complicated ERP or accounting system. What I mainly need is something for recipes, ingredient costs, orders, and pricing.

One of my biggest problems is calculating prices for customers. Very often someone asks me for a price for one cake, then asks about another size or a different cake, and sometimes even a third option. I end up recalculating ingredients, quantities and costs manually every single time, which gets quite time-consuming.

Ideally, I’d like something where I can save my recipes and ingredient prices, change the number of servings, and have the quantities and costs recalculated automatically. It would also be great if I could keep my orders and maybe inventory in the same place instead of using several different apps or spreadsheets.

Does anyone here use something like this for a small home baking business?

I’d really appreciate any recommendations, especially something simple and made for home bakers rather than large bakeries.

 

[Bakingtime3]

Can't speak to the app issue, but have seen discussions about baking things at home to sell on other sites. One thing to remember is the laws vary based on where you live. Some places require a separate kitchen in order to meet local health/sanitation laws, but perhaps you already know that. The 'cost' of items you sell is more than just the cost of ingredients and likely all of those other costs are a significant part of the total. There is the cost of your time, packaging/delivery/shipping costs, depreciation on equipment such as mixers/ovens as well as the cost of utilities such as electricity/gas/etc. If you were to rent a separate location to make your products, it would be more obvious what those costs are. I would assume any app for this purpose would also require some factor for overhead costs. Some may be more complex/sophisticated than others.

 

[didicakebaker]

Thanks so much for the info, really useful! I already checked the local health/sanitation laws and regulations for home baking in my area, so that part's covered - what I mainly needed was a place to actually keep track of everything I'm doing. It's still just a hobby for me, but I want to take it more seriously and have a real overview of things - what stuff actually costs me, what's been ordered, what I need to buy.


By the way, I came across an app called CakeFlow Planner and I've been trying it out. So far I really like it - recipes, inventory and orders are all in one place. The biggest help has been that it does all the calculations for me, so I don't have to manually recalculate costs or adjust recipes every time someone asks for a different cake size. And the thing that used to drive me crazy - trying to remember in my head what I've got ordered and how much I need to buy - doesn't happen anymore. Everything's in one place now, it's honestly been a lifesaver.

 

[BethP]

Hi everyone,

I bake cakes from home and I’m looking for a simple app or tool to help me keep everything in one place.

I don’t run a big bakery or company, so I really don’t need a complicated ERP or accounting system. What I mainly need is something for recipes, ingredient costs, orders, and pricing.

One of my biggest problems is calculating prices for customers. Very often someone asks me for a price for one cake, then asks about another size or a different cake, and sometimes even a third option. I end up recalculating ingredients, quantities and costs manually every single time, which gets quite time-consuming.

Ideally, I’d like something where I can save my recipes and ingredient prices, change the number of servings, and have the quantities and costs recalculated automatically. It would also be great if I could keep my orders and maybe inventory in the same place instead of using several different apps or spreadsheets.

Does anyone here use something like this for a small home baking business?

I’d really appreciate any recommendations, especially something simple and made for home bakers rather than large bakeries.

 

[BethP]

HI I completely understand this! I’m a home baker too and I found the costing/pricing side one of the hardest parts, especially when changing cake sizes or quantities. I’ve actually been working on a simple recipe cost calculator to make this easier — keeping ingredient costs, quantities and pricing together without needing a complicated system. I’d be happy to share it if you’re interested

 

[didicakebaker]

thank you very much, I am very satisfied with the CakeFlow Planner, they are very easy to use and cover everything I need for work, until now I did not notice how much material I actually spend on each cake and I simply forget to include it in the price, but now I know to the cent, the best part that inventory, orders and recipes are conected