Cake Pricing Calculator
Most home bakers charge for ingredients and forget they work for free. This workbook costs every ingredient the way you actually buy it, adds packaging, overhead, delivery and your own hourly wage, and gives you a price that hits the margin you set.
€12 one-off payment · not on sale yet
What it does
You enter each ingredient exactly as you buy it — a 1.5 kg bag of flour, a dozen eggs, a 500 g block of butter — and the workbook converts it to a cost per gram, millilitre or unit. Recipes are then built line by line, so a cake that uses 340 g of that flour is costed at 340 g, not at a guess.
From there every quote adds the four things most bakers leave out: packaging, a fair share of your monthly overhead, delivery, and your own hourly wage. The result is a true cost, a suggested price that hits your target margin, and a blunt verdict on the price you were about to charge.
It is a spreadsheet, not an app. Nothing is uploaded, nothing expires, and every formula is visible and editable.
- Automatic kg / g / oz / lb / ml / l / fl oz / cup / tbsp / tsp conversion from one editable grams-per-unit table
- Cost per recipe and cost per serving, from 20 recipe slots
- Overhead, wage, packaging, delivery and target margin folded into one price
- Five quote slots side by side for comparing sizes or customers
- Batch multipliers for tiered cakes and large cookie orders
- Order book with due-date alerts and profit per job
- Dashboard: revenue, profit, margin health and best-sellers
- Sample data included, clearly marked, cleared in about two minutes
The pricing formula, in full
Ingredients + packaging + overhead share + delivery + (hours × your wage) = true cost. Suggested price = true cost ÷ (1 − target margin). The Instructions tab explains why that is not the same as adding a percentage on top.
Who it is for — and who it is not for
Being honest about this saves everyone a refund request.
A good fit if…
- You sell cakes, cupcakes, cookies or bakes from home and price by instinct
- You want to know whether a job actually made money after your time
- You are comfortable typing in a spreadsheet — no formula writing needed
- You want your numbers on your own machine, not in someone else’s SaaS
- You are quoting weddings or tiered cakes and keep under-charging for them
Not a good fit if…
- You need VAT returns, sales tax or bookkeeping — this prices jobs, it is not accounting software
- You want invoicing, card payments or customer emails built in
- You need stock control or ingredient re-ordering
- You want a phone app — setup on a small screen is miserable
- You have never opened a spreadsheet and would rather not start
What is inside, tab by tab
Six tabs. Two of them you set up once; the rest you use every time a job comes in.
1. Ingredients
Your master price list. Enter the pack size, the pack unit and what you paid, and the sheet works out the cost per gram, millilitre or unit. Ships with 40 sample ingredients priced in pounds — type over them with your own.
2. Recipes
A line-by-line recipe builder with 20 slots. Pick an ingredient, type the amount and the unit, and get a cost per recipe and a cost per serving. Six complete sample recipes are included.
3. Price Calculator
Five quote slots side by side. Each one takes a recipe, a batch multiplier and your hours, then adds packaging, overhead share, delivery and wage to produce a true cost, a suggested price and a price per serving. Type the price you had in mind and it grades it: losing money, below target, or on target.
4. Orders
An order book with status dropdowns and due-date alerts. Each row shows what you charged, the estimated cost, the profit and the margin, so a bad job is visible the week it happens rather than at year end.
5. Dashboard
KPI tiles for revenue, profit, average margin and the number of orders below 15% margin, plus a monthly revenue-and-profit chart and a profit-by-product chart. It updates itself from the order book.
6. Instructions
A plain-English setup guide, the pricing formula explained in one page, and a start-fresh checklist for clearing the sample data when you are ready to use your own.
About the sample data
The workbook arrives full of a fictional baker’s year: 40 ingredients, 6 recipes and 85 orders across 12 months. It is there so nothing looks empty and so you can see the mechanics working before you trust them — in the sample year her margin climbs as she starts pricing properly. Every sample row is marked, and the Instructions tab tells you which ranges to clear.
What it looks like
Screenshots of the actual workbook, sample data and all. Values are shown in pounds; the file is currency-agnostic.
Specifications
| Format | One .xlsx file |
|---|---|
| Opens in | Microsoft Excel 2010 or later, Google Sheets (File → Import → Upload), LibreOffice Calc |
| Macros | None. Formulas only, all visible and editable |
| Tabs | 6 — Ingredients, Recipes, Price Calculator, Orders, Dashboard, Instructions |
| Capacity | 20 recipe slots, 5 quote slots at a time, an order book you extend by copying the last row down |
| Sample data | 40 ingredients, 6 recipes, 85 orders across 12 months — all marked and clearable |
| Currency | Currency-agnostic. Samples are shown in £; change the cell format to yours |
| Units | g, kg, oz, lb, ml, l, fl oz, cup, tbsp, tsp and per-unit items, from one editable grams-per-unit table. The cup row ships at the liquid average of 240 g; edit it for dry ingredients, or enter those in grams |
| Delivery | Not on sale yet. When checkout opens: instant download after payment |
| Price | €12, paid once. No subscription, no account, no upsell inside the file |
Questions
Do I need Microsoft Excel?
No. It is a plain .xlsx with formulas only, so Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc all open it. Import it into Google Sheets with File → Import → Upload. Some colours, fonts and chart styling will look slightly different outside Excel, which is true of any spreadsheet.
Will it work on my phone?
You can open and read it in the Excel or Google Sheets mobile apps, and typing a price into a quote slot is fine. Setting up 40 ingredients on a phone is miserable — do the setup on a computer, then check quotes on your phone.
Can I use my own currency?
Yes. The samples are in pounds, but nothing in the maths depends on it. Select the cells and change the number format to your currency; the formulas do not care.
Does it handle VAT, sales tax or my tax return?
No. It prices jobs and tracks profit per order. It is not accounting software, it does not file anything, and it does not calculate VAT or sales tax for you. If you need those, keep using whatever your accountant asked for.
I measure in cups. Does that work?
Partly, and it is worth knowing exactly how before you buy. The Ingredients tab has one editable conversion table with a single value per unit, and the cup row ships at 240 g — the liquid average. That is right for milk and water and wrong for anything dry: a cup of flour is about 120 g, sugar 200 g, butter 227 g, cocoa 85 g. So either enter dry purchases in grams, which is the accurate route and the one we recommend, or change the cup figure in the table to match what you scoop. Those four numbers are printed next to the table in the file, and the Instructions tab says the same thing.
Are there macros or add-ons?
None. Nothing runs, nothing connects to the internet, nothing asks for permissions. That is also why it works the same in Google Sheets and LibreOffice.
How do I clear the sample data?
The Instructions tab has a start-fresh checklist that names the ranges to delete on each tab. It takes about two minutes. Keep a copy of the original file if you want the samples back later.
Do I get updates?
The download is the file as it is today. There is no subscription and no update service — once it is on your computer it is yours, and it will still open in ten years.
Something is broken. What then?
Email support@vendwright.com with what happened and which app you opened it in, and we will make it right.
How is this different from the free calculator on this site?
The free cake pricing calculator prices one cake at a time in your browser and forgets it when you close the tab. The workbook keeps your ingredient prices, your recipes, five quotes at once, an order book and a dashboard, so the second cake takes thirty seconds instead of five minutes.
Price your next cake properly
One file, one payment, no account. If it stops you under-charging on a single wedding cake it has paid for itself several times over.
€12 price when checkout opens
Checkout opens shortlyEmail support@vendwright.com to be told when this template goes on sale.
Or use the free calculator first — it is genuinely useful on its own.