Is a recipe costing spreadsheet good enough?

For a few recipes with stable prices, yes. It stops being enough when prices change often, recipes share sub-recipes, or you need to track orders and deposits alongside your costs.

Can I import my spreadsheet into Farinu?

Yes, on the Team plan. The AI assistant reads a spreadsheet or a photo of a recipe and drafts the recipes for you to review before they are saved. On the free plan you enter them by hand.

Is Excel really free?

Excel for the web is free with a Microsoft account, and Google Sheets is free with a Google account. The Excel desktop app comes with a Microsoft 365 plan.

Does Farinu replace my spreadsheet completely?

For costing, pricing, orders, sales, production and stock, yes; sales, stock and more than 50 orders a month need the Team plan. If you want to keep a sheet for other things, that is fine.

Comparison

Recipe costing spreadsheet vs app: an honest comparison

Recipe costing spreadsheet vs app comes down to this: a spreadsheet is free and fine while you sell a handful of products and update prices by hand, and an app earns its place once ingredient prices move, recipes share sub-recipes, and you need orders, deposits and margins in the same place. Below is a fair look at both, with a worked example, so you can decide which fits your bakery today.

Recipe costing spreadsheet vs app at a glance
What you need	Spreadsheet (Excel or Google Sheets)	Farinu
Cost to start	Free (Google Sheets, Excel for the web)	Free plan for up to 10 recipes
Ingredient price change	Update by hand and check every tab	Change once, every recipe recosts
Sub-recipes	Possible with careful cross-tab formulas	Built in, used across recipes
Labour, machines, overhead	Only if you build it yourself	Included in each recipe cost
Margin alerts	None unless you write rules	Alert when a price falls below your target markup
Orders and deposits	Separate sheet or notebook	Custom orders with deposits and balance (free up to 50 a month)
Helpers	See everything in the file	Helper role never sees costs (Team plan)
Importing recipes	Typed by hand	AI imports from a photo or spreadsheet (Team plan)

Last verified October 11, 2026

What a spreadsheet does well

Excel and Google Sheets are the starting point for most home bakers, and for good reason. Google Sheets is free with a Google account, and Microsoft offers a free web version of Excel with a Microsoft account, with the desktop app included in Microsoft 365 plans. You already know how to use them, and you can shape the sheet exactly the way you think.

For a baker with five to ten recipes and stable prices, a well built sheet is enough. One tab of ingredients with price per gram, one tab per recipe that multiplies grams by that price, a cell for packaging and a cell for your margin. If that is you, our free recipe costing template is a good place to start.

No cost to start and no account with a new company.
Total flexibility: any column, any formula, any layout.
Easy to share as a file or print for the kitchen wall.

Where the spreadsheet starts to break

The problems rarely show on day one. They show on the day butter goes up, or the day a customer asks for a wholesale price, or the day you realise your frosting is used in eleven recipes and lives in eleven different places.

Most sheets were built by one person, late at night, and only that person knows which cells are safe to touch. One pasted row or one broken reference and a price silently goes wrong, and nothing warns you.

Price changes have to be copied by hand, and one missed cell means a wrong price.
Sub-recipes such as a buttercream or a pastry cream are hard to link cleanly across tabs.
Labour, gas, electricity and overhead are usually left out because they are tedious to spread across recipes.
Nothing tells you when a price has fallen below your target markup.
Orders, deposits and what each customer still owes end up in a separate notebook or chat.
Sharing the sheet with a helper shows them every cost and margin.

Worked example: one price rise, two ways

Here is an example with made-up but realistic numbers. You buy butter at 4.00 USD per pound and it rises to 4.80 USD, a 20 percent increase. Butter is in 14 of your recipes, including a vanilla buttercream used in 6 cakes.

In a spreadsheet, you update the ingredient price and then check every recipe tab to confirm it picked up the new price, including the ones that copied the value instead of linking it. Then you work out, recipe by recipe, which ones fell below the price you were aiming for. If your vanilla layer cake costs 18.40 USD to make and sells for 45.00 USD, and the butter rise adds 1.10 USD, the cost becomes 19.50 USD and your margin falls from about 59 percent to about 57 percent. Fine for that cake, but a tighter product may now be under target, and you only find out if you look.

In Farinu, you record the new butter price once. Every recipe and sub-recipe that uses it is recosted, and a margin alert lists the products that now sell below your target markup, with a suggested price to get back on target. You accept or dismiss each one.

What a recipe costing app adds

Farinu is built for home and micro bakers, so it covers the jobs a costing sheet usually grows into. Costing includes ingredients, packaging, sub-recipes, labour, machines and overhead, so the number you see is the real cost of a batch, not just the flour and eggs.

Suggested prices from your target markup, and price lists for retail and wholesale.
Margin alerts when an ingredient price rises.
Customers with their WhatsApp number, and custom orders with deposits and balance payments.
A sales log and a monthly profit and loss report.
A production plan and log, plus purchases and stock.
Owner and helper roles: helpers can work on orders and production without ever seeing costs.
An AI assistant that imports your recipes from a photo or a spreadsheet, and an MCP server so you can use your data from Claude or ChatGPT (both on the Team plan).

Recipe costing spreadsheet vs app: how to decide

Stay with a spreadsheet if you have a few recipes, prices that rarely change, no helpers, and you take orders one at a time. It is free, and a good template will serve you well.

Move to an app when you notice you are spending your evenings maintaining the sheet instead of baking, when you are unsure whether your prices still cover your costs, or when orders and deposits are spread across chats and notes. The switch does not have to start from zero: on the Team plan, the Farinu assistant can read your existing spreadsheet or a photo of a handwritten recipe and turn it into costed recipes you review before saving.

What it costs to try

The free plan of Farinu includes costing for up to 10 recipes and up to 50 orders a month, with one seat, which is enough to compare its numbers with your current sheet side by side. Sales, unlimited orders, stock, helpers and the AI assistant come with the Team plan. You can keep your spreadsheet while you test, and decide with your own recipes in front of you.

Sources

Questions

Is a recipe costing spreadsheet good enough?: For a few recipes with stable prices, yes. It stops being enough when prices change often, recipes share sub-recipes, or you need to track orders and deposits alongside your costs.
Can I import my spreadsheet into Farinu?: Yes, on the Team plan. The AI assistant reads a spreadsheet or a photo of a recipe and drafts the recipes for you to review before they are saved. On the free plan you enter them by hand.
Is Excel really free?: Excel for the web is free with a Microsoft account, and Google Sheets is free with a Google account. The Excel desktop app comes with a Microsoft 365 plan.
Does Farinu replace my spreadsheet completely?: For costing, pricing, orders, sales, production and stock, yes; sales, stock and more than 50 orders a month need the Team plan. If you want to keep a sheet for other things, that is fine.

Test your sheet against Farinu

Create a free account, enter a few recipes from your spreadsheet, and compare the real cost and margin of each one.

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