Feature
Import recipes from a spreadsheet, a PDF or a photo
To import recipes from a spreadsheet into Farinu, open the assistant, attach the file and approve what it reads: each recipe arrives with its ingredients and quantities, and nothing is saved until you say so. The same works with a photo of a handwritten recipe card, a PDF or pasted text, so the years of work already sitting in your sheet come with you instead of being typed again.
Bring the sheet you already have
Most bakers who look at costing software already have a spreadsheet. It works, it is free, and retyping forty recipes into a new app is the last thing anyone wants to do after a day at the oven. That is why many stay in Excel even after the sheet stops keeping up with prices.
Farinu does not ask you to start over. Your recipes come in as they are, and from then on the app does what a sheet cannot do on its own: it recalculates every recipe when flour goes up, warns you when a price rise leaves a product selling below its target, and keeps prices, orders and sales in one place.
How to import recipes from a spreadsheet, step by step
The import runs inside the Farinu assistant, a chat that can read files. You stay in control at every step.
- Start an import from the assistant, which opens a new chat.
- Attach your file: an Excel or CSV sheet, a PDF, a photo of a recipe card or a notebook page, or paste the text.
- The assistant reads it and proposes the recipes it found, up to 20 at a time, with each ingredient and its quantity.
- Check the approval card. Each ingredient is marked New ingredient or Already in your ingredients, repeated ingredients can be merged in one click, and a unit that clashes with an existing ingredient is blocked until you fix it.
- Press Approve. Only then are the recipes and any new ingredients saved, and you see what each batch and each unit costs.
Read next: A bakery AI assistant inside Claude and ChatGPT
Recipe costing from a photo
Not every recipe lives in a spreadsheet. Plenty live on a stained card or in a notebook. Take a clear photo and attach it: the assistant reads the handwriting or print and turns it into the same approval card, so recipe costing from a photo works the same way as from a file.
Read the card before approving: if a word was hard to make out, correct that line first.
From Excel to recipe costing, with prices
If your sheet already has what you paid for each ingredient, include it. When a purchase line says a 1 kg bag of flour cost $1.80, the assistant records the pack size and price as that ingredient's first price, so costing is ready the moment you approve.
If your sheet has no prices, the recipes still come in. Farinu tells you how many ingredients still need a price, and you fill those in once; every recipe that uses them updates.
| Ingredient | Quantity | Pack and price in the sheet | Cost in the recipe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flour | 500 g | 1 kg for $1.80 | $0.90 |
| Butter | 250 g | 500 g for $4.50 | $2.25 |
| Sugar | 200 g | 1 kg for $1.20 | $0.24 |
| Eggs | 4 | 12 for $4.20 | $1.40 |
| Batch of 12 muffins | Whole recipe | Total and per muffin | $4.79 total, about $0.40 each |
What happens after the import
Imported recipes are ordinary Farinu recipes. You can add packaging, labour, oven time and overhead, set a target markup or price and see a suggested price, put the recipe on a retail or wholesale price list, and get a margin alert when an ingredient you buy gets more expensive.
Ingredients are shared across recipes, so the butter in your muffins and the butter in your croissants are the same ingredient with one price. That is the part that is hard to keep right in a spreadsheet with a tab per recipe.
Read next: An ingredient price tracker for bakers that tells you what to charge, Bakery price list software, one list per place you sell
Which plan includes the AI import
The AI assistant, and with it recipe import, is part of Team. On the free plan you can cost up to 10 recipes by entering them yourself, which is a good way to check that Farinu fits before moving your whole book across.
If you would rather keep working in a sheet for now, the free recipe costing template uses the same method, and it is a file you can import later.
Questions
- What files can I import recipes from?
- An Excel or CSV spreadsheet, a PDF, a photo of a recipe card or notebook page, or text you paste into the chat.
- Does my spreadsheet need a special layout?
- No. The assistant reads the recipes as you wrote them. A clear recipe name, ingredient names and quantities with units give the best result, and you check everything on the approval card before saving.
- Will it create duplicate ingredients?
- It matches ingredients you already have, marks the rest as New ingredient, lets you merge repeated ones in one click, and blocks a unit that does not match an existing ingredient until you fix it.
- Is anything saved without my approval?
- No. The assistant only proposes the recipes. Nothing is saved until you press Approve.
- Can my helpers see the costs of imported recipes?
- No. Helpers never see costs in Farinu, whether a recipe was imported or typed in.
Related pages
Bring your recipes, keep your evenings
Create a free account, see how Farinu costs a recipe, then move to Team to import the rest of your sheet in one go.