For cake makers
Cake business software for custom cake makers
Good cake business software answers two questions before you say yes to an order: what does this cake really cost me, and what should I charge? Farinu adds up ingredients, fillings, fondant, boards, boxes, your hours and your oven, suggests a price with the markup you choose, and then keeps the order, the deposit and the balance in one place until the cake is delivered and paid.
Why custom cakes are hard to price
A custom cake is never just a recipe. It is a sponge, a filling, a buttercream, maybe a ganache, a fondant cover, sugar flowers, a cake board, a box and four hours of your evening. Many cake makers price the flour, butter and eggs, guess the rest, and find out at the end of the month that the busiest weeks paid the least.
The other half of the problem is the order itself. Details arrive by message, the deposit is in a bank app, the delivery date is on a calendar and the flavour change is in a voice note. One missed detail on a wedding cake costs more than a month of any software.
Cost every layer with sub-recipes
In Farinu you write each component once as its own recipe: vanilla sponge, chocolate sponge, Swiss meringue buttercream, salted caramel, ganache. A cake recipe then uses those components as sub-recipes, so when you build a two-tier chocolate cake you pick the sponge, the filling and the cover instead of typing every ingredient again.
Packaging, boards, dowels and boxes are added as packaging lines, your decorating time as labour, oven time as a machine, and rent, electricity and insurance spread as overhead. The cost you see is the full cost, not the ingredient cost.
- Ingredients with the price you actually pay per pack
- Sub-recipes for sponges, fillings, frostings and covers
- Packaging: boards, boxes, dowels, ribbons
- Labour at the hourly rate you set for yourself
- Machines and overhead, so gas, power and rent are covered
A worked example: one 8-inch celebration cake
Here is an example with illustrative numbers. Your own prices will differ, which is exactly why the calculation matters.
With a target markup of 40%, the suggested price is the cost times 1.40: 84.00 x 1.40 = 117.60 USD, which leaves a margin of about 29% of the price. If you had charged 75 USD because the ingredients came to about 20, you would have paid to make that cake. In Farinu the target markup (or a target price) is set per cake or as a bakery default, and the suggested price follows your current costs.
| Cost line | Example amount |
|---|---|
| Ingredients: sponge, buttercream, filling | 14.20 |
| Fondant and decorations | 6.50 |
| Cake board and box | 3.80 |
| Labour: 3 hours at 18.00 | 54.00 |
| Oven time | 1.50 |
| Share of overhead | 4.00 |
| Total cost | 84.00 |
| Suggested price at 40% markup | 117.60 |
Read next: Cake pricing calculator, Cake serving chart by pan size
Custom orders, deposits and balances
Each customer has a name and an optional WhatsApp number, and a delivered order with a balance due gets a WhatsApp reminder link. An order holds the delivery date, the cakes, the price list used and the total. Record the deposit when it arrives and the order shows as deposit paid; record the balance at collection, and once the order is delivered and the payments cover the total it moves to paid.
Orders move from draft to confirmed, deposit paid, in production, ready, delivered and paid, so on a busy Friday you can see which cakes still owe money and which are ready to go. If an order is cancelled and you keep the deposit, it counts as income in your monthly profit and loss, net of any refund.
Read next: Order management for bakeries, Cake and bakery order form: a free template for home bakers
Software for cake decorators who work alone or with a helper
Many cake decorators work alone at first, then bring in a partner or a helper for the busy season. On the Team plan, Farinu has owner and helper roles: helpers can take orders, see prices and balances, and log production, but they never see costs or margins. Your pricing stays yours.
When an ingredient price rises, say butter or couverture chocolate, Farinu raises a margin alert for each cake that now sells below your target, with a suggested new price, so you can update it before a season of orders eats the difference.
Read next: An ingredient price tracker for bakers that tells you what to charge
Everything else your cake business software should do
Costing is free and already includes price lists for retail customers and for cafés that buy wholesale. The Team plan covers the rest of the week without another spreadsheet.
- A sales log and a monthly profit and loss
- A production plan and log, so you know what to bake and when
- Purchases and stock, so you know what you have before you shop
- An AI assistant that imports your recipes from a photo or a spreadsheet
- An MCP server, so you can ask Claude or ChatGPT about your own numbers
Questions
- Is Farinu free for cake makers?
- The free plan includes costing for up to 10 recipes, which is enough to cost your core sponges, fillings and best-selling cakes, and up to 50 orders a month with deposits. The Team plan removes both limits and adds sales, stock, helpers and the AI assistant.
- Can I price tiered and custom designs?
- Yes. Build each tier from sub-recipes, add decorations, boards and the extra hours as their own lines, and Farinu gives you the full cost and a suggested price for that design.
- Does it handle deposits for wedding and celebration cakes?
- Yes. Record a deposit when the customer pays it and the balance later; the order shows what is still owed, and refunds on cancelled orders are tracked too.
- I already have my recipes in a notebook or spreadsheet. Do I retype them?
- No need. On the Team plan, the AI assistant can import recipes from a photo of a page or from a spreadsheet, and you check them before they are saved.
Related pages
Know what every cake earns before you say yes
Create a free account, cost your first cakes and keep up to 50 custom orders a month with their deposits and balances. Move to Team when you need more.