Bakery management software: production recipes, expiry dates and cakes ordered for a pickup date

A bakery is two businesses stuck together: a small workshop and a shop. You bake in the morning, fill the display case at midday, take a phone call in the afternoon for a birthday cake tomorrow, and by evening the few left over are either marked down or thrown out. Ordinary retail software only handles the second half — selling and taking money — so the owner still cannot answer the simplest question: how much flour went into this morning's batch, and what did that cream cake really earn.

Three streams of goods running side by side

Set the production recipe: how much flour per batch

In the software, anything the bakery makes itself is declared as a produced item, as opposed to goods bought for resale. Each product carries a production recipe listing its materials and quantities. When the kitchen finishes a batch and reports it with the number of finished units, the software adds the goods to sellable stock and deducts the materials exactly as the recipe says — nobody subtracts anything by hand.

• Sponge bases and whipped cream are declared as semi-finished goods: make one large batch, use it across several products, and the consumption is still counted correctly.
• If there is not enough material for the batch being reported, the software says so there and then, instead of leaving you to discover the gap at month-end stocktake.
• Only once there is a recipe is there a cost per cake. That is the figure that decides which product should go up in price and which should leave the case.

Same-day goods: lots, expiry dates and the case at closing

Almost everything a bakery buys has a date on it: butter, cream, yeast, fillings. Receiving stock by lot number with an expiry date tells you which lot to use first, and there is an option to block the sale of expired goods — a fence worth having when several people go in and out of the store. Set a minimum stock level on flour, butter and boxes so you can filter in seconds for everything that needs reordering.

At the counter, each product carries a printed barcode label; the cashier scans and is done, with no hunting for names on screen at the busiest hour. What is left at closing gets marked down or written off — as long as it is recorded, because the daily write-off figure is exactly what tells you how many fewer to bake tomorrow morning.

Cakes ordered for a pickup date

Birthday cakes, wedding cakes and corporate orders are all booked in advance. Every order needs a pickup date, a pickup time, whether the customer collects or you deliver, and a notes field for the exact wording to be piped on the cake. Put every order in one place the moment it is taken, and tomorrow morning the machine shows today's list without anyone leafing through a notebook. The mechanics are the same as for a flower shop — the article below walks through each field.

Two numbers to read at month-end

The first is margin by product: bread sells fast but earns little, cakes have fewer orders but almost never spoil — knowing that is what lets you change the mix in the case. The second is the gap between the material a recipe says should have been used and what was actually deducted. A small gap is ordinary trade waste; a large, steady one means the recipe is wrong, or something in the kitchen needs a look.

Ordersys builds retail software for small shops and chains: barcode selling at the counter, produced items with recipes, stock by lot and expiry, minimum stock levels, advance orders and margin reporting by product. A bakery still keeping a paper book can take the free 7-day trial — set up one recipe, report one batch, and you will see the material store deduct itself.

Read more: Flower shop software: booked orders by delivery date and wholesale credit for a close look at advance orders; and Mother and baby shops: managing goods by lot and expiry date if you want the detail on lot-based receiving.