# What is the best software for a sourdough micro-bakery?

> A sourdough micro-bakery needs pre-orders with a cutoff, a bake-day count, collection points, a few cafe accounts and cost per loaf. How ibakepro covers all five.

A sourdough micro-bakery needs software that does five jobs: takes paid
pre-orders up to a cutoff that respects your levain schedule, adds them up
into how many of each loaf to mix on bake day, tells each customer where and
when to collect, keeps a handful of cafe accounts on their own prices, and
costs every loaf from what you paid for flour. ibakepro is bakery
management software that does all five for sourdough bakers in Australia, the
US, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Europe, from a two-bake-a-week home operation to a
bakery mixing for a dozen cafes.

## The five jobs, and what to check for each

**1. Pre-orders with a real cutoff.** Sourdough is planned two days out: the
levain is built the night before the mix, so an order placed after that point
is an order you cannot bake. The ordering page has to refuse dates inside your
lead time, skip the days you do not bake, and take payment at the time of
order, so a pre-order is a loaf already paid for.

**2. A bake-day count.** On mix day you need one number per product: 34
country loaves, 18 seeded, 12 rye. Anything that makes you add up orders from
messages, a spreadsheet and a cafe's email is where loaves go missing.

**3. Collection points and markets.** Many micro-bakeries hand most bread over
at a market stall or a fixed pickup window. Each order should carry its
collection day and instructions ("stall 14, Saturday 8 to 11am") so the
customer knows and you can tick it off on the day.

**4. A few wholesale cafes.** Cafes order differently from retail customers:
their own prices, minimums, a fixed delivery day and an invoice instead of a
card payment. Two cafes is already enough to make a second system painful.

**5. Cost per loaf.** Flour, salt, the starter you feed and throw away, the
bag, the oven time and your hours. Your price only holds when that number
moves with the flour invoice. The arithmetic is in
[how to price sourdough bread](/blog/how-to-price-sourdough-bread).

## How ibakepro covers it

- **Pre-orders.** The [storefront](/features/online-storefront) only
  offers dates that respect your lead time, blocked days and the time slots
  you run on each weekday, and an order exists only once it is paid. On Growth
  and Business.
- **Weekly releases with a cap.** A [drop](/features/limited-release-drops)
  sells a fixed number of loaves with one fixed pickup date and its own
  collection instructions, and it cannot sell loaf 41 when you can bake 40.
  Useful for a Friday bake or a special like a hot cross bun or panettone
  run. On Growth and Business.
- **The bake-day count.** Every order, from the shop, a drop or entered by
  hand, feeds the calendar and the bake sheet, so the mix list comes from the
  orders themselves. See [orders and quotes](/features/orders-and-quotes).
- **Cafe accounts.** On Business, each cafe signs in to a private
  [wholesale ordering](/features/wholesale-ordering) area with its own prices,
  minimum quantities and net terms such as net 14, and orders for its delivery
  day. The cafe places each week's order from the trade area in a minute, or
  you enter it for them.
- **Cost per loaf.** [Recipe costing](/features/recipe-costing) prices each
  loaf from the flour, salt and packaging you bought, converts units on the way
  into the recipe, and recosts every loaf when a sack price changes. Flour and
  seeds sit in [The Pantry](/features/pantry-and-stock) against upcoming
  orders, so you see a short week coming before mix day.
- **Market days.** A market can be recorded as one sale with takings, the cost
  of what you sold and the stall fee. See
  [tracking market day sales and profit](/answers/how-do-i-track-market-day-sales-and-profit).
- **Allergens.** Seeds, sesame and spelt are tracked from ingredient to loaf to
  order, and the storefront shows them as customers choose. See
  [allergen management](/features/allergen-management).

For a loaf every week, most micro-bakeries run a weekly drop that regulars order
from, with a cutoff that matches the bake.

## What it costs

Plans run from US$17 to US$59 a month (A$26 to A$89, £13 to £47), with a
14-day free trial. Pre-orders through the shop and drops start on Growth; cafe
accounts on terms are on Business. The full breakdown is in
[what does bakery software cost](/answers/what-does-bakery-software-cost).