Packaging costs

Packaging is the cost bakers most reliably leave out. It is not one number you can add at the end either, because the same cake needs a board and a ribbon when someone collects it and a board, a ribbon, an outer carton and a bag of void fill when it goes on a courier.

ibakepro treats packaging as a real cost line with its own arithmetic. It is on every plan.

Where packaging comes from

Boxes, boards, dowels, ribbon and cartons live in your pantry as supplies, the same as ingredients, with a cost per unit and a supplier. You group them into packaging components, and a packaging component carries variants: a 6-hole cupcake box and a 12-hole one are two variants of the same thing, each with the number of units it holds.

In the product builder's packaging step you pick the packaging a build needs. You can also add a loose pantry supply directly when it does not warrant a component.

It counts the boxes for you

This is the part that stops the cost being wrong. A packaging variant knows its capacity, and the build knows its base quantity, so the number of packages is computed rather than assumed.

Rounding is always up, because you cannot ship two thirds of a box.

When ibakepro cannot work out a capacity, or the build is tier-based and has no base quantity, it returns one package rather than inventing a multiplier. Under-counting is something you can see and fix. Silently multiplying a cost by a number nobody chose is not.

The same cake costs different amounts to collect, deliver and post

There are three fulfilment methods: pickup, delivery and dispatch. Shoppers see dispatch as shipping.

Each packaging line can be scoped to the methods it is packed for. A courier-safe outer carton applies to delivery and shipping and not to a pickup. The control sits beside the quantity stepper in the packaging row and only appears once you offer at least two methods, because scoping is meaningless with one.

A line you never scope applies to every method.

The margin figures on an order, and the analytics built on them, all read that same packaging cost, so a report cannot disagree with the order it came from.

Packaging stock comes off too

Packaging supplies deplete like any other pantry item, and the deduction is scoped by the same rule the cost uses. A pickup order does not consume delivery-only packaging. This is worth flagging if you have been running a while: once packaging starts depleting, your on-hand numbers for boxes and boards will need a stocktake before they mean anything.

Where it sits in the cost

Packaging is its own bucket. It is never folded into raw materials, because your order profit adds the two together and a packaging cost hiding inside ingredients would be counted twice.

The headline packaging figure on a product stays all-inclusive, meaning it covers every method. That is deliberate: the price ibakepro suggests for a product is built on the worst case, so a product priced for pickup can never turn out to lose money when someone asks for it posted.

Design decisions

Packing minutes stay all-inclusive in the labour bucket while the materials split by method.
Packaging is authored in the full product builder. Use it for anything that leaves in real materials.
Existing products keep their saved figures until you re-save them. Open a product and save it again to pick up new numbers. Orders already placed keep their own snapshot and are never rewritten.
Grid-generated variants carry one all-methods packaging figure, folded into the raw cost. It is counted in full, at a single figure for every method.
You choose the packaging, ibakepro counts and costs it.
This is what the materials cost you. What you charge the customer to ship is its own calculation.

Packaging feeds the same cost stack as everything else, so a price change on boxes cascades exactly the way a flour price does and flags the same price review. That is covered in what a product actually costs you to make, and the knock-on effect on what you throw away is in production planning and waste.

Packaging as a real cost line