Getting started6 min read
Do I need a license to sell cakes from home?
How to find the real answer for your own address, in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand, and the five questions that decide what you are allowed to sell and where.
Learn
Everything we have written down, in one place. Guidance on running a bakery, straight answers to common questions and a reference page for each part of the product.
Latest
Getting started3 min read
What is ibakepro?
ibakepro is bakery management software for bakeries that make to order, covering recipe and product costing, orders and quotes, ingredient inventory, deposits and payments, an online storefront, wholesale ordering, deliveries, food safety records and marketing, from 17 to 59 US dollars a month.
Compliance1 min read
Cottage food law
The US umbrella term for state rules permitting home-kitchen food sales, and what the equivalent is called elsewhere.
Pricing8 min read
How do I know if my bakery is actually making money?
Revenue is not profit and a full order book is not a profitable one. The three numbers that settle the question, a worked week that loses money on its best-selling product, and the owner-wage blind spot underneath all of it.
Margins2 min read
How do I see the profit on each order?
A profit panel sits beside the totals while you build an order, splitting cost into ingredients, packaging, labour, overhead and the per-order share of fixed costs, and the reports read the cost snapshot taken when each order was committed.
Wholesale1 min read
Price list
A named set of prices applied to a customer or group, so one product can sell at several prices without being duplicated.
Wholesale1 min read
Minimum order quantity
The smallest amount a supplier will accept on an order, set from the fixed cost of serving one order rather than from a round number.
Pricing7 min read
Why ibakepro will not change your prices or your allergen labels for you
Two deliberate decisions: when a supplier price moves your costs update and your sell price does not, and when an ingredient's allergens change the published label stays frozen until a person applies it.
Wholesale1 min read
Net terms
An agreement to supply now and be paid within a fixed number of days, where the date the clock starts matters more than the number.
Data3 min read
Where is my data stored?
In the region you choose at signup, Australia, the United States or Europe. The regions are genuinely separate, and the one exception is AI image generation, which is processed in the United States.
Stock1 min read
Par level
The stock quantity that triggers a reorder, calculated from usage rate, supplier lead time and a safety buffer.
Stock1 min read
Stocktake
A physical count of everything held, valued at cost, used to work out what a period actually consumed.
Payments7 min read
How much deposit should you take for a custom cake?
The common deposit ranges, the floor your deposit has to clear, when the balance should land and what to keep when a customer cancels at each stage.
Technique1 min read
Lamination
Folding a fat layer into dough repeatedly so the baked product separates into hundreds of distinct alternating layers.
Wholesale7 min read
Wholesale pricing: price lists, minimums and payment terms
How a customer tag becomes a price list, how minimum order quantities work and what pay-on-invoice does to an order.
Costing1 min read
Recipe yield
How much finished product a recipe actually produces after bake loss and trim, measured in the unit you sell in.
Chocolate1 min read
Couverture
Chocolate with enough cocoa butter to be tempered, setting with a snap and a gloss that compound coatings cannot produce.
Pricing3 min read
What does bakery software cost?
ibakepro is 17 to 59 US dollars a month depending on plan, with equivalent prices set in five other currencies, and the honest total adds your payment gateway's processing fees, any AI or SMS use and a domain if you register one.
Technique1 min read
Blind baking
Baking a pastry case before its filling goes in, either part way or fully, so the base cooks through instead of going soggy.
Pricing1 min read
Gross margin
Revenue minus cost of goods sold as a share of revenue, and the two things that quietly inflate it.
Pricing1 min read
Markup vs margin
The same price expressed as a multiple of cost and as a share of price, with the arithmetic that shows why they differ.
Delivery10 min read
What should you actually charge for delivery?
The real cost of one delivery, including the return leg, the waiting and the failed attempts, plus how to turn that into a fee customers accept.
Getting started4 min read
Is ibakepro right for a home baker?
Yes if you are selling regularly and cannot tell which orders made money, but Essentials is one user and 100 orders for the life of the account, so it is a starting tier rather than a permanent home.
Costing1 min read
Food cost percentage
Ingredient cost divided by selling price, and the gap between the theoretical figure and the counted one.
Technique1 min read
Ganache
An emulsion of chocolate and hot cream, with the cream to chocolate ratio deciding whether it pours, pipes or holds a sharp edge.
Technique1 min read
Crumb coat
The thin first layer of icing that traps loose crumbs against a cake so they do not show through the finish coat.
Technique1 min read
Doweling
Driving supports through a cake tier so the tiers above rest on the supports rather than on the cake itself.
Pricing6 min read
Cake serving size chart: how many people does each size serve?
Serving counts for round and square tins from 6 to 12 inches, at both party and finger portion sizes, with the geometry they come from and the assumptions that break them.
Seasonal7 min read
The US baking calendar: what sells when
How demand moves through the year for a US baking business, and how much the shape of that year changes depending on where in the country you are.
Getting started4 min read
Is ibakepro right for a cake decorator?
Yes if every job is quoted individually with a deposit, an event date and size and flavour choices: it was built by a decorator around exactly that shape of work.
Food safety8 min read
Food safety records for a small bakery: what inspectors actually look at
The record types that come up in inspections almost everywhere, what makes a record hold up, the corrective-action habit that matters more than the reading itself, and a workable cadence.
Delivery7 min read
Can you post what you bake?
Which baked goods survive a parcel network, how to pack for a conveyor rather than a car seat, plus a way to decide whether shipping is worth offering before you promise it to anyone.
Wholesale3 min read
Is ibakepro right for a bakery selling wholesale?
Yes if you supply cafes and stockists at negotiated prices and invoice on terms: a tag is a price list, minimums hold per variant and unpaid invoices land in the same overdue report as everything else.
Getting started2 min read
How does the CSV import map my columns?
Upload the file as it came out of your old system and ibakepro proposes a mapping from your column names to its own fields, which you review row by row on a preview screen before anything is written.
Pricing8 min read
Cake pricing calculator: the formula and the numbers to put in it
The one division a cake pricing calculator performs, the five inputs it needs, how to get a defensible number for each and a full worked example from ingredients to final price.
Limited releases6 min read
Running a limited release without overselling
How to sell a fixed quantity to a queue of people without taking money for stock you do not have.
Payments2 min read
How do I take a deposit on a cake order and collect the balance later?
Put a payment schedule on the order, with a deposit as a percentage or a fixed amount and a balance row set to remaining, and ibakepro tracks what is paid, what is outstanding and when to chase it.
Inventory8 min read
Bakery inventory: tracking ingredient stock without counting flour every night
Why bakery stock behaves differently from retail stock, the two-unit trap that wrecks the arithmetic, how to set a par level from your own usage and the short weekly count that people actually do.
Seasonal8 min read
Running a bakery through a summer Christmas
In Australia and New Zealand your busiest season is also your hottest month, which changes what you make, how you move it and what you should be steering customers toward.
Wholesale2 min read
How do I sell wholesale to cafes and stockists?
On the Business plan, trade customers get a private ordering area, sign in with an emailed code, see the tier prices attached to their account and order on invoice terms instead of paying at checkout.
Pricing9 min read
Your flour just went up 20 percent. Now what?
What has to change when an input price moves, which products are affected and by how much, plus why a flat percentage across the menu is the wrong answer.
Limited releases3 min read
How do I run a limited release without overselling?
Schedule the release as a drop, set the units per line, and ibakepro holds stock the moment a customer adds it to their cart rather than when they pay, so the release cannot sell past its allocation.
Wholesale4 min read
Wholesale ordering for cafes and stockists
A private ordering area for your trade accounts, where each buyer signs in with an emailed code and sees only the prices attached to their own account.
Stock4 min read
Sharing pantry stock with another business
Two separate ibakepro accounts can pool their pantry into one physical balance with a shared ledger, so a jointly bought sack of flour is counted once rather than twice.
Costing4 min read
Recipe costing: what a product actually costs to make
ibakepro prices every ingredient at what you paid for it, converts the units, adds labour and overhead and rewrites the cost everywhere the moment a supplier price moves.
Payments2 min read
How do I record a walk-in sale?
Use a quick sale under Orders, Income. It is a one-line income record with an optional stock deduction, not a full order, so it takes no order number, no customer and no invoice.
Production10 min read
Planning production so you stop throwing food away
Batching, make-ahead, portioning and shelf life, plus what waste actually costs once you count the labour and packaging already spent on it.
Pricing4 min read
Product builder: components, sizes and variants
Products are built from components, components from pantry items and a bigger size is scaled by volume against anchors you measured rather than a multiplier you guessed.
Delivery2 min read
How do I plan the most efficient delivery run for a day of orders?
On the Business plan, Route Optimisation sequences a day's deliveries around the time windows customers chose, using live traffic, tolls and your own vehicle running costs, and returns an estimated arrival time for every stop.
Stock5 min read
Pantry inventory and stock tracking
Track what you hold of every ingredient and supply, see what is already committed to orders before it leaves the shelf and keep an append-only record of every movement.
Pricing7 min read
Pricing celebration cakes in the UK market
What UK customers expect to be included in a cake price and what they expect to be charged for, across weddings, christenings and birthdays.
Stock2 min read
How do I get an alert before I run out of an ingredient?
Switch stock tracking on for the pantry item, give it a count and a minimum, and ibakepro emails you when the level drops below that minimum, hits a critical level or reaches zero.
Payments5 min read
Taking a deposit and chasing the balance
Set your deposit rule once and ibakepro sizes it per order, tracks what is still owed and flags the payments that have gone past their date.
Costing4 min read
Packaging as a real cost line
Boxes, boards, dowels and ribbon are costed into the product, counted by how many the build needs and charged differently depending on whether the order is collected, delivered or posted.
International3 min read
Does ibakepro work in my country?
In most places, yes. You choose your data region at signup, set your own currency, timezone, date format, unit system and tax type, and take card payments anywhere Stripe operates.
Pricing16 min read
Pricing a custom cake: the costs most bakers forget
The costs most bakers forget when quoting a custom order.
Orders5 min read
Cake order management, from quote to delivered
A quote and an order are the same record in ibakepro, so converting one retypes nothing, and the stock, schedule and status follow from there.
Storefront4 min read
Selling cakes from your own website and online shop
A section-built website with a real shop attached, where every price is recalculated before it is charged and no order exists until the money has landed.
Ai3 min read
Does ibakepro train AI on my data?
No. ibakepro has no models of its own, every AI feature is a call out to a provider's API and the no-training position rests on those providers' enterprise API terms rather than on anything ibakepro itself can control.
Getting started7 min read
Getting off spreadsheets without losing a year of history
What a CSV import into ibakepro involves, what it will not take and what to do before you start.
Limited releases4 min read
Limited releases that cannot oversell
A scheduled release with a fixed number of units, where stock is claimed the moment it enters a cart, and every failure mode lands on selling one too few rather than one too many.
Marketing5 min read
Email and SMS marketing automation
ibakepro's automation engine has four marketing triggers, and marketing sends are gated on explicit opt-in at the moment of sending rather than at the moment you write the message.
Delivery7 min read
Cold-climate cake logistics
What a Canadian winter does to a decorated cake between your kitchen and the venue, and what to change about transport and scheduling from November to March.
Integrations5 min read
What ibakepro connects to
The integrations that exist today, which direction each one moves data and what the public API lets you build.
Pantry2 min read
Can I see which suppliers cost me the most?
Every pantry item and expense carries a supplier, so you can filter and export by supplier; spend by supplier is one pivot table away from the expense export.
Data3 min read
Can I export my data out of ibakepro?
Yes. Orders, products, customers, payments, expenses and tasks each export to CSV from the list you are looking at, with the filters you have applied, up to 10,000 rows per file.
Compliance5 min read
Food safety and compliance records that hold up
Declare your own control points and limits, log readings and incidents against them and print a period pack of your program and its records without ibakepro grading your food for you.
Orders4 min read
The customer portal: the link your customer opens to pay
A private page per order where the customer sees what they ordered, picks their quote option, fills in the details you asked for and pays, with no account to create.
Getting started8 min read
What to look for in bakery software
The questions worth asking any bakery system before you commit, from event dates and deposits to what happens to your allergen labels when a supplier reformulates.
Ai4 min read
AI for your bakery: design mockups, answers and captions
Choux is three specific tools rather than one chat box - a cake mockup generator, an analytics assistant that answers questions about your own numbers and nothing else, and a caption writer that hands you options to choose from.
Payments2 min read
Are payment processing fees tracked automatically?
Yes, for money taken through a connected gateway. ibakepro books each day's card processing fees as a single itemised expense using the figure the gateway reports, with nothing to switch on.
Analytics4 min read
Bakery analytics: which orders actually made you money
ibakepro reports on the orders you already took, separates revenue from margin and freezes each order's cost at the moment you took it, so last March's margin still reads as last March.
Integrations5 min read
Bakery software with an API you can build against
ibakepro has a public API, and the thing worth knowing before you pay a developer is its shape - it reads and creates, the dashboard stays the single place records change, and it is on the Business plan.
Accounting3 min read
Accounting sync: sending expenses to Xero
Connect Xero and ibakepro pushes your submitted expenses across with the receipt attached, on its own schedule, without you re-keying anything.
Allergens5 min read
Allergen tracking from the pantry item to the order
Tag an allergen once on the ingredient and it rolls up through components and products onto the order, and when a supplier reformulates the published label stays frozen until a person applies the change.