Cake & Bake Pricing Calculator
Excel (.xlsx) — also opens in Google Sheets & Numbers
To price a cake, add up the ingredients, packaging, decorations and your time, add a slice for overheads, then set the price so your chosen profit margin is left over. This calculator does that in Excel or Google Sheets and gives you the price per slice too, so the hours you spend levelling, decorating and delivering are actually paid for.
What's inside
- Ingredients, packaging, decorations and labour in one place
- Builds in your hourly rate + overheads — no more underpricing
- Suggested price and price-per-slice worked out for you
- Perfect for home bakers and small bakeries
What it does
Cake pricing goes wrong in one predictable place: the hours. This calculator puts ingredients, packaging, decorations and your time in one place, builds in your hourly rate and overheads, and works out a suggested price and price-per-slice that actually pays you.
It makes you charge for the hours you forget to count — the levelling, the flowers, the delivery.
Who it's for
Home bakers and small bakeries taking orders. If you've ever finished a celebration cake and realised you earned £2 an hour, this sheet is the fix. A worked example is built in.
Try the free online version: the cake pricing calculator works out takeaway and eat-in slice prices in your browser, with nothing to download.
Worked example: a 2-tier birthday cake
The Cake Pricing tab opens with this order filled in. Each ingredient line is pack price ÷ pack size × amount used:
| Ingredient | Pack | Used | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flour | £0.80 for 1,500 g | 500 g | £0.27 |
| Butter | £2.20 for 250 g | 500 g | £4.40 |
| Sugar | £0.90 for 1,000 g | 450 g | £0.41 |
| Eggs | £0.25 each | 8 | £2.00 |
| Vanilla | £4.00 for 100 ml | 10 ml | £0.40 |
| Ingredients | £7.47 |
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | £7.47 |
| Packaging, board and box | £3.50 |
| Decorations and extras | £6.00 |
| Labour: 5 hours at £12.00 | £60.00 |
| Overheads at 10% (energy, kit) | £7.70 |
| Total cost | £84.67 |
At a 30% profit margin the suggested price is £84.67 ÷ (1 − 0.30) = £120.96, leaving £36.29 profit on the order. Cut into 24 slices, that is £5.04 a slice.
Look at where the money goes: the ingredients are under 9% of the cost and your five hours are 71% of it. That is why pricing a cake as "ingredients times three" (about £22 here) loses money on every celebration cake.
How to use it
- Name the bake, then list each ingredient with its pack price, pack size and amount used (up to 15 lines). Keep pack size and amount in the same unit.
- Add packaging (board, box, dowels) and decorations.
- Enter the hours you really spend, including baking, cooling, decorating, the consultation and delivery, and your hourly rate.
- Set an overheads % and your profit margin. The suggested price, profit and price per slice appear.
- Save a copy per cake design, so repeat orders are priced in seconds.
What it does not do
It works ex-VAT; most home bakers are not VAT-registered, but if you are, add VAT on top. It does not scale the recipe for a bigger cake; use the Recipe Scaler for that, then cost the scaled version here.
Questions people ask
Is this a subscription?
No. It is a one-off £8.99, with no VAT charged: buy it once, download the file and it is yours to keep. It works offline.
Does it work in Google Sheets?
Yes. Upload the .xlsx to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets; the formulas carry over. It also opens in Apple Numbers.
Is the margin the same as a markup?
No. The sheet uses a margin: price = cost ÷ (1 − margin). A 30% margin means 30% of the price is profit. A 30% markup on £84.67 would only be £110.07.
What hourly rate should I use?
At least what you would earn doing something else with those hours. The example uses £12.00; many bakers set it at or above the National Living Wage.
Goes well with
Try the numbers first, free: the food cost & GP calculator and the recipe costing tool run in your browser.