Choosing tools
Cake Order Management: 4 Tools and What Each Costs
A fair look at four ways to keep cake orders straight, and what each one costs you.
On this page
If you sell cakes from home, cake order management is the difference between a calm Saturday and three customers texting at once. The four tools below each start from a different point. None of them bake, so pick the one that matches how you already take orders.
What to remember
- CakePad, CakeBoss, and BakeSmart each cover a different part of the job.
- Brevl is one flat $20 a month and takes 0% of your sales.
- Cost ingredients, your time, and overhead before you quote a price.
- Read the current price on any tool before you pay for it.
What cake order management has to do every week
A cake order is not one task. It is a quote, a date on the calendar, a deposit, a reminder, a balance due, and a pickup time. Miss one of those and you either lose the order or work for free.
Most home bakers start with a notebook and a phone full of texts. That works until you have four orders in one weekend. Then you need one list you can trust, and a way to see what is due next.
Write down every order in one place the day it arrives, even the ones that are only a maybe. A maybe that turns into a yes on Thursday is a cake you have to fit into a full weekend.
The tools in this roundup each start from a different point. One starts at the quote. One starts at your costs. One starts at the order list. Knowing which one you need saves you a monthly fee you do not have to pay. If you want the wider picture first, the tools hub collects every roundup in one place.
The four tools, side by side
Descriptions of CakePad, CakeBoss, and BakeSmart come from each company's own site. Check current features and prices before you commit.
| Tool | Built for | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| CakePad | Solo bakers, home bakeries, and boutique cake shops | Bakery management, with pricing quotes for custom cake orders automated |
| CakeBoss | Home bakers | Organizing orders and pricing, plus tracking costs and profits |
| BakeSmart | Bakeries selling custom and wholesale | Managing custom orders, wholesale operations, and online sales |
| Brevl | Home bakers selling from their own kitchen | A shop you customize, card payments through your own Stripe or Square, and recipes with real costing |
CakePad and BakeSmart both lean toward running the whole bakery. CakeBoss leans toward knowing your numbers. Brevl sits in the middle: orders, money, and costing in one place, on a phone or a computer.
CakePad automates pricing quotes for custom cake orders, which is the slowest part of many home cake businesses. CakeBoss tracks costs and profits, which is the part most of us skip. BakeSmart covers custom orders, wholesale, and online sales in one place, which suits a bakery already selling to shops.
None of these is wrong. The right one depends on which part of the week hurts most. If quoting takes you an hour, start there. If you cannot remember what is due Friday, start with the order list.
What each one costs you
Brevl is one flat $20 a month and takes 0% of your sales. The other three set their own prices, and prices change, so read the current page on each site before you sign up. A monthly fee is only worth it if it saves you more than it costs.
A tool that saves you two hours a month is worth more than $20 if your time is worth $18 an hour. A tool that saves you twenty minutes is not. Write down what you want it to fix before you compare prices.
If the order list is the only thing you need, a bakery order software roundup covers that narrower job. If pricing is the problem, look at costing tools instead.
A worked example: one custom cake order
Here is a two layer 8 inch cake with all three cost lines in it. Ingredients come to $9.50. The board and box add $2.00. Two and a half hours of your time at $18 an hour is $45.00. Power, oven time, and the drive to drop it off add $3.50.
That is $60.00 before you make a cent. Price the cake at $85 and your margin is $25.00, about 29 percent of the price. Price it at $70 and you have paid yourself $10.00 for two and a half hours of work.
Mistakes that cost you money
The first mistake is quoting before you cost. A number you say out loud on Tuesday is hard to raise on Friday.
The second is taking a deposit that does not cover your ingredients. If the order cancels, you should not be out of pocket for the butter.
The third is keeping orders in three places at once: texts, a notebook, and your head. Pick one place and put every order there the moment it comes in.
The fourth is quoting a price without a deposit rule. Decide the deposit before the next order comes in, not during the conversation.
Where Brevl fits
Brevl is the option we build. It is one flat $20 a month with no cut of your sales, and a 14 day free trial. You take card payments through your own Stripe or Square account, plus Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, and cash.
Your shop is yours to customize, with your photos, your colors, and your own web address. It runs on a computer and on a phone, so you can quote a cake from the school pickup line and finish the invoice at the kitchen table. We set it up with you and move your old shop over: products, photos, reviews, and dates. A real person answers, usually within minutes.
If you are weighing it against another tool, Brevl vs Bakesy walks through the differences, and Switch shows how a move works.
Try the free bake pricing calculator
Free, no signup.
- Bakery order management app: a fair roundup
- Cake pricing app: 3 cost lines and a flat $20 a month
- Home bakery order app: taking orders from home
Common questions
What is cake order management for a home baker?
It is one place to keep every order: the quote, the date, the deposit, the balance, and the pickup time. For a home baker it usually means one list you can check on your phone, so nothing gets double booked or forgotten during a busy week.
Do I need paid software to keep cake orders straight?
Not at first. A notebook and a calendar can carry you through a handful of orders a month. Paid tools start to pay for themselves when you are juggling several orders a week, quoting custom work, or tracking what each recipe actually costs you.
What does Brevl cost compared with the others?
Brevl is one flat $20 a month and takes 0% of your sales, with a 14 day free trial. CakePad, CakeBoss, and BakeSmart set their own prices, and those change, so check each company's current page before you decide.
Can I take card payments without a separate card reader?
With Brevl you take card payments through your own Stripe or Square account, plus Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, and cash. That means the money lands in an account you already control, and you are not locked into a payment company you did not choose.
How do I know if a tool is worth the monthly fee?
Work out the hours it gives back in a normal month and what your time is worth. If it saves two hours at $18 an hour, that is $36, and a $20 fee is covered. If it saves twenty minutes, it is not.
What should I check before I pay for any of them?
Check the current price, whether it takes a cut of your sales, and whether it works on a phone. Then check the trial length and put the end date in your calendar, so a free trial does not turn into a charge you forgot about.
Sources
General information, not legal or tax advice. Prices and features change, so check each company's current page before you pay.