BaketlyShort answer: keep the spreadsheet if it stores purchases rather than calculated costs and you actually maintain it. Most do neither, and go quietly stale.
| Spreadsheet | Baketly | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Does the arithmetic | Yes, if you build it | Yes |
| Stores purchases, not costs | Only if built that way | Yes |
| Recosts when a price moves | Only if referenced | Yes |
| Your own hours counted | If you add them | A rate set once |
| Margin per hour by product | If you build it | Yes |
| Market days and booth fees | If you build it | Yes |
| Still accurate in a year | In practice, rarely | Yes |
| Platform | Anywhere | iPhone and web |
Where the spreadsheet wins
It is free, it is yours, it runs on anything, and it does exactly what you build. There is no vendor to outlive, no export to fight, and no platform that might go away. If your sheet is well built and you maintain it, nothing here is an argument to stop.
It is also more flexible than any app. Odd units, a weird wholesale arrangement, a product costed three different ways for three different customers — a spreadsheet absorbs all of that without asking permission.
Where it loses, and it is always the same place
Not the arithmetic. The upkeep.
The question that settles it is what happens on an ordinary Tuesday when a sack of flour goes up forty cents. If your recipe tabs reference a pantry tab, the answer is one edit and everything follows. If each recipe has flour: 0.61 typed into it, the answer is however many recipes use flour — and that is a job nobody does twice.
The two designs look identical from outside. Both are "my costing spreadsheet". Only one is still true next spring, and the bakery running the other has no way of knowing, because a stale sheet reports with exactly the same confidence as a current one.
If your costing cannot follow your supplier, it is a snapshot of a day that has passed.
What Baketly does differently
Three things, all consequences of the data model rather than cleverness:
- The pantry is filled from the label. Point the camera at a sack; it reads the weight and the price and derives the cost per gram. A 16 kg sack at $19.60 is $0.00123 a gram, and you did not type it.
- Recipes recost themselves. Because they reference the pantry item rather than a number, recording the next sack updates every recipe that uses it.
- Market days are first-class. A booth fee is charged against a day, so you find out whether the table paid. Spreadsheets can do this; almost none do, because it is a second model nobody gets round to building.
Where Baketly loses
- Narrow on purpose. No customer ordering, no stock valuation for accounts, no staff model. A spreadsheet will bend to all three; this will not bend at all.
- Young. Version 1.0.1, first released in October 2026. Your spreadsheet has no bugs you have not already found.
How to choose
Open your sheet and find the price of the flour you bought most recently. If it is there and current, and if changing it would update every recipe by itself, keep the sheet — it is doing the job and it is free.
If the number is from last spring, or if changing it means hunting through tabs, then the sheet is not costing your bakery. It is recording a guess you made once, and the cost of that is invisible until the end of a season.
Related
Questions
Is a spreadsheet good enough to run a micro bakery?
Yes, if it stores what you paid for a purchase rather than a cost you calculated, and if you keep it current. A pantry tab the recipe tabs reference is a sound design and costs nothing. The failure is almost never the arithmetic.
Why do costing spreadsheets go stale?
Because repricing means finding every recipe that uses an ingredient and editing each one. That is a job people do enthusiastically for a few months and then stop. The sheet does not tell you it has gone stale, which is the real problem.
Can I use both?
Many people do. The spreadsheet is the best possible preparation for moving to anything else, because it forces you to work out your yields, your hands-on minutes per batch and your pack costs — the parts only you can supply.
What should my spreadsheet look like if I keep it?
One tab holding every purchase as price and pack size, with a derived cost per gram. Recipe tabs referencing that tab rather than typing numbers. A column for hands-on minutes, and an hourly rate in one cell that everything multiplies by.
Is Baketly just a spreadsheet in an app?
In arithmetic, roughly. The differences are that the pantry is filled from a photo of the label rather than typed, recipes recost themselves when you record a new purchase, and market days are costed against their booth fee.
If your sheet has gone quiet
Baketly stores what you paid, not what you calculated, so one price change moves every recipe that uses it. Free on iPhone.
Download on the App Store