What your overhead costs per order
Add up your fixed monthly costs and the orders you take, and get a figure to build into every price.
Free. No signup needed.The short answer
Overhead is everything you pay whether or not you bake: rent, power, insurance, packaging, and equipment. Divide the monthly total by the orders you actually took. £320 a month across 12 orders is £26.67 sitting inside every cake before a gram of flour.
What your overhead costs per order
BakerInbox
What it costs you a month, before any cake
Even a share of the mortgage
The oven is the expensive bit
Public liability, product cover
Boxes, drums, dowels, ribbon
Tins, mixer, turntable, spread over its life
Website, phone, bookkeeping
Ads, fairs, tasting boxes
The cake that did not survive
Overhead per order
£0.00
£0.00 when busy
Per hour worked
£0.00
Each month
£0.00
Each year
£0.00
Only 0 of these are filled in. The more you add, the closer the per-order figure gets to what an order really costs you.
Overhead is what you pay whether or not the phone rings. Yearly and one-off costs are spread to a monthly figure, then across the orders you actually take. Quote from the quiet-month number so a slow month still pays its way.
Overhead only works if you know your order count. BakerInbox counts them for you.
Start free trialWhat counts as overhead
| Cost | Overhead | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|
| Rent, or a share of the mortgage | Yes | Here |
| Gas and electricity | Yes | Here |
| Public liability and product insurance | Yes | Here |
| Boxes, boards and ribbon bought in bulk | Yes | Here |
| Website, phone and card fees | Yes | Here |
| Tins, mixers and equipment | Yes | Here, spread over the months you use them |
| Your own hours | No | An hourly rate in the pricing calculator |
| Ingredients for one cake | No | The recipe cost calculator |
| Mileage for a delivery | No | The delivery fee calculator |
Made with BakerInbox. Free cake tools at bakerinbox.com/tools
Working out bakery overhead
Overhead is the cost of being open. It does not appear in any recipe, which is exactly why it gets left out of prices.
What counts
Overhead is what you pay whether or not the phone rings
Rent or a share of the mortgage. Gas and electricity, and the oven is the expensive part. Public liability and product insurance. Boxes, boards, dowels, and ribbon. Tins and mixers that wear out. Your website and your phone. Ads and tasting boxes. And the cake that did not survive the drive.
The split
Divide by the orders you actually take
£320 a month across 12 orders is £26.67 sitting inside every single one, before a gram of flour. Bakers who price off ingredients alone are quietly paying that £26.67 themselves, out of what they think is profit.
Be honest
Use last month's order count, not next month's hope
The number that matters is what you really took, not what you meant to. If you had a quiet month, your overhead per order was higher, and that is exactly the month you needed to know it.
Then what
Overhead is one of three numbers, not the whole price
Ingredients, your time, and overhead together are your cost. Your price sits above that by whatever margin you want to earn. Take the per-order figure from here into the cake pricing calculator and it will do the rest.
FAQ
Common questions
What is a typical overhead for a home baker?
It depends entirely on whether you rent space and how much you bake. The point is not to match someone else's number, it is to know your own. Fill in even four of the lines and the per-order figure gets useful fast.
Should I include my own wages in overhead?
No. Your time is a cost per cake, not a fixed monthly one, so it belongs in the pricing calculator as an hourly rate. Keep overhead for the costs that turn up whether you bake or not.
Do I count packaging as overhead or as an ingredient?
Either works as long as you only count it once. Boxes and boards bought in bulk are easiest to treat as overhead. If you buy per cake, put them in the pricing calculator as packaging instead.
Where does my information go?
Nowhere. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
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