What is the best software for a sourdough micro-bakery?

A sourdough micro-bakery needs software that does five jobs: takes paid pre-orders up to a cutoff that respects your levain schedule, adds them up into how many of each loaf to mix on bake day, tells each customer where and when to collect, keeps a handful of cafe accounts on their own prices, and costs every loaf from what you paid for flour. ibakepro is bakery management software that does all five for sourdough bakers in Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Europe, from a two-bake-a-week home operation to a bakery mixing for a dozen cafes.

The five jobs, and what to check for each

1. Pre-orders with a real cutoff. Sourdough is planned two days out: the levain is built the night before the mix, so an order placed after that point is an order you cannot bake. The ordering page has to refuse dates inside your lead time, skip the days you do not bake, and take payment at the time of order, so a pre-order is a loaf already paid for.

2. A bake-day count. On mix day you need one number per product: 34 country loaves, 18 seeded, 12 rye. Anything that makes you add up orders from messages, a spreadsheet and a cafe's email is where loaves go missing.

3. Collection points and markets. Many micro-bakeries hand most bread over at a market stall or a fixed pickup window. Each order should carry its collection day and instructions ("stall 14, Saturday 8 to 11am") so the customer knows and you can tick it off on the day.

4. A few wholesale cafes. Cafes order differently from retail customers: their own prices, minimums, a fixed delivery day and an invoice instead of a card payment. Two cafes is already enough to make a second system painful.

5. Cost per loaf. Flour, salt, the starter you feed and throw away, the bag, the oven time and your hours. Your price only holds when that number moves with the flour invoice. The arithmetic is in how to price sourdough bread.

How ibakepro covers it

• Pre-orders. The storefront only offers dates that respect your lead time, blocked days and the time slots you run on each weekday, and an order exists only once it is paid. On Growth and Business.
• Weekly releases with a cap. A drop sells a fixed number of loaves with one fixed pickup date and its own collection instructions, and it cannot sell loaf 41 when you can bake 40. Useful for a Friday bake or a special like a hot cross bun or panettone run. On Growth and Business.
• The bake-day count. Every order, from the shop, a drop or entered by hand, feeds the calendar and the bake sheet, so the mix list comes from the orders themselves. See orders and quotes.
• Cafe accounts. On Business, each cafe signs in to a private wholesale ordering area with its own prices, minimum quantities and net terms such as net 14, and orders for its delivery day. The cafe places each week's order from the trade area in a minute, or you enter it for them.
• Cost per loaf. Recipe costing prices each loaf from the flour, salt and packaging you bought, converts units on the way into the recipe, and recosts every loaf when a sack price changes. Flour and seeds sit in The Pantry against upcoming orders, so you see a short week coming before mix day.
• Market days. A market can be recorded as one sale with takings, the cost of what you sold and the stall fee. See tracking market day sales and profit.
• Allergens. Seeds, sesame and spelt are tracked from ingredient to loaf to order, and the storefront shows them as customers choose. See allergen management.

For a loaf every week, most micro-bakeries run a weekly drop that regulars order from, with a cutoff that matches the bake.

What it costs

Plans run from US$17 to US$59 a month (A$26 to A$89, £13 to £47), with a 14-day free trial. Pre-orders through the shop and drops start on Growth; cafe accounts on terms are on Business. The full breakdown is in what does bakery software cost.