I'm looking for an all around software for my new bakery. Something to handle everything from online orders, point-of-sale, time reporting, reports, inventory, cost analysis.

I hear a lot of talk about CakeBoss on here, and know everyone likes it, but I think I need more. Have any of you with retail stores used one of the above, or something better? These are all pretty darn expensive! ouch!

Background... my bakery will be retail pastries, customs cakes, breads, and light lunch. It will be me and one or two other employees.

Cakeboss should be sufficient for such a small scale bakery/cafe. The others were designed for super high volume food bakery manufacturers such as Wonder Bread, Hostess, etc.

I currently use Cheftec. It's amazing software but it's not compatible with my computer so I it's almost impossible for me to use. Besides it being very expensive!

I want cake boss and may purchase it soon (first I'm getting a new computer). My only hesitation with cake boss is the weights it assigns ingredients. For example, I use almost 5 oz. per cup of a.p. flour and they use 4 oz. per cup of flour. When you take that and multiple it by 10 or 20 batches (which I do regularly) it can completely ruin a recipe. I'm thinking I could just enter my already converted recipes in weights, but what happens if someone hits the multiply option (or scale up or down) and it's on cups? Then my whole recipe could be screwed up and I might not be aware of the problem if I'm not told.

In Cheftec they don't assign a weight per ingredient. I enter weights based on each recipe. When I scale it up or down, it only uses the weight I've already entered.

HTMS

so can cake boss handel time reporting (for employees) then? I didn't see that it did point-of-sale slips. I checked out the sight and it looked awesome if i just continued from home doing the custom cakes.

I haven't heard of cheftec. guess that is another one to throw into the mix. blah! so many options. I just want one thing that does EVERYTHING! sales, inventory, credit cards, scale, online...

I Talked to the guy from BakeSmart today. Uh, nice but really strange. Almost turned me against the product. He's the owner, which frightens me. I guess the super smart usually are odd though. :-/

No, CakeBoss does not handle payroll or employee reporting at this time.

stink! you guys (cake boss people) should plan a super cake boss! I would buy it since everyone loves the current version!

We use Bakesmart. All I can say is that choosing a software program is like choosing the President.....you pick the lesser evil.

jennifer- so do you like it or do you wish you would have had another one. z-bake looks good to me at this stage too. z-bake's website is pretty crappy, and i would think that software people would do a better job with that. maybe just stupid, but it was my initial reaction. then again, a fancy website doesn't mean a good product!

If you want to call me sometime I can tell you the good and the bad of bakesmart. My number is 318-308-1474 or the bakery number is 318-445-9561

so nice of you jennifer! I'm going to download the demos of the 3 that look good to me and get an idea of how each work. then I'll call if I'm still stumped! I'm always bad with decisions, so expect a cal.. ha ha ha!

Just a side note here, as a programmer analyst, coding software, which is what I do for ATM, Credit and Debit cards, is NOTHING like coding a website (just look at mine). they are two completely different types of programming, so don't let that put you off.

Also, most programmers are not personable, especially the good ones, they are still the stereotypical geek, so don't let the owner put you off either.

Just look at the products and customer service they have for fixing a possible bug or support issue.

The owners of cake boss company is a man & wife team. She is the customer service and caker who inspired this program, very out going, very friendly, and extremely diligent and helpful when it comes to everything. The programmer is the husband and he is amazing at what he does! There are no tech support fees like most programs for businesses have. And yes code for websites is html code for application and systems software uses other programming languages so extremely different!

My dance studio management software cost me $495 plus $199 for annual tech support, AND if I want to upgrade I have to purchase the whole new version at the higher rate, NOT just the difference in price between old & new versions. It sucks!

cakesdivine. Thanks for your opinion, but I do actually need a biggish system. I do need employees to start too. I am opening a full service bakery. we're talking not just decorating, but lunch menu, pastries and breads. There is no possible way that I can be open 7 days a week, handle all the baking, AND be standing at the counter when people walk in to buy a loaf of bread. Just not possible. I thought about just writting out manual sales slips for each item (like on the pads you can take orders with), but then I have to pay someone to sit and do data entry for me (since it will be impossible for me to have the extra hours every day). It's actually much cheaper to buy the software for $1000, and have it forever, than to pay someone, and all the ones I looked at have free support.

I did take the baby steps as a home baker though, so I appreciate that comment. this is a full scale business, not a hobby anymore. My paretns own 12 businesses between them (none bakeries), so I'm not completely in the dark. cake boss just doesn't do what I need it to do. my mom has done payroll her whole life and she will do mine for this too.

I started my office career in Payroll and now am in HR. I know of a FREE website that has RELIABLE paycheck calculations that you can use for any state. It's called Paycheckcity.com. They do not offer a time keeping system, but if you aren't ready to purchase a larger software that has one yet, paycheck city will at least enable you calculate your employee's paychecks.

We have been using the Bakesmart POS system since October. It works very well, they are very helpful, and we cut our credit card costs in half using the company they have a relationship with. Starting this month (May) we have switched from Quickbooks to Bakesmart for our invoicing. Is it seamless? No. There is a learning curve, the screens are different, you need to learn how to find a report. But it is all there, and far less cluttered than Quickbooks. I hope by the end of summer to use Bakesmart for our formulas.

A point should be made on a change like this in your systems. A friend of mine at King Arthur Flour passed on advice he learned from a customer. What ever the cost of a new system you put into place, you need to figure you will spend an additional 10% in time to implement your system. In the case of Bakesmart for us this has meant data entry, time on the phone with them teaching us how something works, and making corrections. We ran the invoicing system for two weeks parallel to Quickbooks to catch any errors.

One important thing to say in response to comments regarding the people at Bakesmart is that they have been very helpful, easy to work with, and have always been there if we have had any issues with the system. This includes early an early morning call when we had a POS problem.

I am a very deliberate person when buying anything for our bakery. Sometimes this drives my staff crazy, but in the end I have never done anything rash, and in the fifteen years we have been in business I have only a few things I wish I had done differently. Buying Bakesmart is a choice I feel very good about, and so does my staff.

Gerry Newman
Albemarle Baking Co.

thanks so much. I haven't used a nice software yet, just my own insane paper sysem...which isn't working anymore! So I'm hoping I'll escape the transition from one to another. I'll going to download the trial version this week. I obsess over things like this too, so glad to see someone else that does the same!

I use Bakesmart for my business as well. I am also a full scale bakery and cafe, so I understand where you're coming from.
Yes, Bakesmart has a learning curve, but the support they offer has been key. Is it perfect? No. Will it handle everything you want it to? Yes.
I also know what you mean about the owner, but he is a good guy; we've had several conversations over the last couple of years.
Just a suggestion - if you do end up with them, ask them what hardware they require, and buy it yourself. The company they referred me to had the worst customer service, and I found out the hard way that they had sold me refurbished equipment.
Please feel free to PM me if I can help at all. Good luck - it's a tough business, but extremely gratifying.

I have looked at the packages mentioned in this post but they are all very expensive and seem old and outdated. We did a demo with FlexiBake today which was excellent. Does anyone have any experience with FlexiBake?

Hi

I've been evaluating both BakeSmart and Flexibake for use in a retail bakery. Both programs appear to do what I need, so I was wondering more about how easy / difficult are the companies to work with? What kind of support do they provide? How responsive are they? How often to they publish updates?

Thanks,

Roman

QuickBooks is a good software for your accounting needs, it has some great features related to your accounting needs like calculation of employee payment, wage payment, tax calculation, printing check, direct deposit option and many other features.. I have written a review on top accounting software, which would be helpful in knowing each accounting software in detail.

You were using BakeSmart in 2010.  How do you feel about the upgrade to their new program?