is there any other software that is simmilar to cakeboss but doesnt cost as much? i dont make a whole lot of cakes so i dont have the money to spend since right now i barely break even with each cake i would do. but i really need a program like cakeboss

First, it sounds like you're under charging for your cakes. When you say break even, do you mean with supplies and ingredients or are you including some calculation for your labor as well. Even with your labor, you probably should increase your prices. I know it's what the market will take but you're not competing with Walmart. You are doing custom cakes.

As for the software, not that I know of. Cakeboss is considered extremely cheap by software standards. I know that doesn't help you when you're just starting out but cost by use and features it's really well priced. There are a few Excel spreadsheets here on CC people use to calculate cost but I don't think they do order tracking, calendar etc.

You may want to put away $10 from each cake you do and just save up for it. Have a CakeBoss jar or something. It will be worth it. Software like quickbooks and turbo tax are similiarly priced and have to be updated so many years (new cost to you). Cakeboss is a one time fee (discount for CC users) free techsupport, and I think they've only done one "paid upgrade" and that's because of the new feature development. And that wasn't mandated, it was pay to upgrade if you want.

For what it does cake boss really doesn't cost that much, but if you have an excess of free time you could probably duplicate the functionality in a free office suite like OpenOffice (or Microsoft Office is you already have it). You would need to develop your own custom pricing spreadsheets, or you could even use pen and paper. To keep track of customer data and expenses you can use another spreadsheet or again a paper-based solution. For invoicing you can create your own in any word processing or page layout program, or you can buy blank invoices.

http://www.openoffice.org/

If you are looking at it for the pricing aspect, then you don't have to purchase anything. Just get out a pen and some paper.

Make a list of everything you use for the cake.

Get the prices for the items you buy. You can get them off reciepts, or just walk through the store with your list and right down prices.

Next you figure out the price per serving (or the amount you use in your product). As an example, if a bag of flour costs you $2 and has 10 cups in it, and you use 4 cups per recipe, then you can figure that it costs you .20 per cup or .80 for flour for the recipe.

Don't forget to factor your cake boards, supports, and additional non food items you use on the cake. You can also round up or add in some extra for the smaller items you may not want to price out per cake, like paper towels, wax paper, tooth pics and so on.

Tally your numbers and you will have an idea of what you spend on the items to make a cake.

There are other things you may need to factor in, such as electricity, any licenses you may need, insurance and so forth.

I love openoffice.

Kelley, I teach new food entrepreneurs how to start their business and in every class we do a basic pricing exercise using TexasSugar's pen and paper process. And I recommend cakeboss as an excellent tool to help them in pricing and tracking. I made the statement because several times people (my students, people who have read my book, and CCmembers) have emailed me to ask what they should charge for something because they are not inclined (for whatever reason) to do the math.

Kelley, I have heard nothing but great things about CakeBoss.

I, for one, am a hobby bake that just does cakes for family and friends, and not very many at that. So I look at the pricing from that stand point, and was taking the OP's question from that view of things.

I do think you can get a basic idea of what you are spending by looking at receipts and doing some math, especially if you only have a few recipes or use cake mixes (doctored or what ever).

From that basic idea OP can make sure she is charging more for her cakes and can set aside money to spend on the software at a later date.

Mimi, as a WMI I get the pricing question a lot. I could simply tell them what I would charge, but that doesn't help them in the long run figure out how to charge for themselves. I could also suggest they call around to bakeries, but as I have said in other posts, there are so many variables that in the end they have to make sure they are covering their costs and time.

While I do think there are some people that are lazy about pricing (aka, the ones that post pricing questions over and over for different cakes) I don't assume that everyone is. I honestly think people just don't know where to start with it.

Been there done that. When you are first starting out you just pull a number out of your head that you don't want to be too much cause you don't want them to think you are screwing them. After a while you either get burnt out on spending so much time working on cakes and barely breaking even, or you realise that something has to change and you start doing some real math to see how much you are spending.

I think it is an eye opener when you go from a cake mix costs $1.25 and a bag of powder sugar costs $2, so I spend less than $5 to make a cake, to realizing that you are also using the eggs, oil, butter/crisco, vanilla that you bought to cook for your family, not to mention the other things like cake boards and so on.