Just wondering how Australians work out pricing for their cakes.

Is it a combination of making back the cost of all your ingredients, then adding on labour?

Do you have a standard per slice, type of system?

I'm just starting out charging for friends of friends and I am finding it difficult to work out how best to price. I don't want to over/undercharge, and want to know that I'm getting what is reasonable for the time and effort that goes in to each cake.

Any ideas, thoughts and advice would be great.

AWould love the Answer too! Have a few people starting to order cakes. Never sold one before! I have no idea.

If the price is by slice, how do I know how many slices in my cakes?

I don't sell cakes but I have known quite a few ladies who do.  Don't know how they work out their price but I do know that none of them have ever charged by the slice.  I had never heard of this until I joined this site.
 

ANY BODY TRIED THE CAKES WORLD ALPHABET CAKE TINS??

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/the-cakes-world/ALPHABETS-/_i.html?rt=nc&_fsub=3997995013&_sid=228721893&_trksid=p4634.c0.m14.l1513&_pgn=2

CakieBakie I think you ended up with your thread in the wrong place.  I don't know anything about these letter cake tins but I do have little silicone ones that I bought on ebay.  Each of my letters is about the size of 2 cupcakes and I just pour a simple icing over them and let it drizzle down and then put some wimple decorations on top.  People love getting their names.
 

I am in Australia and I price by the slice.  My basic unit is for a one inch by two inch by three inch slice. We rarely tort our cakes in Australia and we usually bake a 3 inch cake , so by the time it is ganached and covered it is closer to three and a half inches. If I torte it is closer to four. 

Hi there :)

I use to try and price my cakes upon a 'per slice' basis.. but it doesn't make sense really, as you most likely know already that every cake you design and decorate is so uniquely different and there are so many variables. 

I feel personally that the best way is to cost out your ingredients, materials, gas & electricity, water (to the very last.. including the ribbon around the base board!), and then sit down and really try your hardest to guesstimate how long this cake is going to take you to complete.. from getting your ingredients out of the cupboard, preping, baking, ganaching, covering, constructing together the tiers to finally decorating! Once you have worked out your hours of labour, you need to ask yourself what you feel your time is worth per hour. I for example try and work for $25 p/h.. it doesn't always work that way.. and I know as an artist I get carried away and feel the desire to go 'above and beyond!' lol.. and if I do, well hey that is my choice if I don't charge for it.

My calculations would be for example a cake that was going to take 15 hours to put together and cost $125 in materials and ingredients etc -

15hrs x $25 = $375 + costs $125 = $500

And I am a BIG endorser of the pricing software CakeBoss.. omg it is invaluable when you are serious about running a professional business and ensuring you are not ripping of either yourself or your clients ;)

Oh and I definitely torte my cakes.. twice actually.. I actually thought most Aussie decorators do?! 

Cheers!

Thanks so much cutiepiecupcake, that's exactly the type of system I have been trying to use. What you've said is extremely informative. 

I find it difficult to estimate the cost of the use of utilities like, gas, water, electricity etc. I'm also finding that we put so much time into our cakes, there are hours and hours of prep before we even start baking, and we pretty much end up charging only to get back a little after cost. I think I need to sit down again and rethink everything, I just feel bad to charge more than $200 for anything. It ends up that we are getting paid for only 4 hours of work max, when we put in usually anywhere from 15 hours and up.

Oh yeah, we also torte our cakes in to three, and we almost always use ganache on cakes and buttercream on cupcakes.