A bakery inventory list is one row per ingredient and packaging item, with the unit you count it in, how much you keep on hand (the par), what's there now, and what it costs, so that one sheet tells you what to order this week and what your stock is worth at month end. Here's a filled-in example for a small bakery, the four formulas that make it work, a ten-minute weekly routine, and the file to download (Excel format, opens in Google Sheets, no sign-up).
The short version
- One row per item. Count in the unit you'd say aloud: bags of flour, pounds of butter, dozens of eggs.
- Four numbers you type per row: par, reorder point, on hand, and the date you counted. The rest are formulas.
- Order = par minus on hand, whenever on hand is at or below the reorder point.
- Count the short-dated things weekly (dairy, eggs, yeast, fruit) and everything monthly.
- Value = on hand × cost per unit. The total at the bottom is your closing stock for the books.
The list
Twelve rows from a two-person bakery, counted on Monday, September 21, 2026. The real sheet has forty or so.
| Item | Unit | Units per pack | Cost per pack | Cost per unit | Par | Reorder at | On hand | Order | Packs | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bread flour | 50 lb bag | 1 | $25.00 | $25.00 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 5 | $75.00 |
| All-purpose flour | 50 lb bag | 1 | $22.00 | $22.00 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | $88.00 |
| Sugar, granulated | 50 lb bag | 1 | $45.50 | $45.50 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | $91.00 |
| Butter, unsalted | lb | 36 | $144.00 | $4.00 | 108 | 36 | 50 | 0 | 0 | $200.00 |
| Eggs, large | doz | 15 | $45.00 | $3.00 | 30 | 10 | 8 | 22 | 2 | $24.00 |
| Heavy cream | qt | 12 | $54.00 | $4.50 | 24 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 0 | $45.00 |
| Whole milk | gal | 1 | $5.20 | $5.20 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 5 | $5.20 |
| Yeast, instant | 1 lb pack | 20 | $110.00 | $5.50 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | $33.00 |
| Chocolate, dark | lb | 25 | $75.00 | $3.00 | 50 | 25 | 12 | 38 | 2 | $36.00 |
| Vanilla extract | qt | 1 | $38.00 | $38.00 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | $38.00 |
| Cake boxes, 10 in | each | 100 | $62.00 | $0.62 | 200 | 100 | 140 | 0 | 0 | $86.80 |
| Bread bags | each | 1,000 | $48.00 | $0.048 | 1,000 | 300 | 250 | 750 | 1 | $12.00 |
| Total | $734.00 |
Download the sheet with these rows, the formulas and a printable count tab, or build it from what follows.
Three things about the columns. The unit is what you count, and the pack is what you buy, because you count butter in pounds and order it by the 36 lb case. The par is the amount you want on the shelf after an order arrives. The reorder point is the level that triggers the order, which should be about what you use during the supplier's lead time plus a cushion; reorder point example works one out from real usage, and par level vs reorder point explains why you want both numbers and not one.
The formulas
With the columns in the order shown (units per pack in C, cost per pack in D, par in F, reorder at in G, on hand in H), row 2:
=D2/C2 cost per unit (E)
=IF(H2<=G2, F2-H2, 0) order, in units (I)
=ROUNDUP(I2/C2, 0) packs to order (J)
=H2*E2 value (K)
=SUM(K2:K200) total value, at the bottom
A fifth that's worth adding: order cost, =J2*D2. On the sheet above it comes to $477.00 for this week's order
(five bags of bread flour, two cases of eggs, five gallons of milk, two cases of chocolate, a quart of vanilla and
a case of bread bags). One number, before you phone the supplier, that tells you whether this week is a normal one.
Chocolate is the row to look at. On hand is 12 lb against a reorder point of 25, so the order is 38 lb, which rounds up to two 25 lb cases. That's the whole point of the packs column: the sheet asks for what you can actually buy.
The ten-minute weekly count
Pick the day before your main order goes in.
- Print the count tab. It lists the items in shelf order, dry storage first, then the walk-in, with a blank count column. Counting from paper and typing once is fewer mistakes than typing in the cooler.
- Count the short-dated things every week and everything else monthly. For cream, milk, eggs and yeast, you're also checking dates, and one row per lot is the way to track those.
- Type the counts in and put the date in the last-counted column. The order column fills itself.
- Send the order.
- Once a month, count everything and write down the total value. That's your closing inventory for the accountant, and it's the number a proper count is for.
After a month or two the order column starts telling you things. An item that's ordered every single week has a par that's too low, or a reorder point too high. One that's never ordered is either dead stock or something you should count less often.
Setting the par
Rules of thumb, and I'd revisit them after the first month: par is about a week and a half of use for anything you order weekly; the reorder point is what you'd use during the lead time plus a day. For bread flour at five bags a week from a supplier who delivers in two days, that's a par of 8 and a reorder point of around 3 or 4. For a 50 lb bag of salt that lasts four months, par 2 and reorder at 1. Don't set pars from the rep's suggestion; set them from what actually left the shelf, which is what the "last counted" history is for. How to price baked goods needs the same numbers, so the sheet earns its keep twice.
Where this stops working
The list is right on the day it's counted and drifts from there, because nothing subtracts the flour when bread is baked. That's fine with a weekly count of the things that matter and a monthly count of everything, and it stops being fine at the second person, the second site, or the week nobody counts. The pars get set once and never touched. Prices creep, so the value column is a year old by the time anyone notices. And the sheet knows nothing about which case of cream expires first; the expiry math needs one row per lot, which is a second sheet. It's the usual story with spreadsheets, and the sheet is still the right place to start.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack imports this list as it is, units, pars and costs included. Counting happens on a phone or a printed sheet, works with no signal in the walk-in, and shows what a difference is worth before it's posted. The reorder list is in days of cover rather than a par somebody set last spring, and reorder points are suggested from how each item actually moves. Buy by the case, stock by the pound, bake by the gram: the conversions are done for you. When a batch is recorded against a recipe, the flour comes off the shelf on its own and the price-creep report shows which supplier has been nudging prices up. Stock, counts and reordering are part of every plan, from $49 a month; recipes that deduct stock are part of Standard.