There isn't one bakery software. There are five jobs: taking payment, taking orders, planning the day's bake, costing recipes, and keeping track of ingredients. Most small bakeries need a till plus one tool for the kitchen, and which kitchen tool depends on how you sell: custom cakes from home, a retail counter with preorders, or wholesale routes. Below is each kind with a named example, what it cost when I read the pricing pages on September 24, 2026, and what it doesn't do.
The short version
- A till takes the money. Square is the common one, and it's free to start.
- Home bakers pricing custom cakes want a costing-and-orders app, like CakeBoss.
- Retail bakeries juggling preorders and cake orders look at order software, like BakeSmart.
- Wholesale bakeries with standing orders and routes look at production systems, like FlexiBake.
- Anyone who buys by the case and bakes in batches needs something that knows where the butter went. That's inventory software, which is where TaroStack sits.
The five jobs at a glance
| Job | What it covers | An example, and its price |
|---|---|---|
| Taking payment | The counter, the market, online orders | Square: Square Free; more inventory features on Plus and Premium, $49 and $149 per location monthly |
| Custom orders at home | Quotes, invoices, recipe costs, shopping lists | CakeBoss: $149 the first year, then $36/year |
| Orders for a retail bakery | Preorders, cake orders, customer records, production reports | BakeSmart: $99/month per location, plus setup from $499; some modules extra |
| Wholesale production | Standing orders, production scheduling, routes, labels | FlexiBake: from $295/month; ingredient lot tracking and inventory from $375/month; extra users $145 to $175 each |
| Ingredients and lots | What's in the walk-in, what went into each bake, what expires | TaroStack: $49/month for stock, lots and expiry; $99/month for recipes, batches and planning |
Prices change. Every one of these companies publishes its own, and it's worth reading them yourself on the day you decide.
A till: Square
Most small bakeries already have one, and Square is a common choice. Square Free covers "basic item management", and the free inventory can "stay updated on stock for all your items", send low-stock alerts, and export counts. Plus and Premium add unit costs, cost-of-goods reports, transfers between locations, purchase orders and barcode labels (Square).
For ingredients, Square has a beta called Square Recipes, for Square for Restaurants Plus and Premium, which takes ingredients off as items sell. It has "no batch prep or recipes of recipes" (Square), which is the catch for a bakery, where nearly everything starts as a dough or a filling. The longer version is does Square do inventory.
Custom cakes from home: CakeBoss
CakeBoss calls itself "the original home bakery business management software". It does recipe costing, pricing, quotes and invoices with your logo, order scheduling and shopping lists, in a browser on your phone or computer (CakeBoss). It costs $149 for the first year and $36 for each year after, with a 30-day money-back guarantee (CakeBoss).
For a cottage baker whose hard problem is "what do I charge for a three-tier cake?", that's a very reasonable price. It isn't trying to track lots or run a production floor, and it doesn't need to.
A retail counter with preorders: BakeSmart
BakeSmart's core platform is $99/month per location, with order management, a customer database, production reports, payment processing and multi-location support. eCommerce, a cake matrix, wholesale and point of sale are modules on top, and implementation starts at $499 (BakeSmart). Its pricing page doesn't list recipes or ingredient inventory, so if those matter, ask.
Judging by the modules, it's aimed at the bakery whose phone rings with birthday-cake orders and whose case needs filling by 7 a.m.
Wholesale bakeries: FlexiBake
FlexiBake is a production system for recipe-based food manufacturers, bakeries first, and it's frank about the size: businesses "scaling from $1-5 million in annual revenue or growing into a $20-30 million operation" (FlexiBake). Its tiers, from its pricing page:
| FlexiBake | Monthly | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Nutritional | $125 | Nutrition analysis, nutrition labels, costing |
| Base | $295 | Production scheduling, an online ordering portal, routes, accounting integration; $145 per extra user |
| Professional | $375 | Ingredient lot tracking and product traceability, inventory management; $165 per extra user |
| Corporate | $495 | Fresh and stale returns, a delivery driver app; $175 per extra user |
(FlexiBake). If you run routes to thirty cafés and need nutrition labels on every loaf, this is the kind of system built for you. TaroStack doesn't write nutrition labels, for one.
The kitchen: ingredients, batches and lots
Here's the gap. The till knows what sold. The order software knows what's ordered. Neither knows that Monday's dough used six pounds of butter from the case that expires Thursday, or that the cream behind it is dated Saturday. Below FlexiBake's Professional tier, that job goes to a spreadsheet or to inventory software.
A spreadsheet is a fine start, and there's a free bakery inventory list with the formulas done. The piece of arithmetic that's easiest to skip, and most worth doing, is the weekly check on what will expire before you can use it, which is worked through in how to keep track of expiring ingredients in a bakery.
Which ones a small bakery needs
My take, by the shape of the business:
- Home or cottage baker, mostly custom orders: a costing-and-orders app (or a good spreadsheet) and a card reader.
- Retail counter: a till, plus order software if preorders are what's eating your mornings, plus something for ingredients once you're throwing away cream or selling wholesale.
- Wholesale with routes: a production system like FlexiBake if you need routes and labels, or inventory software plus your accounting if you don't.
And one rule for all of them: pick the tool for the job that hurts now, not for the bakery you might be in three years. Modules you never open still get billed.
Where this stops working
The trouble with the stack is that each tool holds part of the truth. The till has sales, the cake app has orders, the spreadsheet has ingredients, and every morning somebody copies numbers from one to another. It works while that somebody is you and you're not sick. When there are two of you, or two sites, or a wholesale account asking for lot codes, the copying is where it breaks, and a spreadsheet only knows what it's told.
How TaroStack does it
Square takes the money, and CakeBoss, BakeSmart or FlexiBake can take the orders. What none of them does well is the kitchen: where the butter went, which dough used which lot, and what Tuesday's croissants really cost. That's the job TaroStack does. Recipes hold sub-recipes (the dough inside the croissant, the pastry cream inside the tart), with unit conversion from the case to the gram and a scrap percentage for trimmings. Recording a batch takes the ingredients from the lots that expire soonest and notes which lots it used. It answers "what could I make right now" from what's on the shelf, and planning suggests what to bake and buy for the week, as drafts you approve.
The waste you'd otherwise find at month end shows up early: the expiring-stock forecast says what will still be on the shelf on its date, and what it's worth. Counts happen on a phone, even in the walk-in with no signal. And a wholesale café that wants five days of shelf life can carry that rule on its account, so it never gets a two-day loaf.
TaroStack sits beside your till rather than replacing it. Starter is $49 a month for stock, lots and expiry; recipes, batches and planning are on Standard at $99. The first 30 days are free, and your ingredient list imports from a spreadsheet. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.