Recipe costing: how the cost of a recipe is calculated
All plans
What recipe costing adds up (ingredients, staff and overheads), how the cost per unit and per kilo is worked out, its charts and cost trend.
What it is for
Recipe costing answers the question “how much does it really cost me to make this?”. It is not just the raw materials: your team’s hours and a share of the rent, electricity and other bakery expenses count too. Without that calculation, the selling price is a gamble.
Recipok works out the costing of each recipe automatically, from its ingredients and the costs you set up once. It is used by whoever sets prices and whoever keeps an eye on the margin. This article explains what it adds up, how to read it and how to follow its trend.
Before you start
- Every ingredient needs its price and its unit. An ingredient priced at 0, or counted in pieces with no weight per unit, distorts the cost. See The ingredient sheet.
- Set up your fixed and staff costs. Without them, the costing only includes ingredients.
- Every recipe needs its Handling time (minutes) and, if it loses weight when baked, its Actual weight.
How it is calculated
| Item | How Recipok calculates it |
|---|---|
| Ingredient cost | Quantity × price for each line, using the gross quantity (before waste). Semi-finished products contribute their own full cost. |
| Personnel cost | What an hour of your production team costs, converted to minutes, × the recipe’s handling minutes. |
| Fixed costs (overheads) | Your monthly fixed costs ÷ the hours your team works per month, converted to minutes, × the handling minutes. |
| Total cost | Ingredients + staff + overheads. If the recipe generates by-products that reduce the cost, their value is subtracted. |
| Cost per unit | Total cost ÷ units obtained. |
| Cost per kilogram | Total cost ÷ actual weight. If there is no actual weight, ÷ the total weight of ingredients. |
An example from Pastelería La Plaza, a cheesecake with 25 minutes of handling: ingredients €11.49 + overheads €2.08 + staff €5.63 = €19.20 per cake. With an actual weight of 2,050 g, that comes to €9.37 per kilo.
Read the costing in the recipe
Open the recipe and click Costing and charts in the Recipe options menu. It is read only: to change a figure, you change its source (the ingredient price, the time or the fixed costs).
| Item | Global |
|---|---|
| Ingredient cost | €11.49 |
| 1Fixed costs | €2.08 |
| 1Personnel cost | €5.63 |
| Total cost | €19.20 |
| Cost per pc | €19.20 |
| 2Selling cost | €1.45 |
- 1If overheads or staff come out as zero, the handling time or the fixed costs are missing.
- 2Selling cost: the shop costs you declare in the target margin, spread over the selling price. It is shown separately because it is not part of the production cost.
- 3Cost breakdown: the chart showing the weight of each block.
In the ingredients table, each line shows its cost and its percentage of the total cost: that way you can see at a glance which ingredient weighs most. In the top bar, the Cost block summarises the current cost and its variation.
Cost trend
Every night Recipok saves a snapshot of the cost of every recipe. Click Variation or View cost history in the recipe to open the Cost history: current cost, average cost, range (minimum and maximum), the Cost evolution chart and the table of changes with their date and variation.
To review your whole catalogue, use the Variation filter in Recipes and formulas (since yesterday, a week, a month, three months or a year): it lists the recipes that have become more expensive. It is your signal that a selling price needs reviewing.
Costing on paper
- Print › Cost report in the recipe: a PDF with the weight, the cost per ingredient as an amount and a percentage, staff, overheads (by category) and the breakdown of nested recipes.
- Recipes › Recipe costing: the whole catalogue in one table, for the administrator only. See Recipe reports.
Common mistakes
- Cost too low: ingredients without a price, packaging not added or handling time left empty. In My Recipes, the Time button assigns the same time to several selected recipes.
- Cost multiplied by a thousand: it is almost always a mistyped actual weight. See The cost is too high.
- Once the cost is clear, the next step is the selling price.