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Overview

Your labor rate tells Knead how much your time costs per hour. This feeds directly into recipe costing, giving you an accurate picture of what each product truly costs to make.

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Where to Set Your Labor Rate

  1. Tap Settings in the main navigation.
  2. Tap Business.
  3. Find the Labor Rate field.
  4. Enter your hourly rate (for example, $25.00 per hour).
  5. Save.
Knead stores this value in cents for precision. You enter a dollar amount, and Knead handles the conversion behind the scenes.

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How Labor Rate Feeds Into Recipe Costing

Every recipe in Knead can include production phases — mixing, baking, decorating, packaging. Each phase has a time estimate in minutes. Knead uses a straightforward formula: Labor cost = Total production time x Hourly rate For example, if your labor rate is $25/hour and a recipe takes 90 minutes across all phases:
  • 90 minutes = 1.5 hours
  • 1.5 hours x 25=∗∗25 = **37.50 labor cost**
This labor cost is added to the ingredient cost to give you a total cost per product.

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Why This Matters

Without accounting for labor, you underestimate what your products cost. A cake that uses 12iningredientsbuttakes3hourstomakeactuallycosts12 in ingredients but takes 3 hours to make actually costs 12 + 75=75 = 87 at a $25/hour rate. That changes how you price it. Accurate total costs help you:
  • Set prices that cover your time, not only your ingredients.
  • Calculate real profit margins in The Pantry.
  • Identify which products are worth your time and which are not.
Pro tip: Not sure what to set? Start with what you would pay someone else to do the same work. You can always adjust it later as you refine your pricing.

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Updating Your Labor Rate

You can change your labor rate anytime. When you update it:
  • Future recipe cost calculations use the new rate.
  • Existing orders and invoices are not recalculated.
  • Product margins on the pricing page update to reflect the new labor cost.
Good to know: If you have not added time estimates to your recipe phases, the labor cost shows as $0. Add time estimates to each phase to get meaningful labor cost data.
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