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Overview

Pricing is the hardest part of running a bakery, so Knead does the math for you. Every product form has a Help me price this calculator that turns your real costs — ingredients, time, overhead, packaging, and card fees — into a suggested price with a healthy margin baked in. It is available on every plan, and one tap drops the number straight into your price field. The Help me price this calculator showing cost inputs, a target margin slider, and a suggested price

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Opening the Calculator

The calculator lives right on the product form.
  1. Open a product from your catalog, or start a new one.
  2. Expand the Help me price this section.
  3. Fill in your costs (below), then read off the Suggested price.
It is a collapsible panel, so it stays out of your way until you need it.

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What You Enter

The calculator asks for the numbers that actually make up your cost per item:
  • Ingredient cost per batch — What the ingredients for one batch cost you.
  • Labor rate — Your pay in dollars per hour.
  • Active hours per batch — Hands-on time for one batch (mixing, decorating, packing).
  • Overhead % — A percentage added to cover rent, utilities, and other fixed costs.
  • Packaging cost per unit — Boxes, ribbon, and labels for one unit.
  • Payment fee % — The card processing fee you pay (for example, ~2.9%).
  • Units per batch — How many sell units one batch yields.
Then set the Target margin slider, anywhere from 0% to 90%. That is the profit margin you want the suggested price to hit.
Good to know: If the product is linked to a recipe, Knead prefills your ingredient cost, units per batch, and active hours straight from that recipe — so you often only need to check the numbers and set your target margin. See Linking Recipes to Products.

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What the Calculator Shows You

As you type, Knead updates a full breakdown:
  • Suggested price — Your recommended price, grossed up so the card fee comes out of the customer’s payment instead of your margin.
  • Cost breakdown — Ingredients, labor, overhead, and packaging, line by line.
  • Profit per unit — What you keep on each item after all costs.
  • Batch profit — What you keep on a full batch.
  • Effective $/hour — What you are really earning per hour of hands-on work at this price. This is the number that tells you whether a product is worth your time.

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Three price tiers

Knead also offers three ready-made price points so you can position a product:
TierMargin
Budget20%
RecommendedYour target margin
Premium50%
When the price looks right, tap Apply this price and Knead drops the suggested price into the product’s Price field. You can still edit it by hand afterward.
Pro tip: Watch the Effective $/hour more than the sticker price. A $45 cake that takes three hours to decorate may pay you less per hour than a $28 dozen cookies — the calculator makes that trade-off visible.

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Setting Your Pricing Defaults

So you are not re-typing the same numbers on every product, Knead fills in a few fields from your business settings.
  1. Go to Settings then Quoting.
  2. Open Pricing Defaults.
  3. Set your default overhead % and payment fee %.
Pricing Defaults under Settings then Quoting, with overhead percent and payment fee percent fields Your labor rate default comes from your labor-rate setting — see Setting Your Labor Rate. Any default can be overridden on a single product without changing the setting.

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How Knead Reads Your Margin

Once a product has a price and a cost, Knead flags its margin so you can spot the weak ones at a glance:
MarginFlag
40% and upHealthy
~20% to 40%Warning
Under 20%Critical
If a product lands in the warning or critical range, that is Knead’s cue to raise the price, trim a cost, or reserve it for higher-volume orders.
Still need help? Contact us