What Goes in an Order Form for Bakery?

One of the most exciting things most home-based bakers do in their businesses is create unique items that show their tasty creativity. While chocolate chip cookies and warm loaves of French or Italian bread are delicious, many cottage industries and home bakers go far beyond these staples. As they begin to fulfill special requests, bakers must make sure that they accurately transcribe all of the details so their customers will not be disappointed. Nothing is more upsetting than spending time creating a fancy blueberry pie only to learn that the customer really wanted strawberry rhubarb.

Having an order form for bakery goods you produce is an essential tool for your business. Whether the form simply serves as a checklist for your basic menu or allows for special orders may depend on your baking schedule and comfort level. At a minimum, you should have an online order form rather than relying on slips of paper or your memory.

You can expedite and improve your business operations with a bakery order form template free to download and modify. Rather than trying to juggle handwritten notes or learning a cumbersome database, a free Excel template for bakery orders will streamline the process and help you organize and prioritize. More than content that sits on a screen, this printable bakery order form template allows you to create order copies for clients that serve as a confirmation of their requests.

You have options. One is to spend long hours trying to customize a database or spreadsheet by creating data fields and embedding calculations. Another option is a bakery order form template free for download, one that can be adjusted much more easily than trying to create a template from scratch. With this free bakery order template Excel spreadsheet functions are easily at your fingertips and customization is a breeze.

Or — try Castiron, a food business management platform that's actually built for food. Castiron's cake, cookie, cupcake, and other order form templates make it easy as pie to collect the information you need from customers. Start using our custom order form templates today!

Selecting an Online Cake Order Form Template

Moving Beyond Paper Record Keeping

As a baker, you do your research before you place your goods in the oven. You select, refine, and perfect your recipes, understanding the importance of creating consistently tasty products while experimenting with new menu options in a carefully thought-out process. The precision and perfection you emphasize in the kitchen requires a lot of planning, documentation, and organization before and after you turn off your ovens. Whether it is tracking orders or accounting for income and expenses, the days of trying to keep track of data and numbers in a paper journal are in the past.

Creating a simple cake order form is possible using many software programs. The simplest form can be designed as a basic document on a word processor, such as Word. Although most word processors have template functions, these documents cannot crunch data the way a database or spreadsheet can. Using Excel is a slightly better option, since this very capable spreadsheet has the ability to import and export data between different forms. Despite these enhancements, this tool is of limited value if not used in an online environment.

Basic Options from Google

In selecting an online bakery order form, you should evaluate how flexible these tools are and if they will meet your ever-changing needs. One free solution is to use Google Apps that are available to anyone with a Google account. Instead of a traditional word processor, one could use Google Docs. As an alternative to Excel, Google Sheets offers some helpful functions. To create content and analyze it, a person could use Google Forms.

Taken together, these Google Apps offer a basic solution to developing online ordering forms. As an order form template Google Forms can handle basic functions. For a beginning home-based or cottage baker trying to develop a bakery order form Google Forms may serve their purpose, though it will require time to develop their data fields. For a person who bakes a limited number of selections, such as a baker who offers only a few different cookie varieties, a cookie order form like Google Docs may be sufficient. However, as a baker expands their options and customers -- as they inevitably will -- want specialized baked goods, the options available in the Google Apps family will not meet the needs of a baker.

While Google Apps exist in an online environment and take advantage of the web, there may be limitations for bakers who want a more seamless and integrated online ordering and management system. For example, Google Forms does not work for online payments by your customers. Many of these tools may be great for use by a single person or in a closely knit network, but their applicability in a broader sense is limited due to security concerns as a file or document is shared more broadly.

A Better Option From Castiron

For bakers seeking a handy and easy-to-personalize bakery order form online, Castiron offers a better option than Google Forms and other Google Apps. The most important difference is that Castiron was created specifically with the needs of bakers, chefs, cooks, and others in the culinary arts in mind. Instead of using a generic template that offers only limited flexibility, you can have access to a home bakery and cake order form online that you and your customers can use with ease. This form will accurately track orders and remove a lot of the paperwork burden from your workday.

Free bakery order forms are among the many practical and useful tools available from Castiron. Created with your needs in mind, the Castiron website is a portal with many helpful resources. Castiron offers many website tools for people in the baking industry, as well as a way to learn from a worldwide community of culinary experts and to read a blog with expert advice that focuses on the needs of bakers and cooks like you. Having an online ordering resource is just icing on the cake for the tools you will find at Castiron.

The home bakery order form from Castiron is perfectly suited for all home bakers. Whether you create specialized French pastries or bake Cuban bread or Mexican bolillos, you can modify the helpful order form available from Castiron to meet your individualized needs. As your menu changes or you add new ordering options, Castiron's helpful online form will allow you to manage your orders and sales.

How to Create a Cake Order Form with Castiron

While this helpful utility works with all types of baked goods, a discussion of how it can help a cake baker offers a great example of Castiron's value. An editable cake order form allows you to establish a variety of options. You can add fields where your customers can select the size, flavor, frosting and icing, theme, decoration options, border color, border trim color, writing color, and so many other selections. You can have categories ready to select, as well as space for a narrative to describe any special requests. Castiron order forms for bakers are flexible, meaning you can add as many fields as you'd like, and ask any questions that you'd like.

The cake order form online can also include pickup or delivery information and deposit and payment details. Having the ability to track orders from the time you purchase supplies and ingredients to the successful delivery of the cake and receipt of payment make an online cake order form template from Castiron the best choice for your home-based baking business. This template goes beyond the capabilities of stand-alone versions of Word and Excel, as well as apps available from Google, such as Google Forms.

If you bake cakes, you know that your standards must be very high. If one doughnut in a baker's dozen has a little less filling than expected, it is not a terribly upsetting experience for your customer. However, if a quinceañera cake or wedding cake fails to meet the client's expectations, online reviews and negative social media may cause irreparable damage to your home-based business. Giving a customer an extra Bavarian cream or jelly doughnut is an easy fix, but there is no way to have a second quinceañera or exchange of wedding vows if an order is not properly completed.

Castiron offers a great solution for you. You can create a quinceañera or wedding cake order form template that allows customers to select from basic choices and personalize them with the enhancements and writing that will make their cake a signature part of a memorable event. The printable cake order form template allows you to share a copy of the order if they prefer physical copies, but every Castiron order request is also emailed to you and your customer for safekeeping.

If cakes, cookies, or other baked goods are a major part of your home baking business, Castiron has a great solution for you to track, manage, and expedite your orders while guaranteeing a level of accuracy that is imperative for your business.

Consider Castiron for Your Bakery Form Needs

Whether you create cakes, decorate sugar cookies, bake breads, or dust doughnuts with powdered sugar, your bakery is a big part of your life. You may have your oven warming up hours before your neighbors wake up, and might spend your weekends delivering the perfect cake to a wedding reception in a kitchen full of caterers. However you do your baking magic, you need a customized bakery ordering form template that allows you to turn your baked goods into bread in your wallet.

Home bakers and cottage industry cooks will find the tools available from Castiron to be an important ingredient in the success of your business. The bakery order form template, along with website development tools, helpful blogs, and other resources will allow you to elevate your local business into a popular choice. Visit Castiron's website to learn about their customizable online order forms.