Weekly Bakery Production Schedule Spreadsheet
The Automated Production Planning System for Artisan Bakeries — From Order Intake to Baking Schedule to Staff Assignment
Tuesday afternoon. The production schedule for Wednesday is not done.
The head baker knows roughly what needs to be made. The sourdoughs are bulk fermenting. There are twelve custom cake orders for the weekend. Three wholesale accounts need delivery Thursday morning. The farmers’ market order needs to leave by 7 AM Friday. The new part-time staff member starts tomorrow and there is no written task list.
“Roughly knowing” what needs to be made is a production strategy that works until it doesn’t — until the week where two things were forgotten, one thing was over-produced and sold at a loss or discarded, and two staff members were doing the same task because no written schedule existed.
This spreadsheet ends roughly knowing.
📥 Digital download. Opens in Excel or Google Sheets. Usable from day one.
THE SPREADSHEET SYSTEM — EVERY SHEET EXPLAINED
SHEET 1: THE MASTER PRODUCT LIST
The Product Database
Every product the bakery makes, documented in one place. For each product:
Production data: The batch size (how many units one production batch produces), the prep time (the hands-on time — mixing, shaping, decorating), the passive time (the time the product is in the oven, proofer, chiller, or setting without active attention), the total time-to-completion from first action to ready-to-sell, and the oven position requirements (the rack configuration and the temperature profile, important for scheduling oven time across multiple simultaneous products).
Ingredient data: The raw material requirements per batch (linked to the inventory sheet), the total ingredient cost per batch (auto-calculated from the ingredient unit costs in the inventory sheet), the yield per batch in units, and the ingredient cost per unit.
Storage and shelf-life data: The storage method (ambient, chilled, frozen), the display life (how long the product can be on the counter before quality drops), and the advance production window (how many days in advance this product can be made without quality loss — the data that drives intelligent pre-production scheduling).
Pricing data: The retail price, the wholesale price if applicable, the gross margin per unit (auto-calculated), and the target weekly production quantity by channel (retail counter, wholesale, pre-orders, online). 📊
SHEET 2: THE WEEKLY ORDER INTAKE
The Order Aggregation Tool
All incoming orders for the week entered in one place, automatically feeding into the production requirement calculations:
Walk-in sales forecast: The historical average units sold per day by product category (the data input that improves over time as the bakery accumulates weeks of sales data), the event or promotional adjustment factor for weeks with special events, and the resulting forecast by product.
Pre-orders and custom orders: The individual order entry — customer name, product, quantity, required-by date, any special instructions. Each order feeds directly into the production requirement for the relevant day.
Wholesale orders: The standing order by account (the weekly recurring quantity that is automatically included in the production requirement) and the variable order entry for weeks where an account orders above or below their standing amount.
Online orders: The imported order total by product from the e-commerce platform, with the required-by date based on the shipping cut-off schedule.
The aggregated output: the total units required by product for the week, disaggregated by day. The number the production schedule is built from. 📋
SHEET 3: THE PRODUCTION SCHEDULE
The Week View
The production schedule that translates the order requirement into a day-by-day, hour-by-hour plan:
The production-before-sale logic: For each product, the advance production window from the product database determines which day the product must be made by to be ready when required. Sourdough bread sold on Friday requires production Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. Custom decorated cakes for Saturday collection require sponge production Thursday, filling and crumb coat Friday, final decoration Friday evening or Saturday morning. The schedule that builds backward from the sale day.
The oven capacity model: The oven’s capacity (the number of trays, the available temperature zones if the oven is a deck oven with independent deck control) entered in the setup sheet. The schedule automatically flags when the planned production for a day exceeds oven capacity — the conflict that is caught in the planning stage rather than discovered at 5 AM when the plan cannot be executed.
The prep time model: The total hands-on preparation time for the day’s planned production totaled against the available staffed hours. The overscheduling flag that appears when the day’s planned prep time exceeds the hours available — the signal to move a product to a different day or add a preparation stage to the day before.
The passive time overlap optimization: The production sequence suggestions that maximize passive time efficiency — the scheduling of bulk fermentation, chilling, and proving periods to run concurrently with the active preparation of other products, reducing total production time. ⏱️
The Daily Detail View
Each day of the week broken into production time blocks:
The morning block (the first activity period, typically the highest-pressure period — what needs to be finished before opening or before first deliveries leave), the mid-morning block, the afternoon block, and the evening block where applicable (the bread production that begins in the afternoon for next-day sale). Each block shows what is happening, who is responsible (linked to the staff allocation sheet), what oven zone is in use, and the passive time periods where staff can move to other tasks.
SHEET 4: THE STAFF ALLOCATION SYSTEM
The Staff Hours and Skills Matrix
The staff available for the week: each team member, their scheduled hours each day, their skill level by task category (the proficiency rating that determines which tasks can be assigned to which staff member — not every member of the team can be assigned to custom cake decoration or sourdough scoring, but every member can be assigned to mise en place and simple packaging).
The staff allocation output: each team member’s task list for each day, derived from the production schedule and the skills matrix — the written task list that answers the question “what am I doing today?” before the question is asked. 👥
The Labor Cost Calculator
The total labor cost for the week by staff member (hours worked multiplied by hourly rate), the labor cost as a percentage of the planned revenue for the week, and the labor cost per unit for each product category. The data that surfaces whether the week’s production plan is financially viable before it is executed.
SHEET 5: THE CUSTOM ORDER TRACKER
The Custom Order Management System
The dedicated tracker for bespoke and custom orders that require individual management: cakes for specific events, allergen-adapted orders, wholesale special orders, and any order with specifications that differ from the standard product.
For each custom order: the customer name and contact, the order number, the product description with all specifications (size, flavor, decoration, allergens, dietary requirements), the required-by date and time, the collection or delivery method, the quoted price, the deposit status (paid or outstanding), the balance due at collection, the production schedule assignments (which days which components need to be produced), and the completion status at each stage.
The custom order summary view: all active custom orders sorted by required date, showing the production deadline for each. The view that prevents a custom order from being forgotten until the day before collection. 🎂
SHEET 6: THE WASTE AND YIELD TRACKER
The Production Efficiency Monitor
The comparison between planned production and actual production for each product each week: the planned quantity, the actual quantity produced, the units sold, the units discarded (and the reason — end of shelf life, quality failure, overproduction), and the waste percentage.
The running twelve-week waste average by product: the data that reveals chronic overproduction (the product consistently produced at 130% of sales), chronic underproduction (the product consistently selling out before end of service), and production quality issues (the product with a high quality-failure discard rate that indicates a process problem worth investigating).
The waste cost calculation: the ingredient cost of discarded units per week, per month, and annualized. The financial motivation for taking the tracker seriously. 📉
📂 COMPLETE FILE LIST
📊 Complete production schedule spreadsheet (Excel + Google Sheets, all 6 sheets pre-formatted and formula-linked) | 📖 Setup guide — how to enter your products, staff, and settings to make the spreadsheet operational (PDF) | 📋 Sample data version — a pre-populated example showing how the system works in a functioning bakery (included as a separate file)
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 and later, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice Calc.
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