Recipe Cost Calculator Spreadsheet

About this template

This recipe cost calculator tells you what a meal actually costs before you cook it, per recipe and per serving. It is for home cooks, a home baker selling bakes, or anyone who wants food cost in numbers rather than guesses.

Please read: This is a tracker tool only, not financial, tax, legal, medical or any other professional advice or advisory service. It records and calculates what you enter; you are solely responsible for checking all figures, rates, dates and results and for every decision you make. By purchasing, downloading or using it, you accept these terms (your statutory consumer rights are not affected).

The dashboard

Nothing on the dashboard is typed. Choose all recipes or any one, and the cards, cost and batch follow it.

• Five live cards: recipe cost, cost a serving, selling price, margin and batch profit
• Where the cost goes: each ingredient's share of a recipe's cost, dearest first
• Best margins, with every serving's price split into cost and profit
• Prices that moved since the last price, and the recipes hit hardest
• Margin against target, turning red when a recipe keeps less than you aim for
• A batch calculator: how many a batch makes, what it costs, sells for and leaves you
• Price to hit your margin, for recipes under your target
• Average cost against average price by kind of recipe: breakfasts, dinners, bakes and more

Change one price, everything follows

Price an ingredient once and every recipe using it re-costs itself, per recipe and per serving, so a cheap-looking dish that serves two is never mistaken for one that serves four. Every figure on the dashboard is calculated from the tabs behind it. Nothing is typed into a summary, so the front page can never disagree with the rows it came from.

What is included

• Recipes: eighty recipes with meal type, minutes, cost per recipe and cost per serving
• Recipe lines: four hundred lines of ingredient and quantity, with the unit pulled through and how many recipes use each ingredient
• Meal plan: put recipes on the week and see the cost of the week
• Shopping list: builds itself from the week, with the pantry subtracted, so it doubles as your grocery list
• Dashboard: live

Nine connected tabs in all, every one reading the same source list, so the meal planner and the costing never disagree.

You get real spreadsheet files, not a PDF with a link in it: Excel and Google Sheets, each filled in and each blank and ready for yours. The filled copy is the file in the photos, so you can see how it behaves before you type anything.

Works with

• Microsoft Excel 2016, 2019, 2021 and Microsoft 365, on Windows and Mac, and LibreOffice. No Microsoft 365 subscription required.
• Google Sheets with a free Google account. No Google account is needed for the Excel files.
• No add-ins, no macros and no subscription

What you download

• The Excel workbook filled with a worked example, and the same workbook blank and ready for yours
• The instruction guide, which has one-click links to the Google Sheets versions (filled and blank)
• The terms of use as a PDF

Your files are ready to download as soon as payment clears. The files are for personal use on your own devices; please do not share or resell them. Questions before or after you buy? Use our contact page and we will help.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use it in Excel or Google Sheets?

Both. You download Excel workbooks for Excel 2016 or later on Windows and Mac, and the instruction guide has one-click links to the Google Sheets versions (filled and blank).

What happens when an ingredient price changes?

Change it once and every recipe that uses it re-costs itself. The dashboard also shows which prices moved and which recipes were hit hardest.

Can I work out a selling price for my bakes?

Yes. Set a selling price and a target margin; recipes below target turn red, and the dashboard shows the price that would reach your margin.

How many recipes does it hold?

Eighty recipes and four hundred recipe lines.

Does it make a shopping list?

Yes. Put recipes on the week and the shopping list builds itself, with what you already have in the pantry subtracted.