Your First Week: A Visual Walkthrough

Your First Week: A Visual Walkthrough

• Understand the daily steps to get your bakery up and running on BakeOnyx.
• Learn how to set up your core business information, ingredients, and recipes.
• Process your first customer order from start to finish.
• Discover advanced features to help your bakery grow.

Welcome to BakeOnyx! This guide will walk you through your first week, helping you set up your bakery and start managing your operations efficiently. By following these steps, you'll be on your way to a streamlined and profitable business.

Day 1: Laying the Foundation

Your first day is all about setting up your bakery's core information. After you sign up, the BakeOnyx onboarding wizard will guide you through five essential steps. You can access these settings anytime at /dashboard/settings.

1. Business Profile: Enter your bakery's name, address, phone number, and email. Don't forget to upload your logo and set your correct timezone and currency.
2. General Settings: Define your labor rate (how much you pay bakers per hour), your default markup percentage for pricing, and how you want to allocate overhead costs across your products.
3. Tax Rates: Configure the tax rates that apply in your area. This could be sales tax, VAT, or other local taxes.
4. Overhead Costs: Add your fixed monthly expenses like rent, utilities, insurance, and equipment leases. These costs will be used in your profit and loss reports and budget tracking.
5. Order Settings: Choose how your order numbers will be formatted and set your default payment terms for customers.

Day 2: Populating Your Ingredient Library

Today, we focus on your ingredients. Navigate to /dashboard/ingredients. BakeOnyx comes with a master list of common baking ingredients, but you'll want to customize it with your specific items and costs.

1. Browse and Add: Start by adding the ingredients you use most often.
2. Verify Details: For each ingredient, check:
   • Purchase Unit & Cost: How you buy it (e.g., a 25kg bag of flour for $18.50).
   • Stock Unit: How you measure it in your recipes (e.g., grams, kilograms, liters). BakeOnyx will help convert between units.
   • Allergens: Flag any common allergens present (e.g., gluten, dairy, nuts).
3. Current Stock: If you have existing inventory, enter the current amount you have on hand.
4. Reorder Points: Set a minimum stock level for important ingredients. BakeOnyx will alert you when your stock gets low.

Day 3: Building Your Recipes

With your ingredients in place, it's time to build your recipes. Go to /dashboard/recipes and create your top 5 best-selling items.

1. Add Recipe Details: Give your recipe a clear name and description.
2. Add Ingredients: Select the ingredients from your library and enter the quantities needed for one batch. BakeOnyx handles all the unit conversions automatically.
3. Set Yield: Specify how many servings or individual units one batch of the recipe makes (e.g., 1 cake, 12 cupcakes, 24 cookies).
4. Method Steps (Optional): You can add step-by-step instructions here if you want to print recipe cards for your bakers.

As you add ingredients, watch the Cost Per Unit calculation update in real-time. If the cost seems incorrect, double-check the purchase cost and unit of measure for your ingredients from Day 2.

Day 4: Processing Your First Order

Let's put BakeOnyx to work by processing a real order. Go to /dashboard/orders and click New Order.

1. Customer: Select an existing customer or create a new one.
2. Products: Add the items the customer wants. If you haven't already, you can create products directly from your recipes at /dashboard/products.
3. Quantities & Due Date: Enter the number of items and when they are needed.
4. Save Order: Click the Save Order button.

Now, explore the order details:

• Print Job Sheet: This document is for your kitchen staff, listing exactly what needs to be made and in what quantities.
• Generate Invoice: Create a professional invoice for your customer, including prices and payment information.
• Update Order Status: Practice moving the order through its lifecycle: Pending → Confirmed → Ready → Delivered.
• Record Payment: Mark the invoice as paid.

Day 5: Exploring Advanced Features

You've built a solid foundation! Today, explore some of the powerful features that will help your bakery grow:

1. Online Store: Set up your customer-facing storefront at /dashboard/storefront. Add attractive product photos and descriptions, and share your store link with customers.
2. Reports: Visit /dashboard/reports. Generate a Profit & Loss report to see how your sales and costs are shaping up, even with just one order processed.
3. Bake Buddy (AI Assistant): Click the AI icon in the sidebar. Ask questions like, "What are my most expensive ingredients?" or "Create an order for 2 chocolate cakes for tomorrow." Bake Buddy can help with many tasks hands-free.
4. Recurring Orders: If you have customers who order regularly, set up recurring order templates at /dashboard/recurring-orders to save time.
5. Production Planning: Go to /dashboard/production and try generating an AI-powered production schedule for your upcoming orders.

Remember, you don't need to master every feature on day one. Start with the basics and gradually incorporate more tools as your bakery grows.

Next Steps

Now that you're familiar with the basics, check out these related articles:

• Troubleshooting Common Issues