How do you know before you run out of flour? Low-stock alerts in Bake Boost

Short answer: switch low-stock alerts on — the one-time card on your dashboard, or Settings → Orders → Low-stock alerts — and the Inventory Alerts card on your dashboard grows an Ingredients tab and a Supplies tab beside the products it already watched. An item is flagged when there is none left, when it drops to a level you set, or, if you set no level, when less than two weeks of it is left at the rate you have been using it. There is nothing to set up, and it is on every plan.

This is post four in the series on what Bake Boost does for you day to day. Post three covered the production planner, which tells you what to bake this week. This one is about the flour, the boxes and the ribbon that the week quietly eats.

The quick facts

The thing that was already happening quietly

Here is something your Bake Boost account has been doing all along: every time you save an order, it takes the ingredients and the supplies off your stock. The flour goes down. The boxes go down. The ribbon goes down.

What was missing was anybody telling you about it. The Inventory Alerts card on the dashboard only ever looked at finished products — the cupcakes in the display case — and said nothing about the things you bake them out of. The two pages that did go further, Par-Stock and Procurement, are Pro pages that need a reorder threshold set on every item first, and almost nobody had ever set one.

So the numbers were there and the warning was not. That is now closed.

Why "below 10" is a useless rule for flour

Products are counted in whole things. Ten cupcakes is ten cupcakes, so "warn me under ten" works.

Ingredients and supplies are not. Their stock is held in the item's own measurement — grams, millilitres, pieces. "Warn me under ten" would mean ten grams of flour and ten eggs on the same rule. One is a crumb, the other is a bake.

That is why these alerts do not use a fixed number unless you give them one. They use time.

How does Bake Boost decide something is low?

Three rules, in this order:

1. Nothing left. Zero on hand shows as Out — "Nothing left in stock".
2. A level you set. If you have given an ingredient or supply a low-stock level, being at or below it shows as Low — "At or below your level of 500 g".
3. Otherwise, days of cover. Bake Boost works out how fast you have been using the item over the last 28 days and asks how long what is left will last. Under two weeks and it is Low — "About 3 days left at your recent use".

That third rule is the one that matters, because it needs nothing from you. No threshold, no setup, no spreadsheet. It works on your first day with the feature on.

Each kind gets its own tab with its own count, worst first, and a Re-stock link straight to the item. Products keep exactly the rules they always had — under ten is low, under thirty is worth reordering — so nothing that used to appear on this card has gone missing.

Will a long ingredient list turn my dashboard red?

No, and this was the hardest part of building it.

Most bakers add ingredients in order to cost a recipe, not to keep stock of them. You add ground almonds so the cake costs correctly; you have no intention of telling Bake Boost how many grams are in the cupboard. Stock on a new ingredient starts at zero and stays there.

Read naively, every one of those zeros is "out of stock". A baker with a 200-line costing catalogue would have opened the dashboard to 200 red warnings, none of them real, and would have switched the whole thing off within a minute.

So an item sitting at zero is only ever flagged when something says you actually stock it: there is stock on hand, you have set a level on it, or you have logged a restock. An ingredient that exists purely to cost a recipe stays silent — for good. And an item you do stock still gets the full treatment on the way down, which is the warning worth having anyway.

How do I switch it on?

Ingredient and supply alerts are off until you ask for them. Two ways in.

If your own data shows you keep stock of things, you get a single card on your dashboard, asked once:

Turn on alerts switches on the kinds you actually keep. No thanks is remembered, and you are never asked again.

Either way, the switches live in Settings → Orders → Low-stock alerts, and ingredients and supplies are separate — plenty of bakers count their flour and have never counted a cake board in their lives.

While a kind is switched off it is not even looked at. No tab, no extra column, no change anywhere — your dashboard stays exactly as it was.

Seeing the whole list, not just the worst three

The dashboard card is a summary. For the full picture, Products & Inventory → Inventory now carries a Status column and a Stock filter on all three tabs.

Note the dashes. An item you have never kept stock of does not get a green OK — claiming something is fine when you have never told Bake Boost anything about it would be a lie with a tick next to it. It gets a dash, and stays out of your way.

If you would rather set a hard number than rely on days of cover, open any ingredient or supply's Update Inventory dialog: there is now an optional Low-stock level field. Set it and it wins over the days-of-cover rule.

What it will not do

• It does not email you. The warnings live on the dashboard and the Inventory page.
• It does not order anything. Re-stock takes you to the item; the shopping is still yours.
• It does not invent numbers. If you have never told Bake Boost you keep something, it says nothing about it.
• It does not touch product alerts. Those were already on for everyone and stay on for everyone.
• It does not hide a broken value. If an item's stock was saved as something that is not a number, the row says so and asks you to set it again, rather than quietly disappearing.

Who can use it, and what does it cost?

Low-stock alerts for ingredients and supplies are on every Bake Boost plan — Essentials, Growth and Pro — at no extra cost and with no credits involved. They read stock movements you are already generating.

Pro goes further with Par-Stock and Procurement if you want to plan purchasing properly. The full breakdown is on the plans page, and the step-by-step guide is in the inventory docs.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to count everything in my kitchen first?
No. Alerts work from the stock Bake Boost already takes off as you save orders. Items you have never kept stock of stay silent rather than reporting themselves as empty.

How does Bake Boost decide an ingredient is low?
In order: nothing left is Out; at or below a low-stock level you set is Low; otherwise it is Low when less than two weeks of it is left at the rate you have used it over the last 28 days.

Why not a simple number, like "warn me under 10"?
Because ingredient and supply stock is held in the item's own measurement. Ten grams of flour and ten eggs are not comparable, so a fixed number would be meaningless. Days of cover works for both.

Will my costing-only ingredients fill the dashboard with false alerts?
No. An item at zero is only flagged when there is evidence you stock it — stock on hand, a level you set, or a restock you logged. A costing catalogue stays quiet.

Are ingredient and supply alerts switched on automatically?
No. They are off until you turn them on, in Settings → Orders → Low-stock alerts or from the one-time card on your dashboard. Ingredients and supplies are switched separately.

Can I set my own low-stock level instead?
Yes. Every ingredient and supply's Update Inventory dialog has an optional Low-stock level field, and a level you set takes priority over the days-of-cover rule.

Which Bake Boost plan includes low-stock alerts?
All of them. Essentials, Growth and Pro each get product, ingredient and supply alerts at no extra cost.

Next in this series

Next we look at how Bake Boost works out what a cake actually costs you — by the gram, by the slice, and why that changes the price you should be charging. If you want the whole picture now, see what you get with Bake Boost or why it is built for bakers.