How it works
What it reads, what it writes,
and what it refuses to guess.
Bakersline sits between your customers and you, and it only ever moves in one direction without permission. This page is the honest version of how that works — including the places it deliberately does less than it could.
The rule everything else hangs off
There is one door, and you are the handle.
Nothing reaches a customer without your tap
This isn't a preference in a settings screen that a bad update could flip. In the software there is exactly one function that can send a message to Instagram or WhatsApp, and it refuses to run unless a signed-in person has resolved a specific draft. There is no scheduler that calls it, no "auto-reply to easy ones" mode, and no admin override.
The practical consequence: the worst thing a bug in Bakersline can do to your customers is show you a bad draft. It cannot send one.
The path a message takes
From their message to your approval.
-
The message arrives
Meta notifies Bakersline that someone has written to your business account. The message is stored in your workspace, against that customer's conversation, with anything they attached.
If a newer message from the same person arrives while an older draft is still waiting, the older one is retired. That is why you never see two cards for one person — and never approve two replies that contradict each other.
-
Bakersline reads the conversation, not just the message
It sees the recent history of that thread, so "same as last time, but for eight people" means something. It also sees who this customer is to you — what they've ordered before, your notes about them, whether they have an allergy you recorded.
-
It checks your diary before it says yes
Your minimum lead time, the days you don't work, dates you've blocked, and how much you can physically make in a day. Only confirmed and completed orders count towards a day's load — an enquiry someone never came back on doesn't make you look full.
If the date they asked for is impossible, the draft says so and offers the first date that isn't. Politely, and without pretending.
-
It answers from your catalogue, not from the world
Every product you make, with its own choices and its own price basis. If your catalogue has four sponges, those are the only four it will ever offer — and a request for something that isn't on the list comes back to you rather than being improvised into a promise.
You decide per product whether a price may be spoken aloud. A cupcake price can be public while a custom tier stays "quoted per enquiry".
-
It can offer the card you already send
Most bakers answer "what flavours do you have?" with a picture. Upload that picture once and the assistant proposes attaching it to the right replies. It is a proposal — the image goes only when you approve the reply, and you can untick it.
-
It prices from your rules, and shows its working
Your rate per kilo, your minimums, your designing charges, your delivery. Not a market estimate and not a guess from similar bakeries — your numbers, applied.
If you haven't given it pricing yet, it will not invent any. The draft says it can't quote and asks you to take that one, which is the right kind of unhelpful.
-
It writes in your voice
From a brief that holds your prices, your rules and examples of replies you have actually sent. If you let it read your past conversations, it works that brief out for itself and shows you the messages behind every number.
-
It waits
The draft appears in your queue. You read it, change a word or rewrite it entirely, and tap approve — or reject it and answer yourself. Whatever you send is recorded against your name, so a team of two always knows who said what.
Photographs
It reads the design. It never guesses the recipe.
Most enquiries arrive with a picture. Bakersline looks at it properly — and stops exactly where looking stops working.
What it reads off a photo
- How many tiers, and the shape
- The finish — buttercream, fondant, ganache drip
- Colours and palette
- Sugar work, toppers, florals, lettering
- Whether it needs internal structure to stand up
- Roughly how intricate it is, which is what drives your designing charge
- Whether the reference is AI-generated and physically impossible to bake
What it will never infer from a photo
- The sponge flavour
- The filling
- Whether it contains egg
- Whether it's nut-free, gluten-free or dairy-free
- Any allergen at all
None of these can be seen. A confident guess about an allergen is not a small error — so instead the draft lists them as things to ask, and you ask them.
When it doesn't know
It says so, instead of sounding confident.
A model that always has an answer is worse than useless in a kitchen — it will promise a date you can't make, quote a price you'd never charge, and tell someone a cake is safe for their child. Bakersline is built to fail in the other direction.
No pricing configured
The draft doesn't quote. It says the chef will confirm the price, and flags the card so you know it needs you.
Asked about an allergen
It answers only from what your brief actually says. Anything it doesn't hold becomes "I'll confirm that with you before you decide."
A date it can't verify
If the diary can't answer cleanly, it declines to commit and offers to confirm rather than promising on your behalf.
Something outside what you do
It doesn't invent a product line. If your menu has four sponges, those are the four sponges it offers.
Two channels, one inbox
Instagram and WhatsApp, without the app-switching.
| Direct messages to your business account. Meta closes the door on replying 24 hours after a customer's last message — which is exactly why a draft waiting for you at 6am matters more than it sounds. The queue shows the time left on every card. | |
| Your business number, through the Cloud API. Meta supports coexistence: the same number keeps working in the WhatsApp app on your phone and through Bakersline. You reply from your phone whenever you want, and Bakersline sees the same conversation rather than a different one. | |
| Both | One queue, one order book, one customer record. A person who found you on Instagram and then moved to WhatsApp is still one person with one history. |
After the reply
The enquiry becomes an order, and the order becomes a number.
An order, already filled in
Create it straight from the conversation. Title, date, size, tiers, finish and the price you quoted are already there, because they were already discussed.
A kitchen calendar and a baking list
What's due today, this week, and what's slipped. With handover times, because a 6pm party and an 11am pickup are different days in the kitchen.
Recipes that know what they cost
Enter pack sizes and pack prices once. Costs per batch and per kilo are recalculated every time you look, never stored — so a price rise on flour moves every recipe that uses it the same afternoon.
Expenses, and what you actually kept
Four fields per expense. Reports stops telling you what you earned and starts telling you what's left — which is the figure that decides whether the business is worth doing.
Clients who are remembered
Every order a person has placed, your notes about them, and the dates that matter — so next August you're reminded before they have to remind you.
Honestly
What Bakersline is not.
Knowing where a tool stops is worth more than another feature list.
Not a till or a POS
If you have a counter and a queue of walk-ins, you want point-of-sale software. That isn't this, and we'd rather say so than sell you the wrong thing.
Not autopilot
It will not run your inbox while you sleep. It prepares the work so that answering forty enquiries takes minutes instead of hours — the judgement stays yours.
Not a website or a shop
It doesn't build you a storefront or take card payments. Your customers keep finding you where they already do.
Not a replacement for knowing your craft
It quotes from rules you set, from a menu you wrote, in a voice it learned from you. Everything good about it started as something you already knew.
Next
Set it up, or read how we handle your data.
Setting up takes an evening, and most of that is Meta's verification rather than anything on our side.
Create your bakery