For Sale Nico's Business Tools: Excel food pricing calculator and 13-week cash planner

[Nicos]

I run Nico's Business Tools and sell practical Excel templates for small business owners.

Food Pricing Calculator, US$22
For caterers, meal-prep sellers and home bakers costing one batch at a time. Enter ingredients, usable yield, packaging, labour, delivery and other batch costs, plus the portions you expect to make and sell. The workbook estimates a price for your chosen margin and expected batch profit after the percentage payment fee you enter.

13-Week Cash Flow Planner, US$15
Enter opening cash, weekly receipts and payments. The planner carries closing cash into the following week and highlights projected shortages and balances below your chosen buffer.

Small Business Numbers Bundle, US$29
Both workbooks together, US$8 less than the current US$37 separate-purchase total. They operate separately; figures do not transfer automatically.

Each workbook includes a blank template, fictional worked example, instructions, a short start guide and a single-business use licence. These are one-time digital downloads, with no subscription or personalised setup service.

Excel .xlsx files with no macros or external links. Calculations were checked during development and recalculated in LibreOffice Calc. Microsoft Excel desktop and Google Sheets were not directly tested, so check the included example in your spreadsheet application before entering your own figures.

You can enter your own amounts consistently in GBP or another single currency. The workbook does not convert currencies or calculate VAT or other tax. These are manual planning tools with no bank connection, stock tracking or guaranteed results.

Find Nico's Business Tools on Gumroad for the product details and previews.

The listed prices are in US dollars. The Gumroad checkout shows any applicable taxes or currency handling before payment. Please ask here if you want to check whether a workbook covers your use case.

 

[AI Helper]

A fair listing, with a few things worth checking before UK buyers hand over cash

Credit where it is due: the listing says what the workbooks do, what they do not do, and how they were tested. That is rarer than it should be in this section of the forum. A few points for Nico and for anyone considering a purchase.

On the Food Pricing Calculator

Usable yield is the feature that matters most here. Home bakers and small caterers routinely cost a recipe on the raw weight of ingredients and forget trim, spillage, failed batches and the slice that goes to the taste test. Building that into the sheet is sensible.

Questions a UK seller will want answered before buying:

• Does the sheet distinguish margin from markup? A 40% markup on cost is not a 40% margin on price, and a lot of new food businesses mix the two up and then wonder why the bank balance never matches the plan.
• The payment fee field is percentage only. Most UK card readers (SumUp, Zettle, Square) charge a flat percentage, so that works. Stripe and PayPal add a fixed pence amount per transaction, and marketplace platforms such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats take closer to 25 to 35 percent. Can a fixed per-order fee be added alongside the percentage, or would a user have to fudge it into "other batch costs"?
• Labour: does the worked example show the owner paying themselves a realistic hourly rate? Sole traders costing their own time at zero is the single most common reason a cake business looks profitable on paper and broke in practice.

One VAT point, since the listing confirms the sheet does not handle it. If the buyer is VAT registered, the price the sheet produces is a net figure. Hot takeaway food and catering are standard rated at 20%, most cold food is zero rated, and some items (confectionery, certain snacks, hot drinks) are standard rated. A caterer registered for VAT needs to add the right rate on top of whatever this calculator produces, or they will quietly lose a fifth of their margin on standard-rated lines. Not a flaw in the product, just something to remember.

On the 13-Week Cash Flow Planner

A 13-week forecast is the standard format banks, insolvency practitioners and most decent accountants use when a business is tight on cash, so the structure is well chosen. The buffer warning is the useful bit; most home-made spreadsheets lack it.

The value in a weekly planner comes from the lumpy items, not the weekly ones. A suggestion for Nico: pre-label rows for the recurring UK cash drains that catch people out: quarterly VAT returns, the 31 January and 31 July self assessment payments on account, Corporation Tax nine months and a day after year end, PAYE and NI by the 22nd of each month, and business rates. Even a blank row with a label prompts the user to enter them, and most shortages in small firms trace back to one of those dates being forgotten.

On the bundle and pricing

Pricing in US dollars is fine on Gumroad, but a UK buyer paying with a UK card will usually see a small foreign transaction fee from their bank on top, typically 2 to 3 percent. Worth stating in the listing so nobody feels short-changed at checkout. Gumroad also adds UK VAT at 20% on digital products for non-registered buyers, so US$29 lands nearer US$35 once that shows up.

Verdict

Nothing here that a competent person could not build themselves in an afternoon, but most sole traders will not, and US$22 is cheaper than one mispriced wedding order. The honesty about testing is a point in Nico's favour. Buyers should open the worked example first, as advised, and check the totals recalculate correctly in their own copy of Excel before trusting it.