Batchwise: Turning Messy Food Business Expenses into Real Profit Insights 🇮🇳

Each production batch, ingredient expense, and financial outcome matters when running a small food business. That is why Henna Dalvi created Batchwise, an AI-powered tool for home bakeries, snack sellers, and other small food entrepreneurs. Launched during Hacktoberfest 2026's Side Hustle Challenge, Batchwise converts messy notes into structured data and helps business owners understand costs, pricing, and profitability.

Batchwise makes it easy to record ingredient costs, labor, packaging, transportation, and other expenses. It then calculates precisely how much each product costs to make and how much profit each sale generates. Users can compare profit margin (profit as a percentage of revenue) to markup (profit as a percentage of production cost) and see how many items need to be sold to break even.

The tool also features an AI note parser that reads handwritten business memos and extracts ingredient quantities, ingredient prices, and other details. The AI highlights any missing or ambiguous information, so users can confirm the data before it is used in calculations. The AI's work is completely separate from the Python calculation engine, which uses Decimal arithmetic to avoid errors in monetary calculations.

Batchwise is a local-first application, which means it can run without requiring a paid AI API. This is valuable for small business owners who need to protect sensitive information like supplier prices and ingredient costs. The software is built with privacy in mind, giving small food businesses the tools they need to understand their numbers and make informed decisions about pricing and production.