Keeping track of custom orders that arrive as DMs

Last updated 19 August 2026 · Practical guidance from people who have run orders out of an inbox. Nothing here needs software to be useful.

You are not disorganised. The tool has no memory.

Every baker who hits this thinks it is a personal failing, and it is worth saying plainly that it is not. Instagram DMs are built for talking to friends. There is no unread that survives you opening a message to check a date, no field that says "deposit paid", no way to sort by the Saturday everything is due, and no way to see the three cakes for the 14th sitting in three separate threads.

You have been holding all of that in your head, and your head has been doing it well. It stops scaling somewhere around ten orders a week, and it stops without warning, usually on the week you also had a birthday party of your own.

The four things that actually go wrong

• The double-booked Saturday. Two people asked about the same date a week apart and you said yes to both, because the second conversation had no idea the first existed.
• The order you forgot was real. She said "yes perfect, see you then" in a thread that then went quiet for six weeks. Nothing marked it as a commitment.
• The missing detail. You have the flavour and the date and no idea whether she wanted it written on. The answer is in the thread, forty messages up, above three photos.
• The ghost. The one who planned an entire cake with you over two weeks and stopped replying. That one is not an organisation problem, and no inbox fixes it. A deposit does.

Ask everything up front, once

The back-and-forth is not politeness, it is a missing form. Most custom orders need the same eight or nine facts and you already know what they are, so ask for them in one go rather than discovering them one message at a time.

• The date, and whether it is pickup or delivery
• How many people it needs to feed
• Flavour, filling, and anything they cannot eat
• Allergies, asked directly and separately from flavour
• Writing on it, and the exact spelling
• A photo of what they have in mind
• Their budget, or your starting price stated before they answer
• A phone number, so the whole thing does not live in one app

Ask about allergies as its own question with its own box. Buried in "any other notes" it gets skipped, and it is the one you cannot afford to have skipped.

If you are doing this by hand, a free form tool and a link in your bio gets you most of the way. The gain is not the software, it is that the answers arrive in the same shape every time and stop living inside a conversation.

One list, and one rule about what goes on it

Wherever you keep it, a notebook is fine, there should be exactly one place that answers "what am I making this week". Two places become two answers within a month.

Then the rule that does the real work: an order without a deposit is an intention, not a booking. A verbal yes does not take a date off your calendar. Money does. That single line prevents both the double-booked Saturday and most of the ghosting, because the people who were never going to show mostly do not send a deposit, and you find that out in week one rather than the night before.

How much to ask for and how to word it is its own subject: deposit policies that stick. If you are in Canada, the practical mechanics of taking it are in e-Transfer for a home bakery.

Decide how many you can do, before someone asks

The hardest message to write is the one turning down a date, and it is hardest when you are deciding the limit and the answer at the same time. Pick the number on a calm Tuesday. Four cakes a weekend, or two if there is a wedding. Then a Friday request is arithmetic rather than a decision about whether you are a good person.

Set a lead time too. "Custom orders need two weeks" written down in advance is a policy, and the same words invented on the spot are an excuse. It is the same sentence and it lands completely differently.

Moving off DMs without losing anyone

The fear is that sending someone to a form loses the order. In practice the opposite is the common experience, for a reason worth understanding: a form reads as a real business. The person who drops out at a form is very often the person who was going to disappear at the deposit anyway.

Do it gently all the same.

• Keep answering in DMs. You are moving the order details, not the relationship. Reply like a person, then send the link.
• Say why. "So I get your date and allergies right" is a better reason than "please use my form", and it is true.
• Put the link in your bio and pin it. Half the people who would have DMed will just use it.
• Do not force it on a regular mid-conversation. Someone already three messages in has effectively filled the form in already. Take her order and send the next one to the link.

What to do this week if you change nothing else

1. Write down every order you currently believe you have, with its date.
2. Compare that list to your DMs. The gap is the point of this article.
3. Pick your maximum per weekend and your lead time.
4. Decide your deposit rule and say it in every quote from now on.