Hey everyone - I'm brand new to this site, and pretty new with my home-based business. Have checked out a few sites as well as Wilton's, but they all differ as far as cake servings by size. For example, for a 12" I see some say 40 and some say 56. I do realize party cakes and wedding cakes are cut differently, but I am mostly doing party cakes. Also, when I am at the party and watching the cake being cut, they are cutting larger and fewer pieces than I assumed it would feed (which IMO is not my problem) So...do you have any favorite and trustworthy websites or cutting charts I could refer to?? And do you just make the cake according to servings, and leave it up to the customer to cut it as they wish? All advice is HUGELY appreciated!

Welcome to the forum!

Different countries have different sized cake "portions".  The standard American wedding slice is 4" high, 1" wide, by 2" deep.  However, like any "standards", there are many, many exceptions. 

A lovely lady here on CakeCentral produced some paper templates that can be used to show the different sizes of cake servings.  I strongly suggest you print out the templates and create your "pretend" servings slices.

"Sample Cake Serving Sizes -- made of Paper or Cardstock"

http://www.wilton.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=142470&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=

Very few people know how to cut wedding cake-size slices.  If you sell a cake and tell the customer that you are charging for xxx servings, then you should provide a chart and/or a Paper Sample Cake Serving Size and a page with instructions on HOW to get the recommended number of servings.

Here are some more links and templates that may prove useful.  I personally take a moment to explain "How to Cut the Cake", and then provide a copy of whatever form you think will work best.

How to Cut a Wedding Cake

and

http://larkcakeshop.com/CakeServeGuide2.pdf

I always include a cutting chart with each cake.  It's very helpful to consumers who think the proper way to cut a cake is in wedges.

I see the opposite problem of people cutting the cake too small...Here's the serving chart that I use, it has a range of servings for each size cake on it. I tell brides that this size cake will serve between this and that many, then let them choose their size based on whether they think they want more or less cake. http://acaketorememberva.blogspot.com/2012/02/cake-serving-chart.html

I too always provide a cutting guide. I get mine from using this app http://cakeslicer.bakingit.com. This "cake slicer" app is the best tool I've come across as it allows you to alter portion sizes as some customers want smaller/larger servings. Hope this is useful to you for the future. I'm a fan of anything like this which cuts out the boring maths and leaves me more time for the fun artistic cake work :-)