Blog Archives

Understanding What You've Earned

5/29/2012

One of the fundamental principles that a member agrees to when joining a CSA is that they are most likely paying in advance for their food. Based on the principles of accrual accounting, the cash that you receive before you deliver your goods is considered unearned revenue. Once you deliver your produce to your members, the value of that delivery is then recognized as earned or realized revenue.

The Past Deliveries ($) report provides you with a monthly breakdown of earned revenue by Members, Producers, Locations and Items. To learn more about the Past Deliveries ($) report, click here.

How does Farmigo charge for its services?

Farmigo calculates its monthly service fee based on total earned revenue between the first and last day of the previous month. This calculation includes subscriptions and web store orders. We will send you an invoice for the past months deliveries between the 5th and 10th of the current month. You will have one week to review your invoice before you are charged.

Where do members spend money?

When you breakdown the report by Members, you will see how much revenue has been earned from a member's subscriptions versus web store orders. To help you compare these figures, I recommend shading the values of web store orders blue; then sort the data by member names. You will be able to see how much a member spends at the web store in relation to how much they spend on their subscription.

What trends can I identify?

When you generate breakdowns by Producers, Locations, or Items, you will be able to identify other interesting trends. For example, perhaps you would like to understand which share generates the most revenue each month. Generate the Past Deliveries ($) report, breakdown by Items. Open the CSV file in a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel. Delete the item rows that are not relevant, select the data, and insert a column or bar graph. This will provide a clear visual of where you are earning the most revenue.

For a snapshot of current trends related to your CSA, check out the Analytics listed under the Status menu in your Dashboard.

What are some interesting trends that you have discovered?

Support Availability

5/22/2012

We're Listening

Thank you for responding to our survey! We received a strong response rate and value your opinion. Based on the responses and your feedback we have been able to make some key decisions on how to best serve you.

When to Reach Us

Now that we know that an overwhelming majority prefer Monday - Friday Support and the time preference to assist you was 9 AM - 5 PM EDT / 6 AM - 2 PM PDT. We have decided to staff our Support Team during these hours to best suit your needs. This is when you can expect we are available.

How to Reach Us

Your number one preference for correspondence with us was email. So we will respond to your emails during the 9 AM - 5 PM EDT hours. For your convenience, you can just send us an email to support@farmigo.com and that email gets transferred into a ticketing system that is monitored by the team. It is the most efficient way to get a response since this system is the first place that we check each day when supporting you.

If you have an urgent issue that is time sensitive, or an emergency, please type, "URGENT" in the subject line. We will prioritize requests labeled as URGENT first and monitor for URGENT tickets on Saturday and Sunday.

You can also request that we call you back if there is a matter that you want to speak about on the phone. Just write that in the body of the email with the best number and times to reach you.

What to Say

Please be as detailed as possible when describing your reason for contacting the Support Team. This will help us when we research and assign tickets. Including things like the member name, location name, and as many details as possible help us help you.

Holidays and Weekends

We value our team as much as you do! That is why they receive vacation, holidays and time off. You will always receive the most efficient response by sending your requests to support@farmigo.com because on holidays and weekends, we have someone checking for emails with the URGENT label in the subject line. Other issues will be assigned when we get back from our holiday breaks or weekends.

We're Here:

Monday - Friday

9 AM - 5 PM EDT / 6 AM - 2 PM PDT

Email: support@farmigo.com

Include "URGENT" in the subject for time sensitive and emergencies.
Including examples of members names, location names, etc are extremely helpful.

A Refreshing Reports Module!

5/15/2012

As Farmigo has grown, so has the Reports module in the Farmigo Dashboard. Based on your feedback, we’ve added many new reports and new ways of formatting and generating each report. After all our additions and improvements, we felt it was time to spruce it up and organize the presentation of the reports in a manner that will help you to easily identify which one you need.

Each report will now be assigned a category to indicate when it may be used. The report names have also been updated to better indicate what type of data they contain. I’ve outlined below what each of the new categories contain and the new names of each of the reports. We’ve also improved certain reports - Read on to learn about the new Sourcing Breakdown report. For more information, please visit our help site.

Logistics Reports
These reports will help you to execute your deliveries. The Overview reports category provides additional reports that will help you plan for your deliveries.

Accounting Reports
These reports will help you to track financial data for your members and deliveries.

Overview Reports
These reports provide you a broader picture of how you are operating. They will also help you to review past deliveries and plan for future deliveries.

To learn more about each report, click on the Help tab sticking out in the lower right-hand corner for each report in the Dasboard or click here to visit our Help Site.

The New Sourcing Breakdown Report

Some of you may already be very familiar with the Box Builder feature in the Dashboard. This features helps you to plan what goes into each of your shares and provides you with a total amount that you need to harvest or order. Previously, the Harvest report would give you summary of these totals over a period of one day or more. The Harvest report will now be called the Sourcing Breakdown report and it will include even more information.

All-in-One!

The new report not only includes the total number of items that you need to source in order to fill your boxes, it will add web store orders to the total for that period of deliveries. Here is an example of the report as a PDF output.

Where to get it...

If you use the Harvest Module to note a Primary Source and a Secondary Source for your box items, that information will continue to be included in this report. Now if you generate the CSV output, you may also see who the producer is for an item for those of you who source particular items from different producers, such as eggs, bread or jams.

To learn more about the Sourcing Breakdown report, please visit the Help Site or click on the Help button in the lower right-hand corner of the Reports module.

New and Improved Locations Exceptions Interface

5/13/2012

Location exceptions allow you to vary the price and/or schedule of a specific share, option, or item according to a specific location. They also allow you to hide a share, option, or item from a specific location. Recently, we released a new interface to make managing location exceptions simpler.

Where can I view location exceptions?
Market --> Items --> Click on item to view the item card --> Location Exceptions tab
Location exceptions are a feature that must be enabled by the Farmigo team. If you would like to use this feature in your system, please email support@farmigo.com and ask us to enable location exceptions.

Are my current settings affected by the new interface design?
No - If you already have location exceptions set up for your system they will not be affected by the new design. All of your location exceptions that were set up previously are still functioning, they will just look a little bit different.

The old design:

How is the new design different?

Location Exceptions for Shares or Options

1. Locations
Previously, you had to enter each location you wanted to make an exception for. Now, every location in your system automatically appears in the location exceptions.

2. Price
By default, the price for every location will be set to the price listed in the info tab for the item. The default price will always appear in grey. If you change the price of the item at a specific location, it will become bolded.

3. Schedule
By default, the schedule for every location will be set to the schedule selected in the info tab for the item. No schedule title will show up if the location is set to the default schedule.

If you want to set a location to a different schedule, click on the blank space under schedule for that location and a drop down list will appear with your different schedules. Select a schedule. Locations that have a schedule exception will display the name of the varying schedule.

4. Show/Hide Item
Previously to hide an item you had to type in the name of the location and then select "No" from a drop down box under a show column. This made it difficult for CSA's that had many locations and wanted to show an item at only a handful of their location.

We have simplified this with a check box system. By default, the item will be displayed for every location.

Checked box: Display item
Unchecked box: Hide item

Two buttons at the top allow you to select or deselect the box for every location at once.
- Select every box to show the item at every location. Deselect the boxes for the few locations where you do not want to offer the item.
- Deselect every box to hide the item from every location. Select the boxes for the few locations where you do want to offer the item.

Location Exceptions for Store Items
You can also hide a specific store item from a specific location with location exceptions. To hide an item, open the item card, click on location exceptions and uncheck the box for the locations you wish not to sell the item.

Thank you to all our CSA's who gave us valuable feedback about how we could improve the location exceptions interface. The new location exceptions design is more intuitive and simpler to manage. We hope you enjoy it!

If you are not viewing location exceptions in your item cards, email support@farmigo.com and ask us to enable it in your system.

Provide Pick Up Location Hosts the Tools They Need to Help Distribute Shares

5/1/2012

Many CSA's have numerous pick up locations. Although we all want, and sometimes need to be in two places at once, it just isn't possible. Site hosts are members who help you distribute shares when you can't make it to all of your pick up locations. Assigning a member as a site host gives them access to the tools and resources they need to be prepared to help distribute shares. Today's TOW teaches you how to assign a member to be a host and the tools that will become available to them.

How to Assign Hosts to a Pick Up Location
To assign a current member as a host of a location, go to the routes module and click on the location you wish to add a host to. Click on the host tab of the edit location card. Then, begin typing the member's name in the "Find Member" field. To select the member hit enter/return. If you wish to allow subscribed members to view the site host's contact info at this location, under "Publish Host," click on the field where it says "No" and select "Yes" from the drop down menu.

What published hosts will look like in a member's account:
If you decide to publish hosts, members assigned to this location will now be able to view the site host contact information when they enter their account. Now, if they are going to be late for a pick up they can directly call the person in charge of the site.

Helpful Tools for Hosts:
Hosts will be granted access to two tools that will help them ensure proper share distribution at their pick up site. When a host logs into their account, they will now be able to view the reports tab. They can now view an easily printable PDF version of the Pick-up/Drop off Report and the Contact List Report.

* If you would like to publish site host information, but not give them access to these reports, please let us know at support@farmigo.com and we can remove site host access to reports.

Pick-up/Drop off Report
The Pick-up/Drop off Report is formatted as a check list that displays the member name and what they ordered. This report is great for worksites where shares are dropped off in a lunch room/office and members pick up their shares without supervision. Now, members can check off to confirm that they have received their shares so there is no confusion.

Contact List Report
The Contact List Report shows contact info for each member, including phone number and email. If the member has provided secondary contact information, it will be displayed as well.

Empower your members to become site hosts by providing them with these helpful tools! Members can be assigned to multiple pick up locations. Also, there is no limit to the number of hosts at a single pick up location. Some CSA's require members to volunteer at least once a season to help with distribution. This is a good way to encourage members to meet each other and contribute to the success of your program. If you could use a helpful hand at your pick-up locations, ask members to become site hosts!

How have site hosts helped you? What do you find are the benefits of assigning site hosts? Share your comments below.