A reusable box is great way to create a communal experience for your share members and encourages environment-friendly practices.  Coolers are also a great way to expand offerings to your members beyond produce.  But these containers cost money!

The Membership Fee is a helpful tool for asking members to make a deposit on these fun containers.  Read more below for tips on setting up the Membership Fee and then refunding the deposits.

You may want to consider explaining what this fee is for in the signup process by adding a comment to the location or adding it to the payment plan notes.

• Adding a location comment:  Under the Info tab of the location editor, you may add a comment.  This comment will appear in the first step of the signup process next to the location listed.
  
• Adding payment plan notes:  Email [email protected] with edits that you would like to make to your payment plan notes, which are presented in the Terms step of the signup process.  Please note that the notes may not be adjusted for all payment plan types.
  

When the member signs up and is charged the membership fee, a receive fee payment is added under the Payment tab of their member file.  This payment line indicates that the fee has been charged.

Now let’s say that it’s the end of the season or the member has canceled their subscription, you may record their deposit refund by taking the following steps under the Payment tab of the member file:

1. Add an Internal payment with the status “Received” for the amount of their refund and save changes.  You may want to add a note that the payment is for a returned container.
   
2. Add a Check or Cash payment (depending on how you deliver the refund) with the status “Refunded” for the amount of their refund and save changes.  You may want to add a note that the payment is for a returned container.
   

Electronic Checks are the preferred method of payment in Farmigo as they have the lowest transaction fees. Electronic Checks take 5-7 business days to process. Holidays will delay funding. 

Farmigo works with Check Gateway to manage electronic check payments. If your member's bank account has not rejected a payment within 4 days, Check Gateway sends our system a status of Received. Once a payment is marked as received in Farmigo, we stop reaching out to Check Gateway to check on the payment status. Most rejections occur within the first 3 days of processing, however, banks have up to 90 days to reject a payment. It is a rare occurrence, but it is possible that after a payment is marked as received in Farmigo, a bank can then go back and reject the payment. This is why we strongly advise you to compare your Check Gateway statements against your Payments Report in Farmigo. 

Below are example funding schedules for an Electronic Check Payment.

Member enters transaction before noon:
Day 1 - Enter transaction BEFORE 12 noon
Day 2 - Processing Day 1
Day 3 - Processing Day 2 
Day 4 - Processing Day 3 
Day 5 - Processing Day 4 (technically funds released at midnight)
Day 6 - Funds available

Member enters transaction after noon:
Day 1 - Enter transaction AFTER 12 noon
Day 2 - Considered day entered
Day 3 - Processing Day 1
Day 4 - Processing Day 2
Day 5 - Processing Day 3 
Day 6 - Processing Day 4 (technically funds released at midnight)
Day 7 - Funds available

Read on to learn more about how to address each of these payment issues.

Last week’s Tip examined how revenue is recorded on an accrual basis in the Farmigo system.  This week’s Tip dives a little bit deeper and reviews how these principles are related to your members’ balances.

Your Farmigo system records revenue when it is earned in order to help you account for the way in which subscriptions are managed.  If you are accounting for a one time order, then things are pretty simple.  For instance, a customer orders an item for $5 and then pays for that item. When it comes to CSAs though, members commit to receive deliveries for a specific season or on a continual basis.  They are not placing a one-time order; they are subscribing to your program.

For subscription programs, you need to draw against that prepaid credit as the member receives each delivery.  In this case, you want to recognize payment when the goods are delivered since that is when the commitment for the "product" has been attained.

The scenarios outlined below examine how these principles are applied for a seasonal system and an ongoing system.  For help identifying how your system is set up, click here.

Read on to learn more.

This week’s tip focus on how revenue is recorded in your Farmigo system.  The Farmigo system features accounting tools so that you may track your revenue on an accrual basis. This means that income is recorded when it is earned (learn more).  Revenue is considered earned once a member’s order is delivered and recorded as received.

Revenue is realized at the time of delivery in order to account for changes that may be made to a member’s subscription between the time that they place the original order and the time that they receive their order.

Read on to learn more. (Also, check out Part II & Part III)

Check out the new Payments report generator by going to the Reports manager, found under the Status menu in your administrative dashboard.  Read more below to learn about this new report.

We've worked hard to negotiate with PowerPay to decrease your credit card processing fees. 


Lowering the transaction fee from 
$0.25+2.19% to $0.25 +2.09%

Lowering the Authorize.net Service Fee from 
$15/month to $10/month

If you are currently using PowerPay as your merchant to process credit cards, please contact our Powerpay representative Emily to request a reduction in your fees: 
207-228-6042 x 1859 


If you are not currently using PowerPay as your merchant, but would like to, click here for instructions on how to apply and for the online application. Your rates will automatically be set to the reduced rates.