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Step-by-step Market Procedures?

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Diane Rose

Jun 21, 2011 @ 12:29 AM

I wonder if I am operating my market in the MOST efficient manner. We are open for orders from Friday - Monday. When the market closes on Monday, I send the Harvest emails. I'm trying to incorporate more of the built-in technology for checking in the growers and checking out the orders. All of our orders are prepaid (the customer goes to a 2nd site for payment after placing their order).

Question: What reports should be run and in what order to prepare for market day and then after all of the orders gone, which reports should be run to close out the market?

I realize everyone's markets are organized differently, but there must be some basic format to follow?

Thank you,

Diane

1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Eric Wagoner on Jun 22, 2011 @ 06:53 PM

   

   Diane,

   You're right that every market is different, and every market uses the system slightly differently to suit their needs. Here's how I use it for my market.

   1. The growers have until 6pm on Sunday night to get their products listed on the website. I keep an eye on things all weekend to make sure the new products they list conform with our guidelines, that they've set prices, and so forth.

   2. Sunday evening, I turn off the ability for growers to add new products to the site via the link in the Market Manager panel. I go through the products again to make sure everything conforms to our market rules (everything needing a license is licensed, the "no dumping" rule is being followed, items are named correctly, etc.)

   3. I write a weblog entry, using my standard template, and send it out to my customers. I attach the product listing and turn open the market, by checking the two boxes in the "New Weblog Entry" form.

   4. While orders are coming in, if a customer pays via PayPal (about 10% of our orders are pre-paid this way), I credit their accounts and apply the payment toward their order. Both of these are done via the "Open Orders -> Edit Order" page. I also credit volunteers scheduled to help that week with their food credit.

   5. Tuesday night, I close the market to orders and send out the harvest email, both by clicking the links in the Market Manager panel.

   6. Thursday at 2pm, I turn off the ability for growers to edit orders by clicking the link in the Market Manager panel. All growers are instructed to remove items they cannot fill off the website by then.

   7. I then generate the sales report, the packing report, and the all invoices report. I no longer print these, but I save them to my iPhone as a backup in case I need them (via the internet service Dropbox).

   8. I then print the csv containing the amount owed the growers and load it into my check printing software, and print and sign the checks.

   9. At 3pm my volunteers and I arrive at our pickup point and start setting up our space. From 3:30 to 4:30, the growers arrive and drop off their things and leave with their checks. For some of our growers, we check them out using the "Check in grower delivery" page on an iPad.

   10. From 4:30 until 8pm we fill orders. The customers walk up to a team of volunteers with iPod Touches using the "Check out customer order" page. They fill the order and bring it to the customer. The customer bags up their items (most bring their own bags) and walk over to the payment table. There I've got two volunteers with iPads using the same "Check out a customer order" page to record payments.

   11. At 7:30, I call everyone who hasn't shown up yet using the "View Orders Not Yet Picked Up" page on my iPhone. Any orders not picked up by 8pm are forfeited, but they must still pay.

   12. At the close of market, after everything's put away, I issue refunds, charge back growers for missing items, credit accounts for overpayment, and charge accounts for no-shows and roll-overs. I do all this on my iPad using the links on the Market Manager page.

   13. Between Thursday and Sunday, I make out my bank deposit, check the numbers against the payment summary (they're never exact, but given the nature of our cash box's float, that's expected), and then mark all open orders as complete.

   And that's it! We usually fill between 200 and 300 orders a week for about $10,000 total. Besides the five hours I spend on site on Thursday, I spend about another three or four hours a week doing the accounting and other market prep.

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2. 2 Posted by Adam Colvin on Nov 13, 2011 @ 09:13 PM

   

   Thanks for the detailed information on how you do this!

   I'd like to ask what your "no dumping rule" (up in #2) is, and also ask why if you have 10% of your customers prepay with Paypal (#4) that you don't just require everybody to prepay. I'm looking for ways to be more efficient, next year and really like to hear how you do it! Thanks for taking the time to type all this out!

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3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Eric Wagoner on Nov 14, 2011 @ 01:55 AM

   

   Basically, we don't let growers sell for a loss. So, no 1000 pound listings for summer squash at 25 cents a pound, for instance. Our market is not the place to dump product.

   PayPal payments are the least efficient way for us to accept payments, so I don't encourage it. It's an option for those who want it (and it does have it's good points -- a customer just paid us $1000 in advance) for their convenience, but I don't encourage it.

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4. 4 Posted by Adam Colvin on Nov 14, 2011 @ 04:05 AM

   

   Thank you for clarifying!

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