In Open Food Network, Order Cycles are where shop managers open their shop. This involves selecting which of their products are in stock, what fees are applied and what dates the shop will open and close.

Why use Order Cycles? Many producers, who are selling small quantities of products, may find it useful to have an order cycle that is perpetually open, and to fulfill orders individually, as they are placed. Other producers, who sell large quantities of products, to multiple customers, find it useful to establish periodic order cycles, which are collectively fulfilled at the end of a period. For instance, a farmer may have an order cycle which is open (accepting orders) for two weeks. At the end of this order cycle, all of the orders are packed, sorted and distributed at the same time. Once this batch of orders has been fulfilled, a new order cycle is opened. Structuring order cycles in this way can make the tasks of packing and delivering orders more efficient.

Access Order Cycles

When logged into your admin dashboard you can access order cycles from this button:

Or 'Order Cycles' on the blue horizontal menu across the top of the page. Then click on +New Order Cycle

You will now be redirected to a new screen:

Name (required): Choose a name for this order cycle. This will only be visible to you, so it can be named anything which is meaningful for you. We recommend that you follow a consistent naming protocol e.g FoodHub_Week27_2014.

Orders Open: This is the date at which your OFN store will be open, and start to accept orders.

Orders Close: This is the date when your OFN store will close, and stop accepting orders. If you intend to have an order cycle which is continuously open, select a close date which is well into the future.

Schedules: leave blank unless implementing Subscriptions.

Ready for (ie Date/Time) (required): This box tells the customer when their order will be ready for either collection or delivery.

Customer Instructions: This message will be included in the customer’s order confirmation email, below the message that corresponds to their chosen shipping method (see below). This note is designed to only be visible to customers, so you can include more sensitive information like addresses, or phone numbers etc.

Products: You must select the products which will be visible in your online store during this order cycle.

Add Coordinator Fee: There is the option of adding a coordinator fee. Here you can apply an enterprise fee that has been created for your enterprise.

Open the shopfront

Click Create to save this order cycle.

For periodic, repetitive order cycles, you can copy an existing order cycle and change the dates, to make the process quicker. Select the icon with two sheets of paper to the right of the table as highlighted below:

Order cycles will display as green when they are active, yellow when scheduled for a future date, and grey when they have closed. If an order cycle closed over one month ago, it will no longer display on this list. To view all of your past order cycles click show 30 more days or show 90 more days at the bottom of the list.

Customers will be advised when they have already ordered in an order cycle, even if the order cycle was closed for some time before being reopened:

Before you read on, you might like to look at a quick demonstration of how to set up your first payment method:

Setting up a Payment Method

• Go to the Payment Methods page by clicking on Enterprises in the blue horizontal menu, and then click Settings next to your enterprise. The Payment Methods page is found in the menu on the left hand side.

• Click Create new payment method + . You will be directed to a page like this:

• Tick your enterprise, in the box on the right hand side of the page titled Hubs. This indicates which enterprise the payment method you are about to create will apply to. You can select more than one enterprise.

• Name: Choose a name for this payment method. (eg 'Pay with credit card using Paypal'). This name is displayed at checkout and on customers' order confirmation emails.

• Description: provide further details about the payment method. For example, for a bank transfer, you would enter the bank account details in this box into which you would like a customer to make the BACS payment. This description is displayed at checkout and in order confirmation emails.

• Display: Opt for either 'Back Office Only' or 'Both Checkout and Back Office'

• Active: Select whether this payment method is currently visible and available, or not.

• Payment providers: Select the option which is relevant to the payment method you are creating. There are three options:

  • PayPal Express

  • Stripe/ Stripe Connect (This payment has been deprecated and will be removed. Use Stripe SCA)

  • Stripe SCA

  • Cash / EFT / etc. (Cash, cheque or bank transfer. These payments do not go through an online payment portal and do not involve automatic validation)

By clicking Create, the payment method will be created and you will have new fields to define payment method fees. These fields visible depend on which 'Calculator' you selected.

Integrated Payment Providers

For Paypal, MasterCard, Stripe and Pin Payments (Australia only) additional instructions are below.

Payment Method Fees

You can attach a fee to payment methods. Most commonly this is used to pass on a payment portal's fees to the customer. For example, you may wish to charge the customer for the convenience of paying by PayPal to cover the fee charged by PayPal.

Fee Calculators

Flat Percent: This fee is charged as a percentage of the total amount charged in the order.

Flat Rate (per order): This fee is applied as standard fee to all orders, regardless of the size of the order.

Flexible Rate – This fee calculator is especially useful if you'd like to encourage customers to place large orders: the cost of payment can be reduced or zero when the threshold number of items has been reached.

• ‘First Item Cost’: The fee charged for the first item in the order.

• ‘Additional Item Cost’: The fee charged for items beyond the first item.

• ‘Max Items’: The maximum number of items on which the fee will be applied. Items purchased beyond this amount will be not be charged the fee.

For Example: if the 'First Item Cost' is set to £0.20, 'Additional Item Cost' is £0.10 and 'Max Items' is 3 then a customer who purchases 5 items will be charged £0.40 in payment fees (£0.20 for the first item, £0.10 for items two and three, and £0.00 for items four and five).

Flat Rate (per item): This fee is a constant fee, applied to products listed as ‘items’. (It is not applied to products sold by weight or volume. Hence there will be no associated payment method fee charged to a customer who, for example, buys rice by kg.)

Price Sack: This is a flexible shipping fee method that allows you to reward shoppers who spend over a ‘minimal amount’ by applying a discount. If the shopper spends less than the ‘minimal amount’ you can set what shipping fee they pay.

• Minimal Amount: If the order total is below this amount, no discount is applied. If the order is above this amount, the discount will be applied at checkout.

• ‘Normal Amount’: This will be the shipping fee applied to sales below the ‘Minimal Amount’.

• ‘Discount Amount’: This will be the shipping fee applied to sales above the ‘Minimal Amount’.

Refunds

This page explains the varying rights each enterprise has in the context of complex multiple enterprise order cycles. Be it:

• the producer (profile or shop) who supplies the order cycle only,

• a hub which distributes goods only,

• or a hub which coordinates the order cycle (and may or may not also supply or distribute goods).

For more details about simple order cycles involving a single producer selling their own stock only (producer shop), see here.

The coordinator has the highest degree of control over an order cycle. Other enterprises can view the order cycles they are involved in, but only edit settings which affect them.

The Coordinator

The Coordinator of an Order Cycle can:

• Create the order cycles

• Set and edit the name of the order cycle as well as the opening and closing dates.

• Apply enterprise fees to all products (coordinator fee), to products supplied by producers (in the incoming section), and/or to products distributed by hubs (in the outgoing section).

Incoming

• The coordinator can add enterprises as suppliers. However, to do this the supplying enterprise (registered as a Producer with OFN) must have granted the coordinating hub permission to add their products to an order cycle.

• The coordinator can select all or a subset of products from their suppliers that they wish include in the order cycle.

• The coordinator can apply differential enterprise fees to each supplier. For example, they may wish to charge a supplying butcher a higher rate (to cover the extra cost of refrigerated transport) than a baker.

Outgoing

The coordinator can choose which enterprises the products listed in an order cycle are distributed through (including themselves).

To do this each potential distributor must be:

1. Registered as a Hub.

2. Have granted the coordinating hub permission to add products to an order cycle.

3. Have at least one active shipping and payment method.

The coordinator can choose from the complete list of incoming products, which will be displayed on each distributing Hub's shopfront. The supplier (producer profile or shop) must have set up an enterprise permission of 'add to order cycle' between themselves and the specific distributing hub (as well as the coordinator).

The coordinator can apply differential enterprise fees to each distributing hub if desired. This might be advantageous if one hub is further away from the coordinator than another, and hence would have a higher transport overhead associated with it.

Supplying (Incoming) Enterprises

The supplier (producer) can view all the order cycles they’re involved with by visiting the order cycle summary page (from the top horizontal blue menu), even if they haven't created the order cycles themselves. By clicking on the order cycle an incoming producer can see their details only, not the products or details of others involved in the order cycle. They can edit items relating to themselves: for example they can remove a product which is out of stock from an order cycle. A supplying enterprise can not alter the name nor dates of an order cycle.

In the Reports section (top horizontal blue menu) an incoming supplying producer can view the orders they have received for the order cycle

Incoming

• A supplier can view, add and remove their products from the 'Incoming Products' section of an order cycle.

• A supplier can add/remove enterprise fees which are applied to their products in the 'Incoming Products' section of the order cycle. This might be useful for producers who supply several hubs, some of which are much further away from them than others. They may wish to add an extra levy to more distant hubs to cove transport costs.

Outgoing

The degree of influence a supplier has over their products in the 'Outgoing Products' section of an order cycle depends on the specific enterprise permissions they granted the distributing hub and vice versa.

• If the distributing hub granted the supplying producer (profile, shop or hub) the right to 'add to [the hub's] order cycle' then the supplier can view, add and remove products from the list in the 'Outgoing Products' section of the order cycle.

• If the distributing hub did not grant the supplying producer (profile, shop or hub) the right to 'add to [the hub's] order cycle' then the supplier can view but NOT add and remove products from the list in the 'Outgoing Products' section of the order cycle.

• A supplier is never able to change the pickup/delivery details, or the enterprise fees applied to the distributor.

Distributing (Outgoing) Enterprise

A distributor can view Order Cycles they’re involved with in their Order Cycle summary page, even if they did not create them themselves (ie. they are not the order cycle coordinator). By clicking on an order cycle, the outgoing distributing enterprise can see the details of an order cycle which relate to them only. (For example, if they are not the sole distributor of the order cycle they will not be able to see who the other distributing enterprises are nor the products they will offer on their shop front.) The outgoing distributing hub can view and edit details of their distribution- delivery dates and methods, and enterprise fees for distribution- but no the name nor period of the order cycle itself.

In the 'Reports' menu, a order cycle distributor can view the orders which have been placed (along with customer names) to aid delivery/dispatch of goods.

Incoming

A distributor can view the incoming products of supplier who have granted them the enterprise permission 'add to order cycle' but they can not edit stock levels/availability nor apply/remove producer specific enterprise fees.

Outgoing

The degree of influence the distributing hub has over the products in the 'outgoing products' section of an order cycle, depends on the enterprise permissions between them and the supplying producer.

• The distributing hub can add/remove products from its outgoing exchange. This only applies to product from producers who been added to the order cycle by the coordinator, and have granted the distributor the enterprise permission 'add to order cycle'.

• Can change the pickup/delivery details

• Can add/remove their enterprise fee

To open your online shop on Open Food Network and start selling, your enterprise must be registered as either a Producer Shop or Producer/Non-Producer Hub. Read more about the different Enterprise profiles here and here.

The next essential steps are to set up Shipping and Payment Methods for your enterprise. At this stage we also suggest creating Enterprise Fees (a mark up added to the price each product charged by the supplying producer to cover admin and distribution costs).

Opening and closing times of shop fronts on OFN, as well as the option to sub-select products for different dates and times of collection, are controlled by Order Cycles.

Shop fronts on OFN are highly flexible. Read more if you are interested in:

• Providing different products and services to different customer groups.

• Would like only registered members to be able to place orders (Private Shop)

• Would like a 'dummy' display only shop front

Customer View

When you have opened your shop front with an active Order Cycle, customers can view your products listed, search using the top left hand 'Search Box' and/or filter products by their categories or properties:

To add products to their basket, customers can click on 'Add' and then toggle the quantity of the item in their basket using the '+' and '-' keys.

Enterprise fees are useful for producers and hubs who are working together. They allow costs associated with admin, packing, transport, sales and fundraising to be allocated to different parties.

For example, a hub may choose to add an enterprise fee of 10% to all the products they sell to cover their administration costs (storage of products prior to distribution, staff costs etc).

For producers selling their own products directly, these costs are already present in the price of the product so applying Enterprise Fees may not be necessary.

One of the many benefits to OFN customers is price transparency. Shoppers can see the percentage of an item's price assigned to admin, packing etc. This information is displayed by clicking on the pie chart next to the price of a product on the shop front:

Before you move on you might like to have a look at a quick demonstration of setting up your first enterprise fee:

Setting up an Enterprise Fee

• Go to 'Enterprise Fees' by clicking on Enterprises in the blue bar at the top of the page and then click Settings next to your enterprise. The Enterprise Fee page is found in the menu on the left hand side.

• Click Create One Now (or Manage Enterprise Fees if you have already set one up). You will be directed to a page like this:

Enterprise: In the first column, select the enterprise to which the fee applies.

Fee Type: Select the service that the fee applies to. The options are Packing Fee, Transport Fee, Admin Fee, Sales Fee or Fundraising Fee.

Name: Choose a name for your fee.

Tax Category: Select the appropriate tax category. In most cases, the VAT rate for the enterprise fee will be inherited from the product. If the enterprise fee is associated with a service added to the product, the fee may be subject to VAT but the product itself not. In this case, choose between 'Reduced Rate', 'Full Rate' or 'Zero rated' VAT.

Calculator: The fee can be calculated in a number of ways. Select the calculator which best applies.

Click Update to save your enterprise fee.

Fee Calculators

Flat Percent – This fee is charged as a percentage of the total amount charged in the order.

Weight (per kg) – this fee is applied to products on a per kg basis. The fee will only be applied to products which are priced at a per kg rate, not products listed as items (e.g. a product listed as ‘1 bunch of parsley’ will not have an associated enterprise fee with this option).

Flat Rate (per order) – This fee is applied as a standard fee to all orders, regardless of order size.

Flexible Rate – This fee calculator is especially useful if you'd like to encourage customers to place large orders: the enterprise fee can be reduced or zeroed when the threshold number of items has been reached.

• First Item Cost - the fee charged for the first item in the order.

• Additional Item Cost - the fee charged for items beyond the first item.

• Max Items - the maximum number of items on which the fee will be applied. Items purchased beyond this amount will not be charged the fee.

For example, if the 'First Item Cost' is set to £0.20, 'Additional Item Cost' to £0.10 and 'Max Items' to 3, then a customer who purchases 5 items will be charged £0.40 in enterprise fees. This is comprised of £0.20 for the first item, £0.10 for the second and third, and £0.00 for the fourth and fifth.

Flat Rate (per item) - This fee is a constant fee, applied to products listed as ‘items’. (It is not applied to products sold by weight or volume, hence there will be no associated enterprise fee charged to a customer who buys rice by the kg for example).

Price Sack - This is a flexible shipping fee method that allows you to reward shoppers who spend over a ‘minimal amount’ by applying a shipping discount. If the shopper spends less than the ‘minimal amount’, you can set what shipping fee they pay.

• Minimal Amount - If the order total is below this amount, no discount is applied. If the order is above this amount, the discount will be applied at checkout.

• Normal Amount - This is the shipping fee applied to sales below the 'Minimal Amount'.

• Discount Amount - This is the shipping fee applied to orders above the 'Minimal Amount'. You can set this to 0 for free shipping, or use a minus symbol to apply a discount, eg. -5 for $5 cheaper.

You open your shop by creating an Order Cycle. When you create an order cycle you select when your shop is open (from and until), which products will go into the shop, and any fees that you'll apply.

Why Order Cycles? Some hubs may wish to have an online store which is perpetually open and to fulfil orders on a one by one basis, as they are received. However, many hubs operate on a periodic ordering system which allows them to process orders in bulk, making their production, packing and distribution activities more efficient (and reducing associated overhead costs).

For example, an order cycle might be open for two weeks. At the end of the fortnight, all orders will be packed and delivered at the same time on the following Wednesday. Once this batch of orders has been delivered, a new order cycle may reopen.

A quick demonstration of setting up a new order cycle:

Viewing Order Cycles

You can create an order cycle, and view previous order cycles by clicking on Manage Order Cycles on your dashboard.

Or from the horizontal menu at the top of the page.

Create a New Order Cycle

The first step is to select a coordinator for your order cycle. Only the enterprise who coordinates an order cycle has permission to modify and manage all aspects of the order cycle. Other enterprises involved in an order cycle (as suppliers or distributors only) will have restricted access. For more information on cross-enterprise management in the context of order cycles, click here.

Once the order cycle coordinator has been chosen, the process of setting up your cycle can be broken down into three steps:

1) General Settings

Name (required): Give the order cycle a name which is meaningful to you. We recommend that you follow a consistent naming protocol e.g FoodHub_Week27_2014. We also recommend that you include the name of your hub in the order cycle name, so that OFN support can identify your order cycles if you need assistance.

Orders Open at: This is the date and time when your OFN store will be open, visible and able to accept orders from customers.

Orders Close: This is the date and time when your OFN store will close and stop accepting orders. If you intend to have an order cycle which is continuously open, select a close date well into the future.

Schedules: Leave blank unless using Subscriptions.

Add Coordinator Fee: As a hub, the coordinator is most likely you. Here you can apply your Enterprise Fee which acts as the markup. The fee will be calculated according to the calculator selected in Enterprise Fees. You can only apply an enterprise fee which has previously been created.

2) Incoming Products

On this page you can select the producers, and their produce, which will be available in this order cycle. In the dropdown menu you will see all producers who have granted you permission to add their produce to your order cycle (See Enterprise Permissions section). After selecting a supplier and clicking Add Supplier, all of the products associated with that supplier will be visible. Check those products you wish to add to the store, or click select all.

The Receival Details field is optional. Information added to this field will automatically added to any email sent to producers at the end of an order cycle (after clicking 'Notify Producers'). It might be a good idea to include an exact delivery address for produce prior to distribution to customers here.

The Add Fee button in this section, at the end of each producer's entry in the table, allows you to add different enterprise fees to different suppliers. For example, transporting flour or heavy goods to customers may be more expensive for a hub than salad. Hence, a hub can, in a transparent manner, add a slightly higher enterprise fee to all goods supplied by the flour miller than the salad farmer.

Select the name of the enterprise in the first dropdown box, then click the name of the enterprise fee in the second dropdown box. In the example below, an enterprise fee named 'OrderAdmin' is applied to the supplier, 'Producer of Fruit'.

3) Outgoing Products

Here you can select one or more hub-distributors. All hubs chosen to be a distributor in this order cycle will have an open shop front for the duration of the order cycle. In a simple model, only one hub is listed as the sole distributor for the order cycle. Select the hub, and check the box 'Select all' to add all incoming products to the shop front. For more flexibility, the same order cycle may have multiple hub distributors. In this case you may wish to select a different subset of the available incoming products for each distributor, and/or add different delivery dates for each.

The Tags column is where you can tag your order cycles to customise whether they are visible/invisible to certain customers. See tags and tag rules for more information.

The ‘Ready for (i.e. Date/Time)’ (required): This box tells the customer when their order will be ready for either collection or delivery. If your order cycle is a perpetual one, which fulfils orders on an individual basis rather than in bulk, you should enter something like ‘Two days after order is received’. The example below shows how a customer can toggle between different order cycles to select the date which suits them best.

The note is also shown at check out, when the customer selects their shipping method (see below) and is included in the order confirmation email.

The Pick-Up Instructions message will be included in the customer’s order confirmation email, below the message that corresponds to their chosen shipping method (see below). This note is designed to only be visible to customers, so you can include more sensitive information like addresses, or phone numbers etc. See below for an example of the order confirmation email.

Add Fee: Again, a previously created enterprise fee can be assigned to this distributor. For simple models (with one hub distributor, who also is the coordinator of the order cycle) adding a fee at this stage is the same as adding a 'Coordinator Fee' (it will apply to all products). For complex models, the coordinator may wish to add different fees to all products sold though each distributor. The best place to implement this functionality is here.

Open the shopfront

Click Save to schedule the order cycle. If the opening date has already passed, your shop is instantly open! If you are not ready to open right away, enter dates in the future, which you can change later.

For periodic, repetitive order cycles, you can copy an existing order cycle and change the dates to make the process quicker. Click the button with two sheets of paper to the right of the table as highlighted below:

Order cycles will display as green when they are active, yellow when scheduled for a future date, and grey when they have closed. If an order cycle closed over one month ago, it will no longer display on this list. To view all of your past order cycles click show 30 more days or show 90 more days at the bottom of the list.

Customers will be advised when they have already ordered in an order cycle, even if the order cycle was closed for some time before being reopened:

‘Notify Producers’ Button

By using this button at the top of the page, all the Producers linked to the order cycle will receive an email containing a list of the products ordered for that particular order cycle thus far.

When the Notify Producers button is selected there will be a confirmation prompt. Once confirmed, an email will be automatically sent to all relevant Producers. The email will include Delivery instructions (if this field is completed in the incoming products section) as well as the following product information:

• SKUs (if relevant)

• Name of Supplier

• Product name

• Quantity ordered

• Price per unit

• Subtotal per product

• Included Tax (if relevant)

Setting up automatic producer notifications

If you would like the producer emails to be automatically sent when an order cycle closes, you can do this from the 'Advanced settings' menu in the edit order cycle screen:

From the menu that appears, select the checkbox for 'automatic notifications' and click 'save and reload page' to save your changes:

To also show customer names in these reports, for example to help your producers to pack items by customer, ensure you have the setting 'customer names in reports' enabled from the shop preferences menu of your enterprise settings:

Once you have the automatic notifications set up for an order cycle, your producers will automatically be sent an email after the order cycle closes. Enabling 'customer names in reports' will help them to pack the orders by customer.

Producer / Supplier Reports

If your Order Cycle includes products from linked Producers / Suppliers they will be able to log in to their OFN account and view reports about the Order Cycle. By default they will not be able to see any Customer Details in these reports. If you would like your suppliers to access Customer Names in their reports, you can adjust these settings in Shop Preferences in your Enterprise Settings.

Before you read on, you might like to have look at a quick demonstration of how to set up your first shipping method:

Setting up a shipping method

• Go to the Shipping Methods page by clicking on Enterprises in the blue horizontal menu, and then click Settings next to your enterprise. The Shipping Methods page is found in the menu on the left hand side.

• Click Create new shipping method + . You will be directed to a page like this:

• Check the box next to your enterprise on the right hand side of the page under 'Hubs'. This indicates that the shipping method you are about to create will apply to that enterprise. You can select multiple enterprises, if desired.

• Name: Choose a name for the method. This name will be displayed to the customer during their purchase process and on order confirmation emails. Example:

• Description: Add additional details, such as the precise address of the collection point. These details will be visible to customers in grey next to the name (see screenshot above) and in their order confirmation email.

• Display: Opt for either 'Back Office Only' or 'Both Checkout and Back Office'

• Category: Is this method a delivery or pick-up?

• Calculator: Select the way that shipping fees will be added to this shipping method. Note that a shipping fee may be zero. See below for more details.

• Tax Category: This enables you to set the tax associated with your shipping method/collection fee independently to that assigned to tax-eligible products owned by your enterprise. The options are: none, full rate, zero rated, reduced rate or shipping.

• Categories: Transport conditions (refrigeration, frozen, default) associated with this shipping method.

• Zones: Select the appropriate zone (this is to enable correct tax calculations).

By clicking Create, the shipping method will be created, and you will then be provided with new fields, to add details of the shipping method charges. The fields presented will depend upon which shipping fee calculator you have selected.

Fee Calculators

Flat Percent – This fee is charged as a percentage of the total amount spent in the order.

Weight (per kg) – this fee is applied to products on a per kg basis. The fee will only be applied to products which are priced at a per kg rate, not products listed as items (e.g. A product listed as ‘1 bunch of parsley’ will not contribute to the overall fee a customer is charged for shipping)

Flat Rate (per order) – This fee is applied as standard fee to all orders, regardless of the size of the order.

Flat Rate (per item) – This fee is a constant fee, applied to products listed as ‘items’. (It is not applied to products sold by weight or volume. Hence there will be no associated shipping cost charged to a customer who, for example, buys rice by kg).

Flexible Rate – This fee calculator is especially useful if you'd like to encourage customers to place large orders: the cost of shipping can be reduced or zero when the threshold number of items has been reached.

• ‘First Item Cost’: The fee charged for the first item in the order.

• ‘Additional Item Cost’: The fee charged for items beyond the first item.

• ‘Max Items’: The maximum number of items on which the fee will be applied. Items purchased beyond this amount will be not be charged the fee.

For example: If the shipping fee for the 'First item cost' is £2, 'Additional Item Cost' = £1 and 'Max items' = 3. A customer who purchases 5 items, will be charged £4 shipping (£2 for the first item, £1 for items two and three, and £0 for items four and five).

Price Sack – This is a flexible shipping fee method charged by total monetary sale, rather than number of items purchased (Flexible Rate above)

• ‘Minimum Amount’: Monetary value of the threshold between Normal shipping fee and Discounted shipping fee.

• 'Normal Amount': Shipping fee applied to sales below the threshold stated in 'Minimum Amount'.

• ‘Discount Amount’: Shipping fee applied to sales above the threshold stated in 'Minimum Amount'.

A list of all customers who have placed an order with your enterprise can be viewed from the Customers menu in the admin dashboard.

You can also manually add a customer by the +New Customer button.

Customer Billing and Shipping Address

Each customer can have a default billing and shipping address. If a customer has a registered OFN account and has completed their details fully their addresses will be copied to this section automatically. Storing a default billing and shipping address can make online purchases quicker for the customer.

Tags (to group customers in to categories)

On the OFN platform this is achieved by assigning all customers belonging to a common group (ie all your wholesale customers) the same tag. To add a tag, simply type its name in the 'Tags' column on the Customers page. A customer can have several tags and of course the same tag can be linked to several people.

Online stores can be opened and closed by creating 'order cycles' on the Open Food Network platform.

The OFN web address for your shop will only display your list of products for purchase when an order cycle is open.

The format of setting up an (multi producer shop) differs slightly from that for (single producer shop).

It's possible to offer simultaneously, for example to allow a purchase for delivery in 1, 2 or 3 weeks.

In some cases, shop owners may want to be able to display products in their shop but not actually allow customers to checkout. For example to show their full product range (which may vary seasonally), or to give potential customers an idea of the products which will be on offer in the next order cycle, before it opens.

To setup a display only order cycle:

• Open an as usual, with the products you wish to display and date range for the order cycle to remain open.

• Change the 'Display' state of all your to 'Back Office Only'. This can be done from Enterprises -> Settings -> Payment Methods -> Edit:

Your shop will now be in the ‘display only’ state. Below is an example of how the shop appears to customers. It’s clearly marked as closed, but customers can see the product range.

Once customers have been grouped into categories with tags, you will be able to customise their shopping experience in the following ways:

• Making particular variants visible/invisible

• Making certain shipping methods visible/invisible

• Making certain payment methods visible/invisible

• Making order cycles visible/invisible

Most often this feature is required by enterprises who have different shop setups for members/non-members or different groups of customers such as wholesale/retail customers. More examples can be found in our section.

How to set up a Tag rule

To access Tag Rules go to Enterprises -> Settings -> Tag Rules

By Default

By default, all items will be visible to all customers whether they are tagged or not. You can change the default display rules by selecting +add new default rule. Int the example below, by default, all Order Cycles which are tagged 'wholesale' will be invisible. (For this example, only those customers who are tagged with the label 'wholesalecustomer' can view (and hence purchase from) Order Cycles tagged 'wholesale'.)

Tag Rules

Once you have defined default rules, you can then set up exceptions to these rules for specific customer groups.

• First define the customer group to which the exception will occur. In the example above, the exception was applied to all customers with the tag 'wholesalecustomer'.

• Then, for this customer group, you can choose to customise their shopping experience in one of four ways:

We now look at each option, one-by-one:

Show or Hide Variants in my shopfront

This rule lets you make particular variants visible/invisible to tagged customers. For this rule to operate you need to have tagged the customer and the product variant in your inventory (not in the producer's product list) with the same tag.

In the example below the 1 kg variant of delux muesli has been tagged 'member'. It would thus be possible to set up tag rules such that by default only the smaller 500 g (non-tagged) variant of delux muesli appears on the shop front unless the customer belongs to a group of buyers all tagged 'member' (in which case they would be able to view the 1 kg option too).

Show/Hide shipping methods

In this example, the shipping method 'Collect in Person' has been assigned to customers with the tag 'member'. One could then set up the following:

• a default tag rule: shipping methods tagged 'member' is invisible

• a conditional tag rule: for customers tagged 'member' the shipping method tagged 'member' is visible

Thus, only members would be able to opt to collect their purchases in person.

Show/Hide payment methods

This rule lets you make particular payment methods specifically available or unavailable to particular customers.

In this example, the payment method 'Cash' has been assigned to customers with the tag 'member'. One could then set up the following:

• a default tag rule: payment methods tagged 'member' is invisible

• a conditional tag rule: for customers tagged 'member' the payment method tagged 'member' is visible

Thus, only members would be able to opt to pay for their purchases in cash on collection.

Show/Hide order cycles at my shopfront

This rule lets you make certain order cycles visible only to certain customers.

In this example, the above Order Cycle has been assigned to customers with the tag 'member'. One could then set up the following:

• a default tag rule: order cycles tagged 'member' are invisible

• a conditional tag rule: for customers tagged 'member' an order cycle tagged 'member' is visible

Thus, only members would be able to purchase goods from this order cycle.

Customer Specific Pricing

Sometimes our users want to charge different prices for different customers, often based on their member vs non-member (or wholesale vs retail) status. Currently, there’s no way to automatically charge different prices for members vs non-members, but there are some round about ways of achieving the same thing.

You can use customer tagging, with tag rules to achieve this by:

It is possible to have more than one order cycle open at the same time. This has the effect of creating two (or more) open shopfronts, which the customer can choose between from the one website address (URL). This feature is helpful when you want to have different ‘conditions’ in the two shopfronts such as different products (wholesale or retail), different enterprise fees (such a non-member mark-ups) or different order cycle opening and closing dates (for different deliver runs).

When the customer first lands on your shopfront page they will be requested to choose an order cycle before products are visible:

When the customer selects an order cycle, the shopfront will load with the specific products, fees and opening and closing dates of that order cycle.

Ordering your order cycles

You can choose whether you want your order cycles to be listed in the dropdown menu by closing date (closing soonest first) or by opening date (opened earliest first).

Customers can navigate between order cycles:

Often an enterprise may want to offer individual customers and wholesale retailers different prices (or even different products- such as bulk buys).

For some enterprises (such as community food groups) 'members' may be eligible to reduced rates in comparison to 'non members'.

'' are the mechanism on the OFN platform whereby differential pricing and other benefits can be imparted to specific customer groups, if desired.

For step-by-step guides on how to implement tags and tag rules to provide specific functionalities view the .

If you don’t want your shopfront to be visible to the public (ie. you would like to host a shop front from which only members can place orders), there are two ways that you can make your shop more private:

• make your shop 'invisible' and only share the shop website address (URL) with your desired customer base

• make your shop 'private' and only visible to registered customers.

Make your shop front invisible

In your Enterprise Settings, under Primary Details, you can set your profile to 'invisible'.

When the Visible in Search? option is set to 'not visible' your OFN enterprise will be hidden in both all searches within the platform and in external web the search engines. Your enterprise will not appear in the "shops" menu nor on the OFN map page.

The benefit of this method for making your OFN shop front invisible is that you can invite (by email, perhaps), customers by sending them the direct link to the store. It is also a simple and effective way to manage your enterprise.

Hence, if someone on your mailing list forwards an email from you to a friend, the friend can place an order without being a registered customer. You will need to manually double check that all orders came from registered customers, posteroiri.

Visible to registered customers only

A stricter, but potentially more time consuming approach, is to let your OFN enterprise remain visible in the enterprise settings above but change the Publicly Visible Shopfront option (under Enterprises-> Settings-> Shop Preferences) to Visible to Registered Customers Only.

Whilst your enterprise will be visible in a search of the OFN platform, your customers would need to log into their OFN account in order to view your shop front and the products on offer. Other registered OFN shoppers, who are not on your customer list, will not be able to see your shop front once logged into their OFN accounts.

You'll need to maintain your Customer list and manually add all new customers, before they can place their first order.

You can also delete customers who you no longer want to be able to see your shop or place an order.

How does the shopping experience change when your shop is private?

When visitors to your shop arrive at the shop, if they're not logged in yet, they'll see the message below.

From here there's 2 pathways:

a) If the customer logs in, or signs up with an email address that is on the shop's customer list, they'll be taken to the shopfront as usual.

b) If the customer logs in or signs up with an email that is not on the shop's customer list they'll see the message below. They can then contact the shop to request access.