A good way of keeping in touch with customers and potential customers is to set up a mailing list and periodically send out newsletters or information about product updates by email. For example, you may wish to send:
a monthly newsletter on the progress of your enterprise, new products, news from producers, etc.
an email notification each time a new sales cycle is launched.
One of the most common tools online today is Mailchimp, so here are some tips and tricks for using Mailchimp to send your newsletters.
Be sure to follow local legal guidelines when storing and processing customer contact information. For EU regulations see here.
It is possible to "connect" your Open Food Network and MailChimp accounts. In doing so every new customer who places an order in your shop will automatically have their contact address added to your enterprise's MailChimp contact list.
If you would like us to help you facilitate this automatic link between your OFN and MailChimp accounts please contact your local support team.
A regular email to customers to remind them your next order cycle has just open (or is about to close) can be an effective reminder for them to place an order!
This is a slight hack of the standard MailChimp advice for sending automated, regular emails.
Once you have logged into your MailChimp account, select Campaigns and then Create a Campaign. Opt for the subcategory 'Email'
Click Automated and then Share Blog Updates.
You will be directed to add RSS feed and timing for your email updates to customers. Select one of the following feeds: https://www.lemonde.fr/rss/une.xml http://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml https://www.theatlantic.com/feed/all/ https://www.politico.com/rss/politicopicks.xml The exact URL entered doesn't matter- the fact that these RSS feeds post every day means that you can use it to trigger a regular email to your customers.
Then choose when you want the email to be sent. If your order cycle opens every Monday at noon you may enter to use these days and times. Select Next to move on.
Choose whether you would like the email to go to your entire audience (all of your mailing list) or just a segment of it (specific customers who you may have sub-grouped).
From this point onwards, add details as you would normally in a MailChimp email or campaign.
This section is under development. If there are specific accounting software platforms or tools which you would like to use to help the smooth operation of your OFN enterprise please get in touch with your local support team.
Step-by-step instructions for downloading OFN sale data and importing into Xero can be found here.
The option for Hubs to reimburse their supplying producers for goods supplied by ABA files is available for Australian OFN users only. Read on for details on how to implement this.
Users who operate a shop with multiple suppliers (hub users) often ask us for the quickest way to forward payments that they receive from customers, to their suppliers. For example, you may stock products from 20 producers in your hub shop. After you receive customer orders and payments, you want a quick way to work out how much you need to transfer to each supplier and then quickly make payment.
This page describes a couple of ways that users can pay their suppliers.
You can use Reports to get a breakdown of the value of goods sold from each supplier. The Order Cycle Supplier Totals report gives the total value of goods sold from each supplier. Alternatively you can download the Order Cycle Customer Totals report and create some pivot tables to extract the data you need.
Once you have the dollar values that you need to pay to each supplier, the next step is often to enter these amounts into your online banking system, to do a bank transfer to each supplier. This can be time consuming for those with numerous suppliers.
At the moment OFN doesn't have an automated system for calculating what is owed to suppliers and automatically forwarding payments to them.
Note: The ABA file is an Australian banking file format, so this option is only relevant to Australian users.
An alternative for Australian users is to create an ABA file. An ABA file is an file type like an excel spreadsheet, which can be uploaded into most Australian bank's online banking systems, as a way to pay multiple people without entering their individual payments manually.
There's a couple of ways to create an ABA file.
1) Use your accounting package to generate an ABA file
If you use an accounting package such as MYOB, Quickbooks or Xero, it's likely that the package will have an 'ABA generation' tool. These tools vary, but generally they'll allow you to enter the amounts you wish to pay each supplier, along with their banking details (BSB, account number, name etc) and then the ABA file will be generated. You can then upload this file into your bank and the payments will be made en mass.
You may need to contact your bank so they can enable the ABA file upload too. It may also depend on the type of bank account you have with them, so check that they offer this first.
2) Use an online ABA file generator
Cemtaxaba is an online ABA file generator which can turn an excel file into an ABA file. There are fees associated with the tool, check their website for details - https://www.cemtexaba.com/
The process for using this tool is as follows.
1) Download the CemtexABA template CSV file.
2) Enter details into the correct columns.They ask for the bank details of the payee and the amount you want to transfer.
3) Upload the CSV into the Cemtexaba website. They'll ask you for your bank details (the 'payer' information), and then they'll provide you with an ABA file
4) Upload the ABA file into your online banking system to do the bulk payment.
As a food enterprise operating on the Open Food Network platform, you may wish to also use external software for specific, additional functionalities. For example, for increased flexibility over invoicing, more in depth accounting, marketing or even analysing your OFN sales.
Some users have already found ingenious ways to use the platform's data with other software, some interesting uses of which we will describe to you. We are also gradually developing integration possibilities, so do not hesitate to contact us if you have a specific need so that we can study it!
