The distributions menu gives you all of the information you need to get your products to the customers who ordered them. This article explains what is available on the distributions menu with information about the: Daily Summary, Location Summary, Sign-In Sheets, Packing Sheets and what each of these parts of the dashboard can do for you.
We have also created a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) document called What to do on Distribution Day, which can be a helpful tool to make sure you don’t forget any steps along the way. That article includes a link to a printable version of the SOP. You may want to hang it up somewhere in your farm office to serve as a reference!
To get started first, access the distributions page through your dashboard. It looks like this:
There are four sections of this page which you access by clicking the tabs: Daily Summary, Location Summary, Sign-in Sheets, and Packing Sheets. We explain each section below.
Daily Summary
You can use the daily summary to get a snapshot of what has been ordered from your farm. This summary answers
“what do I need to harvest and/or pack today or across several days?” It is an aggregate report of all the products that you are selling within the search parameters (set by the filters as described below). This report aggregates shares by their
share template. This report can also be a tool for looking at a season in review, such as reviewing $ earned from one type of product, at one specific location. It can be helpful for farms that communicate with other growers/producers about additional items needed. For example, if you want to get a quick view of how many jars of honey you need to ask the beekeeper for this week, the daily summary is an easy way to view this information.
The page looks like this:
There are a few filters on the page to help you narrow down the information you are looking for.
The first drop-down menu allows you to select either standard products or shares (interchangeable with subscriptions on GrownBy). You will notice that if you select Share in this drop down, you will have additional options to filter by CSA Group, specific subscription/share product, and location. If you select Share, your options look like this:
When viewing all products, the second drop-down menu simply allows you to filter by location, like this:
The date selectors allow you to look at just one day or a range of days. To look at just one day, set both start and end dates to the day you would like to view.
Once you have set the filters, click Apply Filters. The chart gives you the product name, quantity ordered, unit, and a dollar amount total. The total simply reflects the product price multiplied by the quantity. It does not reflect whether invoices are paid or unpaid.
If you would like to further manipulate this information, you can export it to CSV by clicking the button below the date range filters. A separate tab will appear and once the .csv file has been created, you can find it in your downloads folder. Click on it to open it in excel, etc. The CSV columns are SKU, Product Name, Product Type, Category, Producer, Buying Option, Qty, Units Each, Base Unit, Total Base Units, and Product Subtotal.
Location Summary
The location summary answers “where am I delivering what?” or "how to pack the truck". It is an aggregate report of all the products that you are harvesting and where they go within the search parameters (set by the filters described below). It looks like this:
The filters work exactly the same as the Daily Summary but the output displayed is different. The location summary groups products ordered by location, gives you a number of orders for a given date, and further lists the specific products and quantities ordered.
Again, you can export a CSV file of this report if needed.
Sign-in Sheets
Sign-in sheets answer “who needs to pick-up/be delivered what?” It looks like this:
Again, the filters are the same for this page as those above but there are a couple of additional features here. One is that in addition to a CSV export, you can also export to PDF.
The PDF has a summary cover page which lists orders per distribution location and then the full list of customers for that location and what they need to pick-up. This export is best for the traditional CSA model. See the next section, Packing Sheets, for a view that is more helpful for custom-packed boxes.
From this page, you can also click
Generate Emails to get a quick view of all email addresses associated with orders for your filtered data. This can be helpful if you need to reach out to a specific group of customers filtered by any of the criteria available on this page. A pop-up appears with the relevant email addresses. You can copy and paste them from here to a mail chimp import or email draft.
The exports from this page include Date, Status (like canceled), Customer info (such as name, email, alternative email, Address, phone number, delivery address), Location or Delivery Zone, Product, Buying option/Child Template Name, Quantity, Order #, Payment status, and Payment type (ie Farm Credit, Card, Cash), and payment schedule.
Packing Sheets
Packing sheets are designed for packing orders–especially ones with standard items–and answering the question, “what do I put in this customer’s box?" The page looks like this:
The filters for packing sheets are the same as for the above pages.
The display on the page lists each order in a separate box and gives all of the relevant information to help you make the pick-up/delivery happen: Order #, Pickup details (date, location name, and address), customer details, and product names, quantities, and prices. Each order creates a separate packing sheet, even if it is for the same customer and on the same day.
The packing sheet can be printed directly from a PDF or exported as a .csv. From the .csv, farm admins can use mail merge or label making programs to customize their own labels or packing sheets.