Transitioning Your CSA from One Season to the Next

Transitioning Your CSA from One Season to the Next

You may ask yourself:
  1. What do I do at the end of a year?
  2. How do I transition my GrownBy set-up from one season to another? 
  3. How does the way I set up my GrownBy influence the data I can get from GrownBy in the future?
  4. How do I track retention rates season over season or year over year? 
We have some general recommendations and best practices to share about transitioning seasons. We are also available to chat about the specifics of your situation. When in doubt, reach out! Every farm is different and we are very happy to talk through your farm and find ways to set up GrownBy that will work best for you!

Note: If you have a seasonal CSA and ordering does not overlap between share seasons, follow the below steps for transitioning from one season to the next:
  1. Double check locations and add as necessary
  2. Update schedules
    1. Year-round schedules
      1. Check holidays and days off
      2. Update any hours, cutoff days, missed product messages
    2. Seasonal schedule
      1. Change start and end dates
      2. Check holidays and days off
      3. Update any hours, cutoff days, missed product messages
    3. CSA Groups
      1. Keeping the same CSA group (preferred!)
        1. Advantages
          1. No product changes needed regarding the CSA group
        2. Disadvantages
          1. Not as searchable as everyone is clumped together year after year.
      2. Not keeping the same CSA group
        1. Advantages
          1. Useful for marketing a group of products to customers, such as a season-specific offering
          2. Always have a very concise and searchable group of customers for future reference. You can still search orders by product names and dates to compare shoppers year to year.
        2. Disadvantages
          1. You will need to update all CSA group products with the new CSA group each year
      3. Create or edit share and product
        1. Do you want a new product?
          1. If not, simply update availability (preferred!)
          2. If yes, copy current product and make sure the date availability is correct
Note: If you have overlapping seasonal CSAs (selling 2 seasons at once), follow the below steps:
  1. Double check locations and add/edit as necessary for upcoming season
  2. Create new schedules
  3. Create a new CSA Group(s)
    1. Add a time descriptor like the year to your CSA group to make it easier for your customers to understand what they are purchasing
  4. Products:
    1. Note: this applies only if you are actively selling for both time periods at once–not if you are simply distributing but not still selling for the previous time period)
    2. If you are selling a current season share and a future season share at the same time, do this:
    3. Copy the product and edit the copy for the next season
      1. We recommend adding years to your product to make it easier for shoppers to understand what they are purchasing
General Recommendations

CSA Groups 
  1. Create as few CSA Groups as possible, but enough to work for your farm. Read more here. Many farms may find it easiest to have just one CSA Group.
  2. If it is important to you to be able to later sort by CSA Group, name your CSA Group with the year of the share. This will allow you to sort/filter a year’s orders by CSA Group later.
  3. When transitioning from one year to the next, you can rename the CSA group (unless you are selling for both seasons at once, in which case you should create a new one).
  4. We do not recommend using the same CSA Group name year after year. Doing so will create confusion as past orders will then be included in the data for the CSA Group with a new name. If it isn't important to you to be able to filter data by CSA Group in the future, you can theoretically just use the existing CSA Groups without a year. 
Schedules 
  1. When you change your schedule dates from this season to next season, products that have availability that will no longer align with the newly scheduled dates will drop off of the schedule when you save the edited schedule. You will receive a notification when you click save that tells you which products will be affected. 
Products 
  1. Keep the same  Standard Products– no need to edit them! (unless ordering for previous season/year products and coming season/year Do not create new share products for the new year; just edit the schedules and then re-add your edited schedules to the existing share products.
  2. Keep track of which Products you’ve adjusted as you go (see below)
  3. Previously on GrownBy, one Product could be associated with multiple CSA Groups but now, each product can only be associated with only one CSA Group. If there are products in your account that are associated with multiple CSA Groups, you should remove all but one of the CSA Groups. Any products that you created prior to this change in GrownBy and have copied will also be associated with multiple CSA Groups. We encourage you to adjust these Products to only have one CSA Group to ensure that the checkout functions smoothly for your customers (ie that they don't have the option to select a CSA Group that doesn't align with their location).
  4. As you update your Products for the coming season with the correct CSA Group, you should track your progress to make sure you don’t miss any. There are two ways you could do this. One is to view the products in the products tab and sort them by CSA Group. The other is to create a share export from the products tab at the beginning of the process and then use that to make sure that you have updated all relevant products. Re-export that Share export once you're done with the process of updating products to make sure that you got them all!
  5. Be sure to add any updated schedules to each product!
Again, please feel free to reach out to us for help transitioning from one season to the next! 

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact support@grownby.app or schedule a time to talk with us here!




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