Welcome to lettuceshare the Take Kare Wellness Centre in Roma, Queensland. I received a phone call on Monday to set up this new buyers group. We had it set up by the following day, so members could place their orders from Tuesday night and their order was in with Food Connect on Thursday.
This all happened pretty smoothly, which is fantastic when no one had used the software before. Lots of work has gone in to making that happen :-)
Spring must be a great time to join a co-op, with 4 new groups starting with lettuceshare in September!
I'd like to welcome Tarragindi Food Group, the awesomely named Kelvin Groove, Toowoomba Mum's Co-op and also Deagon Co-op, which is replacing the previous group running in Sandgate, Brisbane.
A few of the groups are testing a new feature I've been working on which aims to solve the partial ordered box problem. The quota system has been great for showing users how full a box is, but if a box is only partially full when the ordering window closes, the person responsible for ordering has a problem. They need to decide whether to round down and ask members to take a bit less when the order arrives, or round up to the next whole box and ask members to take a bit more.
Of course, this could all be left to until the order is delivered and boxes are packed, but why do that when you can automate it? By turning on this new order adjustment feature, individual orders are increased or decreased (proportionally to their order size) to arrive at the closest full box. This really does simplify the ordering process to just emailing the supplier.
lettuceshare has always shown information about the farmers who grow our food, but I was asked recently to make this a bit more transparent. Now with a new purchase-show-grower option, the purchase page, invoices and orders show the grower rather than the name of the supplier account:
This provides your members with as much information as possible about the food they're buying, while allowing you to manage your supplier accounts in the background.
It's been a while since I posted here so welcomes are due! Firstly welcome to lettuceshare The Chewsday Collective, a new group in Annerley, Brisbane. This group has it's origins in my own buying group Turnstyle, which I'm glad to say will also be moving to lettuceshare. Hopefully sharing accounts here will mean we can do more collaboration down the track.
Thanks to Ipswich Good Food Group, lettuceshare now has support for tracking stock levels. When this feature is turned on, all purchases are automatically deducted from your stock levels. Adjustments can be made via the stock page, with the history available to download:
Stock quantities have always been imported using the stock import tool, but this is now automatically used for stock intake. You don't have to use the import tool though, just choose an item and enter the amount in the New Quantity field and click submit. This new feature should help with stocktake and reconciliation. To turn it on, set the new value "stock-track-quantity" to true in the template editor.
Along with this work, I've also added the ability to create composite stock items. When you tick the composite box at the bottom of the stock form, you're specifying that this item represents a list of purchases. This means you can create all sorts of mixed boxes to sell!
To see how you can create a box, please read the documentation on Creating and Selling Boxes. Of course the list of items that make up a box are also automatically deducted from stock. :-)
I've been working on a new project at goodharvest.com.au using the same software that powers lettuceshare. This new site required both a shopping cart and a new point of sale system. The difference between this and the current purchasing system used by many co-ops is that point of sale is designed for non-members. This means we can sell produce and take payments in cash, eftpos or credit card. The point of sale software is integrated into both the purchase and payment data, so that all member and non-member data can be processed together.
One of the benefits of working on Free Software is that I can make these new features available to other groups. Just let me know if you think you could benefit from adding either of these options. Thanks to Mick for starting another great project, and agreeing that sharing our resources is important in growing our local food systems. He's also got a nice looking website... obligatory screen shot:
Up until now lettuceshare has only been suitable for groups that meet on a weekly basis. It's been a high priority to make the dates more flexible so that groups can pick a calendar date to order and purchase on, rather than a week day. I'm glad to say this is now available, and earlier in the year than I was expecting.
One other change I've made is to the Roster module. The roster has been well used by most groups, but I wanted to extend the concept for other members who might not put their name down but do a lot of work none the less. These members are generally already listed in the system under different permission groups to give them access to administrator pages, so I've allowed these groups to be listed on the roster but not shown in the options. This means your members won't be able to select a working group as a role, but you will be able to add and remove them as needed.
To do this you must first have edit permission to your roster page. Then when you add a role, make sure the "Display in menu" checkbox is not checked and it will be added to the list of working groups.
Lastly, when the purchase page is in volunteer mode it will now show reminders if your group is configured to show them and the member purchasing hasn't volunteered recently. Members currently in working groups won't be shown reminders either.
Most co-ops are winding down for a well earned break over christmas. I would like to say thanks to everyone who have used lettuceshare and the other sites this software runs on. It's been a busy year with lots of feedback and improvements, thanks for your patience but more importantly your enthusiasm! It really is a pleasure to be part of the local food movement.
There's lots in the pipeline for next year, to end this year though I've just enabled secure http. For those who are interested, just change the url in the address bar to read "https://" at the start. I plan to redirect all traffic to the secure connection in the new year. Until then, have a safe holidays and Merry Christmas!
There's been lots of changes to the software over the last couple of weeks. The biggest being that users with permission to add new users now have full control over the settings for their group. For me this is a bit of a "handing over the keys" moment. Until recently group customisations could only be done using the admin account, but the Site Editor is now available to other users. All the config options in the Site Editor are now listed on the templates page.
The groups permission settings also received an overhaul. From your one initial account you can now set permissions on all the new accounts you create, giving them fine grained access to just the pages they need, or give them full control just like your own account. The settings page under documentaion goes into more detail on how to use the new functionality.
I spent the day yesterday working through using the new stock import feature with a co-op in Sandgate, Brisbane who have also just joined the lettuceshare family. Welcome to Kim, Brett and their growing community!
Kim has been putting in some time to become familiar with the system, and the outcome of our work yesterday was to greatly improve the whole import process. Nothing like feedback from users to get things working better :-) See the updated documentation on the import page, it's now more flexible with the data it's given, and will even compare imported records with your existing products where you've changed the original name. This gets around a problem we had where Food Connect used the same product names for multiple records.
I would like to welcome the Ipswich Good Food Group to lettuceshare! They are currently in the process of transitioning to the site, thanks to Deb, Ruth and Sonja for all their hard work getting this far. They're a great bunch so if you live in Ipswich check them out, they meet every Tuesday evening and offer a wonderful range of local produce.
Also thanks to the support of Goodliving on the Sunshine Coast, I've implemented a feature for groups that meet at more than one site. Up until now all your products have been available to all groups, but you can now have finer grained control over your suppliers. This is done via the Manage Users dialog (see the screenshot below). You just enter the username for an existing supplier and hit enter and it will show you which groups they supply to at the bottom of the dialog. So even though your main suppliers are available to everyone (the default), individual members can choose to bring their home grown goods to just their own group, and there won't be any confusion for other groups because those items won't show up as being available for them. Best of both worlds... local & ultra-local!
This all happened pretty smoothly, which is fantastic when no one had used the software before. Lots of work has gone in to making that happen :-)
Solving the Partial Ordered Box problem
I'd like to welcome Tarragindi Food Group, the awesomely named Kelvin Groove, Toowoomba Mum's Co-op and also Deagon Co-op, which is replacing the previous group running in Sandgate, Brisbane.
A few of the groups are testing a new feature I've been working on which aims to solve the partial ordered box problem. The quota system has been great for showing users how full a box is, but if a box is only partially full when the ordering window closes, the person responsible for ordering has a problem. They need to decide whether to round down and ask members to take a bit less when the order arrives, or round up to the next whole box and ask members to take a bit more.
Of course, this could all be left to until the order is delivered and boxes are packed, but why do that when you can automate it? By turning on this new order adjustment feature, individual orders are increased or decreased (proportionally to their order size) to arrive at the closest full box. This really does simplify the ordering process to just emailing the supplier.
It's all about the farmers
This provides your members with as much information as possible about the food they're buying, while allowing you to manage your supplier accounts in the background.
It's been a while since I posted here so welcomes are due! Firstly welcome to lettuceshare The Chewsday Collective, a new group in Annerley, Brisbane. This group has it's origins in my own buying group Turnstyle, which I'm glad to say will also be moving to lettuceshare. Hopefully sharing accounts here will mean we can do more collaboration down the track.
New features: Stock tracking & Boxes
Stock quantities have always been imported using the stock import tool, but this is now automatically used for stock intake. You don't have to use the import tool though, just choose an item and enter the amount in the New Quantity field and click submit. This new feature should help with stocktake and reconciliation. To turn it on, set the new value "stock-track-quantity" to true in the template editor.
Along with this work, I've also added the ability to create composite stock items. When you tick the composite box at the bottom of the stock form, you're specifying that this item represents a list of purchases. This means you can create all sorts of mixed boxes to sell!
To see how you can create a box, please read the documentation on Creating and Selling Boxes. Of course the list of items that make up a box are also automatically deducted from stock. :-)
Shopping Cart
One of the benefits of working on Free Software is that I can make these new features available to other groups. Just let me know if you think you could benefit from adding either of these options. Thanks to Mick for starting another great project, and agreeing that sharing our resources is important in growing our local food systems. He's also got a nice looking website... obligatory screen shot:
Buying dates
One other change I've made is to the Roster module. The roster has been well used by most groups, but I wanted to extend the concept for other members who might not put their name down but do a lot of work none the less. These members are generally already listed in the system under different permission groups to give them access to administrator pages, so I've allowed these groups to be listed on the roster but not shown in the options. This means your members won't be able to select a working group as a role, but you will be able to add and remove them as needed.
To do this you must first have edit permission to your roster page. Then when you add a role, make sure the "Display in menu" checkbox is not checked and it will be added to the list of working groups.
Lastly, when the purchase page is in volunteer mode it will now show reminders if your group is configured to show them and the member purchasing hasn't volunteered recently. Members currently in working groups won't be shown reminders either.
Secure http
There's lots in the pipeline for next year, to end this year though I've just enabled secure http. For those who are interested, just change the url in the address bar to read "https://" at the start. I plan to redirect all traffic to the secure connection in the new year. Until then, have a safe holidays and Merry Christmas!
Control over group settings
The groups permission settings also received an overhaul. From your one initial account you can now set permissions on all the new accounts you create, giving them fine grained access to just the pages they need, or give them full control just like your own account. The settings page under documentaion goes into more detail on how to use the new functionality.
Stock Importing Improvements
Kim has been putting in some time to become familiar with the system, and the outcome of our work yesterday was to greatly improve the whole import process. Nothing like feedback from users to get things working better :-) See the updated documentation on the import page, it's now more flexible with the data it's given, and will even compare imported records with your existing products where you've changed the original name. This gets around a problem we had where Food Connect used the same product names for multiple records.
Ipswich Good Food Group
Also thanks to the support of Goodliving on the Sunshine Coast, I've implemented a feature for groups that meet at more than one site. Up until now all your products have been available to all groups, but you can now have finer grained control over your suppliers. This is done via the Manage Users dialog (see the screenshot below). You just enter the username for an existing supplier and hit enter and it will show you which groups they supply to at the bottom of the dialog. So even though your main suppliers are available to everyone (the default), individual members can choose to bring their home grown goods to just their own group, and there won't be any confusion for other groups because those items won't show up as being available for them. Best of both worlds... local & ultra-local!