There are 2000 CSA in France (AMAP). The way they work is based on subscription, in the literal meaning of the term, so members of a CSA buy a subscription to a certain basket for 6 months or a year, and then receive the content from the subscription contract on the agreed upon pace.
The CSA network in France is represented by one association who have developed since 3 years a software where CSA can establish subscriptions contracts, manage digital signature, and amendements in the contract life cycle. After 3 years of development, their developer is stopping to work on the project, so they are looking for another contractor to develop their software and published a request for proposal with some requests for adjustments and new devs as well on their software.
We had a couple of conversations with them and @Rachel , and there is a possibility for Open Food France to propose them to join and instead of developing their own software on their side, develop a module within the OFN, so they donât have to maintain it alone, investment cost can be shared with other interested network worldwide, maintenance cost is not on them, what they do has a greater impact, their producers can also share their catalog with other distributors, etc. They are open to that idea, but they have some imperatives, and among them: they want around Spring 2019 to have a functional software that does what their software do today and some first complementary things that are in their Request For Proposal.
We will start to work with Rachel on some first brain ditch on how would a âcontract based subscriptionâ module / CSA subscription module look like in the OFN. The logic is actually a bit different from the current standing orders ones, as in a subscription, what is sold is not products, but a subscription. So the invoice is hold when a subscriber buys a subscription and then deliveries are only the delivery of the content planned in the subscription contract, but products are not invoiced Transaction is not on products. Some of the current standing orders logic will probably be used, but with adjustments.
But before we move forward with the idea to propose them to join and build it with us, we want to jauge how much of a priority that could be within the OFN community. As if they follow us on that proposal they need to have something functional by Spring. We have prioritized Split Payments to go next as a big feature, and still have work on Spree until at least end of year. So how would the priority in CSA subscription feature be for you? If we gain such a big partner in France and who can also contribute $? (we donât know budget yet).
Some first thoughts and mockup on how this could work given our OFN contraints⊠so that we can decide if that worth moving forward on thinking in that direction, or directly go toward an integration strategy: Reflexion and mockups - Google Slides
Proposition: to understand how CSA works in the different countries via filling in this spreadsheet: CSA management global understanding - Google Sheets before seeing how we can implement it in OFN.
@Kirsten @sstead @NickWeir @lin_d_hop @tschumilas @sauloperez @saritamoreira @lauriewayne @lauriewayne1
Given your feedback, we will decide if we answer or not this RFP based on on OFN, or on their sofwtare, or if we donât.