Hub can easily generate accurate packing slips

AH… OK I see what you mean. So to edit an order and add a new product that a producer delivered to the hub, I would enter that product, go into the closed OC, select the product - and then it will show up in the dropdown on the edit order page. I understand. (But still - a lot of work - which is why we need new processes for delivery notes … )

The other, hacky, option would be to change the affected product in the CSV before uploading it to create the labels. The major negative there is it would not reflect anywhere within OFN … but it would solve writing it in by hand on the packing slips. Not ideal either way, but it is an option.

yes - that’s what we’ve been doing. But the nicer thing about changing it in OFN as @MyriamBoure suggests is that then everything re-calculates (taxes, fees if they are attached to specific products, ) and when you work with total sales kinds of reports in the back end, everything is correct.

In the UK I have gotten around some of these problems by using Google Scripts to generate the packing file a user needs. Currently I have done this for one paying user and another is interested in the format.
Here is an example of the format:
Tamar Automated PackingEg.xlsx (12.0 KB)

this is great @lin_d_hop. Am I able to link to the script so I can upload a file and try it out?
The nice thing about what @CLFC did - is that the output (in PDF) has 2 sections. The first section lists ALL the orders in that cycle by supplier. The second section lists the orders for each buyer (as your’s does). So - what we’ve been doing - for each different drop spot/distributor - the first volunteer takes a little cart, visits each supplier’s pile of goods, and puts the aggregated orders onto the cart. Then a second volunteers fills each buyers orders from the cart. We do this because in this particular hub - MOST buyers pick up and select their own order - so basically we create a mini hub in the big hub for delivered orders.
It works - thanks to you both for all this - BUT our problem is that - if something is not available (which is always the case) - we refund by putting cash into the delivered box (because other refunding in OFN is overly cumbersome). So - to do that, we still need a copy of either the order confirmation or the invoice - so we can easily see the shop price of the item. So - I think once we have supplier name on the invoice - we’ll pack using invoices anyway.
Is there any way that the shop price for an item can be pulled onto these scripts easily? (Otherwise we use invoices and wait until we get ‘proper’ packing slips done)
And I’m curious about your ‘picked’ and ‘double checked’ columns - love to hear your process.
the hub I’m working with wonders if we can print these slips with a highlight or bold or colour… anytime quantity is greater than 1. Because this is where the packers ususally screw up.
BIG thanks - and glad to know others are trying to improve the packing stuff. Its a big turnoff for hubs here.

This is an update on the ‘packing slips’ wishlist item. LOTS of different problems and uses here. My humble summary:

  1. Pick Sheets/Harvest Sheets are needed: These are reports/sheets that a producer uses to pick product after an OC changes. (So pre- delivery to a hub or drop spot. Pre- order packing). Based on the stories we gathered - many producers need to integrate a la carte orders in an OC with some kind of CSA/Basket program - so the solution needs to be more than totallying what has been ordered in the OC for that producer. Second - there is the problem of units - a hub might list ‘bunches’ of carrots - but a harvester picks pounds of carrots and later bunches. So - very messy stuff.

  2. Receiving Sheets - these are records that a hub or distributor or host at a pick-up spot uses to ‘receive’ goods as they arrive, check them against what was ordered, and reconcile differences so that 1. customer orders can be modified, 2. supplier invoicing can be reconciled. Sometimes hub do this ‘live’ on-line - but often its done on paper, for later entry into some system (in or out of OFN)

  3. Packing slips/sheets/labels - these are used to pack orders. IN some cases this is the producer who is packing per customer, or packing per delivery site - before the goods leave the farm. Sometimes these are generated at a hub with bulk orders for a distribution site. Sometimes these are generated at a hub for each customer’s order. They need lots of customized info: the producer name (product source), the shop price (sometimes money is collected at delivery), the customer details (name, contact, how/if they’ve paid). AND they need to be EASY to read - especially when there are multiples of specific products (everyone misses this in the current OFN reports). Ideally they can be printed right to labels.

But there is GOOD news!

Tthere is now a rich collection of the hacky ways in which various users are using combinations of OFN reports, ZERO uploads, CSV downloads and modifications/merges, and Google Scripts to pull together their harvest/pick sheets, receiving sheets and packing slips. ITS RIDICULOUS!! and also marvelous at how ingenious our users are!!

But we are a long ways from incepting specific new features based on this - and its very caught up in disucssions (we need to have) about where we envision reports heading I think. Do we want these new kinds of reports to be 'internal ’ to OFN, or have a set of outside OFN tools (google scripts, zero uploads, Zapier zaps?) that we offer to users, along with some instructions as options? I think the latter would be quicker.

I’m now asking about process (@danielle) . We are not ready to do any specific inception or wishlist items I don’t think. BUT is there a way to make more clear and systematic the hacks currently being used? Maybe to make a system of better hacks and then share them. If for example - I prepared a set of excel sheets that we want to end up with (so they can be moved to PDFs or labels) - might others be able to hack us to them via: Zapier? Google Scripts? Zero? Other?

I know most of you think in pictures/diagrams - sorry - please feel free to put this into a picture. I’m a word & language thinker - so thus my long post.

Others - @lauriewayne1 @luisramos0 ? please add to the google sheet additional thoughts/cases and solutions from your instances.https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lp8UXHFYU1zbDfkx3--qmjbSvE6MM9AU2tgmiGQWM-g/edit

Other ideas?
@MyriamBoure @CLFC @NickWeir @lin_d_hop also @Kirsten - trying to ping Emily Rogers - but can’t find her (Sally put lots of AUS cases in the google file - would be helpful to her)

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@tschumilas as you say there are lots of hacky ways, and we regularly have feedbacks from users in France, and also users who are blocked from using OFfrance because we don’t have an easy to download and use packing slip adapted to their need. When we are going to incept (properly) we will look at the various options you mentioned, the good thing here is to have a better understanding of the need.
We had a new feedback from a potential user in France who was blocked because manipulating csv seems for them too complicated when they currently have a PDF they download with all what they need. They want something “as easy” as what they have to get the info they need to prepare the orders. I guess it’s just another case with the same need expressed above from the beginning. I’m sure this topic will be discussed at the global gathering, integrations / report is one of the first needs in term of integrations.

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I’ve translated a template one of our producer has build on Google sheet in order to prepare his orders for delivery. First tab you copy / paste the Order cycle customer total report, second tab gives you a ready to print doc (not too big to waste too much paper, not too small to still be able to read it). He prints several of these and distribute them to all the people helping him to prepare the orders (wash the vegetables etc). When a customer ordered more than one quantity there is a highlight in the dedicated column to avoid mistakes.

Link to the template:

Warning : if you use more lines in sheet 1 than the 34 I have in my template in Excel, be sure to update the spreadsheet. Do learn how to do that in Excel look at this: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/refresh-pivottable-data-6d24cece-a038-468a-8176-8b6568ca9be2

Also please copy or download this template before testing it :slight_smile:

Looking forward to any feedbacks on this!

So the previous template I shared was from a single producer hub, with the objective to end up with a list of customers and their ordered products.

Here is another example from a hub with around 30 producers, and the reverse need : having a list of products and their dispatch into buyers’ orders. They have around 180 orders per week currently. Here is their process:

  1. They assign a number to each buyer. This number is written on a physical box at their delivery spot.
  2. They create the spreadsheet to know for each product how many they need to put in each box. The temp. controlled products have their own packing sheet taped to the fridge.
  3. Once the producers have delivered their products, they start packing thanks to this spreadsheet.

How the spreadsheet works:

  1. They copy paste packing per customer report in “packing2” tab cell A1. This will generate the order number, they only need to update the spreadsheet to have the list of buyers and their number in “buyer number” tab.

  2. They select all the lines with TOTAL ITEMS and delete them (it will mess with the order number formula).

  3. They do a pivot table to have a view of the list of product and the quantities per order. Thanks to the pivot table, this can be filtered by temp. control as well.

    1. should be enough but it is not printable with so many orders hence the last spreadsheet tab called “DISPATCH”: where column A and B will be printed out. Basically this tells them : put 2 kg of potatoes in box 1, 2 in box 4 and 6 in box 14. Then put 1 salads in box 4, 6 in box 9 and 2 in box 56… etc

EDIT: The column B is generated thanks to a macro you can launch by clicking on the red button.

Link to the spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AtICmZ9azKtHu77_Fp4wKOSIv5yATXKe/view?usp=sharing

This made me notice we have no reports showing individual orders by products. We have by customers, by suppliers, but nothing by products.
Also packing does no show shipping method (delivery spots).

These are amazing examples. Thank you so much for posting them. I obviously need to learn excel :sweat_smile and give them a try.

I agree that it would be nice to have a report by product. A hub would find it useful to know, for example, their biggest sellers in each OC. I think the flower hub here found this last year by doing a OC suppliers total for each OC, and then sorting it by the product field. (It didn’t work out because a number of producers were over-writing variant names all season and I didn’t know this. So - the product data in reports was messed up. An important note to suppliers – do not over-write variants!)

Just to share a different packing model: One of the hub’s here has a ‘market style’ system - a little different from what you describe: Tables are are arranged in ‘sections’ like: pantry, bakery, produce, refrigerated, frozen… In each area, tables are labelled with the supplier/producer names. When the producer brings their products, they drop it off onto their correct table, and the hub verifies it against a checklist (OC supplier totals report modified for manual check off and notation, then printed). Any changes are noted - and someone makes these on the orders using BOM . When the buyers arrive, they pick up an updated list of what they purchased (right now this is a challenge - the hub has been using invoices - but @lin_d_hop is going to customize exactly what they need) The consumer takes their list and walks around the ‘market’ and picks up their ordered goods. Cheese, meat are weighed and their order updated in OFN. Then theyhead to a checkout where their advance payment is reconciled. So in these kind of hubs ‘packing’ is a misnomer. They call it a ‘pick up list’ . The list needs: buyer name/contact, list of variants & quantities ordered, supplier names, prices paid (not supplier prices), and SKU (where the hub puts the area in the market where the product is located: kitchen, pantry…) I think SKU is an interesting flexible variable we have - maybe it has other uses too.

How ‘live’ is this for people? Is this still a major concern? I think it likely is . .

I am interested in whether we can shortcut this to some degree by moving it online - and particularly in light of current context around farmers markets, and covid - potentially reducing bits of paper passing through many hands. I’m a bit inspired by china where they just do it all online, not a piece of paper to be seen.

Could we just be sending all the info from an order cycle (or cycles) to a nice responsive page or app that is customisable and designed to enable packing from device rather than paper? but also having ‘send to print’ options where that’s wanted.

Just wondering whether there might be a possibility to leapfrog ourselves here @Rachel @tschumilas @danielle @Jen @MyriamBoure

Also is it possible for me to get / see the script that @CLFC did?

I had to go looking, since I just pulled the plug on the CLFC server a couple of days ago, and the links I had pointed to it … but I had test versions set up on my own server too. So they’re still available.

The label script is here - https://31eagledrive.com/31eagledrive/ofn/create_labels.php

I can’t attach the PHP files here, but if you want the scripts (in PHP, obviously) I can zip them up and post a link.

Here’s a zip with the files, including the sql for the database structure. https://31eagledrive.com/31eagledrive/ofn/OFN-Labels.zip

Hope that’s helpful.

This is still my top priority, and I’ve been frustrated it hasn’t moved in a year and a half. I think because we have so many different workflows in hubs. And, I think some instances are able to do zaps/scripts to solve this. But - I think users need to be able to get their info our of our system as quickly and as intuitive as possible - otherwise, they’ll just leave us. I don’t think they should have to pay us for a further integration to do this. I also think it hasn’t moved because people left it with me to do some organizing - and the best I could do was gather the stories of users workfplows - in the file above - but I was stumped on what next.
It would be nice to have someone who could do scripts on demand for users - I was hoping that would become you @CLFC in Canada until CLFC fell apart. But thanks for the above!! Its a huge help. I love the idea of sending all the info from an OC to a responsive page that is customizable.

@tschumilas just a comment: if this hasn’t moved forward it is not because you needed to organize something. We just have a small dev team and lots of big features in progress that we need to finish before moving to something else. Moving forward on the inception here wouldn’t have help to have it done by today as we don’t have more dev capacity.

About this being a concern:
For France, after compliance problems, this would be also our next priority: you have seen my spreadsheets - they are looking pretty bad. I’m amazed people can use them.
It would need to remain printable in our case: most of the preparation is done in team, with sometimes products being washed as well, so the less electric equipment the better. And online means also 4G is working correctly everywhere, which is not the case in France :slight_smile:

Putting this in inception because it is part of the reports overhaul process Reports Project

@Kirsten is it really? I understood that taxes were the first step for now only.

@Rachel I may have missed something?!

@Kirsten

I definitely don’t think we can put any reports related Discourse posts in inception just yet.

The current inception stage is quite meta… we’re not even looking to specific user needs yet. The next step is UX and tech strategic overview. Then we’ll come to prioritising needs one by one while coming into alignment with the tech and UX direction.

So please no moving things to inception!

In reality we haven’t even officially prioritised this work for the pipe!
#pipehack #weallknowweneedthis

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Okay this scenario as since then evolved for the hub. It now has become:

  1. They assign a number to each buyer. This number is written on a physical box at their delivery spot. The first numbers are always linked to home delivery by bike, then should follow all others shipping methods.

And this tiny detail made the whole process really harder. Because suddenly I had to pull out data for the bike delivery system (like comments customer have made).

Also I haven’t mentioned it earlier but they have 2 OC per week: a first one focusing on meat products and the second one on all other products. Customer buying meat and whatever should keep the same number across the 2 OC… as they will end up with only one box at the pickup place or during delivery. :face_with_head_bandage:

This resulted in a second and more complex iteration of the spreadsheet (done with the help of my partner during first lockdown). I’ve documented it here but it was really a massive pain to make it work on Excel - I don’t advise anyone to use them only if really desperate :laughing: : Packing sheet template when more delivery options.xlsm - Google Sheets

And works like following:

  1. They copy paste packing per customer report in “packing2” tab cell A1. OC customer total report in OC customer total and delivery report in delivery report. Those 3 reports contain data needed by the delivery company

  2. They check all their shipping methods are correctly ordered in Shipping methods tabs (ie here bike delivery should be on top so that customer number 1 in really the first order that has selected hom delivery)

  3. Press the Update button in Buyer number tab. This is a script that will affect one number per customer.

  4. They do a pivot table to have a view of the list of product and the quantities per order. Thanks to the pivot table, this can be filtered by temp. control as well.
    4. should be enough but it is not printable with so many orders hence the last spreadsheet tab called “DISPATCH”: where column A and B will be printed out. Basically this tells them : put 2 kg of potatoes in box 1, 2 in box 4 and 6 in box 14. Then put 1 salads in box 4, 6 in box 9 and 2 in box 56… etc

=> 4. Is made by again just clicking the big red button.