is anyone using OFN for a situation where the ‘shipper’ or ‘transporter’ is not a producer and not a hub. So they are a, for example, trucking company. So - if the supplier (a producer) to a hub, uses a trucking company, I presume they add the fee it costs them to their product as a ‘transport fee’. And if a hub is using a trucking company to delivery orders, they would add the fee it costs them in the ‘outgoing’ section of the OC as part of the ‘shipping’ costs/arrangements.
But in the situation I’m trying to solve (North Western Ontario food system) the producers ship together, and use the same trucking company to go from point A to a central depot, and from that depot it goes out to various communities.
I want to create trucking companies who have various optional fees that are based on weight per kg.
Then, in the OC, I would attach the appropriate trucking co fee to the appropriate producer - and the transport fees would show up in the pie chart, and be collected by the hub. The hub would then have to identify those fees and pay the trucking company.
So 2 problems:
It seems like you have to be a producer/supplier with products in order to appear in the incoming section of the OC. Only then do I see the option to add those fees to a product. SO, if I call the trucking company a producer - it would work - but I have to make a dummy product for them in the OC. But I don’t want it to show in a shop. Is there no way to get the option to add a fee in the incoming section of an OC and attach it to a specific product, when that fee is not attached to a producer/supplier?
Second - there is no report that isolates fees. So I’m trying to figure out with the existing reports, how to isolate the transport fees. If this was the only fee added to a product, I could just subtract the sales price from the master price - the rest would be fees (since tax is not included in prices here). But - transport is not the only fee - so it is cumbersome, taking percentages… Has no one else ever requested a report that isolates fees?
@sstead @MyriamBoure who else might have worked with fees like this?
What about creating a hub of producers (probably that central depot) and have the consumers buy from the hub instead of the producer directly?
the consumers are buying from a hub where product from multiple producers - over large geogrpahic areas – are transporting from. The question is - which hub do they buy from. Most product is coming into a central place and then organized and orders sent back out to multiple locations. So - first I tried one OC with that central place as the hub. But problems getting the transport fees right as itemized above. So the next trial is to still use the central location for aggregation - but each remote location is its own independent hub. It gives more flexibliity to producer-specific fees.
The problem would be solved if OFN had a way for a ‘distributor’ (in the outgoing section of an OC) to attach product or producer specific fees. But when you attach a fee in outgoing - it applies to ALL the products in the shop. I haven’t figured out tagging to do this either - but maybe I’m doing that wrong.
Or if OFN had a way to add another ‘step’ in the chain - like being able to identify and pay a shipper/transporter that brings product to the aggegation location/hub. It can do this when product is sent out of the hub (ie shipping fees). It is possible for any enterprise to have fees (so I can put a transport fee on any enterprise) - so I could set up the trucking companies with the correct fees for every route. But when I’m setting up and OC - I can’t seem to attach those trucking co enterprises (and their fees) to producers or products. It seems and enterprise must be selling in a shop in order for their fees to be useable/selectable. That would solve the problem too - if you could select fees from enterprises that are not selling goods in the order cycle.
I know its a complex thing - but now a second northern Ontario group has asked me to help them solve the same problems. multiple product coming to central depots from great distances, going back out do diverse locations - high shipping fees to be transparent to the buyer (either paid totally by the buyer or split between the buyer and producer because they are too high for the producer to carry alone) - and avoiding redundant fees - and then being able to isolate and identify the fees clearly for invoicing (or for split payment in the future maybe).