Your online market is where you can showcase your freshly grown produce, meat products, cheese, and other unique items you want to offer to customers. This tool is very versatile and can be used for CSA shares, events, selling livestock, sending orders, inventory tracking and more. You'll find all your options by navigating to Market in the left menu.
Market Dashboard
When you access the Market section, you'll first see a Market Dashboard. This is a quick, at-a-glace look at your sales, orders, products, and more. You'll find charts and graphs showing you statistics and data for your sales over time, total orders, and average order value. This gives you an overall picture of your shop. These can be useful for you to determine seasonality of your business, and prepare for expected busy times (or a vacation during your less hectic times of year!) You can use the date filter at the top to update the dashboard. Perhaps you'd like to see this just this month, or last quarter.
Of course, if this is your first time access the page, there won't be much here yet. Keep reading to learn more about setting up your products, designing your store, and selling to your customers.
Products
The products section is where you'll create and track the items you sell in your Farmbrite system. These could be products you want to sell online in your Farmbrite Store, or items you'll sell at a farmers market in person. You might add a CSA share, types of meat, produce or any items that you are selling.
The page shows you a list of your products with the available quantity in your inventory. You can use the filter in the upper right to find products in specific categories or statuses, and click the column headers to sort the page. We know you are always coming up with new and creative products, so you can easily add new ones using the New Product button. If this is your first time adding your products, you could also upload them from a spreadsheet for easier setup.
Online Store
Now that you have products created, you'll want to set up your storefront to sell online. You will have many options for customization including logos, banners, information about your business, payment methods accepted, and more. You can use the custom shop link provided with your Farmbrite account, or use your own URL and embed the Farmbrite store on your existing website using an iFrame.
To take online payments you will need to set up your shop with Stripe, our payment processor. You can also decide to only accept cash or check. We also have the option to set up the Quick Pay options through Stripe. Once you have set up your account with them you can send invoices or receive payments by scanning a QR code. You can add this QR code to a roadside farm stand, use it in your pop-up shop or when you send invoices to customers.
A few hot tips about your Online Store:
- You can Open and Close the online store seasonally. If you want to sell in the fall after a harvest but not during the next spring once you've sold out, you can easily set the shop to Closed and provide a friendly message to your customers.
- Your staff can use the online store as a point of sales device at a farmers market. As long as you have internet connection and a device to access Farmbrite (like a tablet or phone), they can bring up the store and sell items directly through it. This keeps your inventory updated, and allows you to take credit card payments at your booth.
- You can also send an invoice to a customer through your shop. (See how to do that below.)
Orders
The Orders section of your Market displays past orders for you to review. Like the products page, you might find it helpful to use the filter button in the upper right to find exactly what you're looking for. Maybe you want to find ones that need to be picked and shipped, or take a look at last season's orders to be prepared for your upcoming CSA distribution.
You can also create new orders from this page as well, allowing you to enter them after an event if you didn't use the online store as a POS. You can even email an invoice to a customer from an order that makes it easy for them to pay online; this might be helpful if someone calls in an order over the phone.
Pickup locations
The last area of your Market allows you to define pick up locations. You might allow your customers to come by your farm at certain times to pick up their online order, special times you have at a pop-up shop or you might also give them the option to stop by your booth at the local farmers market. What you configure here shows up as options for customers to select as a pick up location in your online store.
Other Items to Note
Payment Options - Farmbrite only supports payments through Stripe. You will be asked to set up an account with them when you open your online shop. They process all payments in the Farmbrite market.
Shop refunds- Since payment is processed through Stripe, you would also do refunds through them. Log into your Stripe account to do this and for more information.
Quick Pay - Farmbrite has an option of using quick pay. You can use this at off-farm events or at your farm stand. This lets a customer scan your unique QR code and then is quickly able to pay for your farm products. This is a contactless payment system which is a convenient way to offer credit card payments to your customers.