It won't 'let me' set up an order cycle

• Do you have an active payment method set up for your shop or hub?

• Do you have an active shipping method set up for your shop or hub?

• Are all the relevant required fields complete? You need to set open and closing times for the order cycle, give it a unique name, and complete the 'Ready for' field box.

I want to sell whole chickens but don't know the weight of individual birds until day of slaughter.

• This is not a problem! Read here for a range of ways the OFN platform has been designed to be flexible to meet the specific needs of food producers.

I supply 'Farmshop A' with potatoes which cost £1/kg. My potatoes are displaying for sale to customers at £1.20/kg

Farmshop A may need to generate extra revenue from every sale to cover their overhead costs. They can do this in a number of ways:

• If you set up an enterprise permission whereby your business permits Farmshop A to add your products to their inventory then they can modify the prices a customer pays for your products that way.

• Farmshop A may add an enterprise fee to your cost price for the potatoes. If this is the case then customers purchasing the items will be able to see a break down of the price they pay by clicking on the pie chart icon to the right of the product price on the shop front.

Good working relationships are key to any sustainable food network. Chat to Farmshop A about how they have organised their sales of your produce (either in person, over the phone or by email).

Farmshop A should (morally) pay you £1/kg for every kg of potatoes you supply to meet their sales. Payment of goods (from distributor to supplier) is a private arrangement organised outside of the OFN platform.

I've added new products but they aren't displaying on the shopfront.

Newly added products must be added to an active order cycle before they are visible on a shopfront for customers to purchase.

• If you are supplying the goods to a hub, then you must get in touch with the person who is coordinating the order cycle in question. This has to be done externally to the OFN platform (drop them an email or phone/speak in person).

• If you are a Shop, then you must add the new products to your active, open order cycle.

• If you are a Hub, then:

  • Make sure the new products are added to both the incoming and outgoing sections of the active order cycle​

  • If the new products are not available for selection to add to either incoming/outgoing sections then check your inventory settings. You may have to add the products to your inventory before they can be added to the shop front.

Not all of my supplier's products are available for me to add to my order cycle.

You may have your Inventory settings set to 'New products must be added to my inventory before they can be added to my shopfront'. In which case, you must review your product inventory, add new/hidden products to the inventory for them to be available for selection in the order cycle.

If you are coordinating an order cycle involving multiple suppliers and distributors, some or all of which may use their product inventory to stock their shop fronts, double check all the relevant enterprise permissions have been granted. Read more here.

A new Producer has started up nearby but I can't add their products to my hub shop front.

You must seek their permission before you are able to retail the goods they make or supply. This is done formally on the OFN platform by the new producer through Enterprise Permissions.

I have a veg box scheme but would like to allow customers to add extra items, if desired, each week to their order.

Scenario One: The customer purchases the veg box each week through an automated subscription set up on the OFN platform: Change your Enterprise Settings-> Shop Preferences-> Change Orders? to 'Customers can change/cancel orders while order cycle is open'. When the order cycle opens, the customer will be sent an automated email to say that their veg box order has been created. They then have until the order cycle closes to login to their OFN account, edit their order and add extra items from your shop front to their basket.

Scenario Two: The customer purchases a veg box through an external platform. In this case, perhaps set up a private shopfront which is only visible to customers registered to your external veg box scheme. Use external software or spreadsheets to match additional items brought through the OFN shop front to customers' veg boxes so that you only have to make deliveries once!

There's been a crop failure and we have fewer tomatoes supplied than we need to meet everyone's order

Not a problem - happens to everyone once in a while! Read here for steps to adjust all your customers' orders at once.

A producer is only willing to supply my hub if their orders meet a minimum criteria

The 'group buy' functionality described here can be used for this purpose too!

I can't refund a customer who paid by PayPal

Currently you are not able to issue refunds to customers who purchased goods by PayPal directly through the OFN platform. You will need to visit your business PayPal account and manually make the refund to the customer there. This is a functionality we hope to develop in the future, should user sufficient users demand it.