Share Templates

How to use share templates.

Share templates are a way to group together similar types of shares for CSA farmers. They allow you to offer a variety of shares but streamline how shares appear in reports. Templates must be created BEFORE creating the associated shares. In GrownBy, we use the terminology “Parent Templates” and “Child Templates.”

Here are a few examples of times or ways that you might use share templates: 

1. To offer different frequencies of share: "Full Vegetable Share" is the template. You know that this has 8-10 items and feeds a family of four. Within that template, the farmer creates a few options, such as: "Weekly Vegetable Share," "Bi-Weekly Group A Vegetable Share," "Bi-Weekly Group B Vegetable Share," and "Monthly Vegetable Share.” All of those shares would be the same size from the point of view of the farmer, so the farm would harvest and pack the correct number of "Full Vegetable Shares." There could be another template for "Small Vegetable Share" with similarly corresponding shares nested within it.
   
2. To offer different price points for the same exact share: Many farms are offering sliding scales/payment tiers and templates can streamline this. The template may be "Fruit Share" and within that template is "Fruit Share - High Income," "Fruit Share - Mid Income," and "Fruit Share - Low Income." On the sign-in sheets, it will just show that each member has a fruit share, without saying the income level associated with the share.
   
3. If you offer a few shares at a special discount: For instance, a discounted share for faculty at the daycare where your pickup is hosted. If you have a limited number of these shares, you could handle the need for a discount with farm credit or promo codes, but if you have quite a few, they might be easier to manage as separate shares under the same template
   

Note that you can use one Parent Template for multiple uses. For example, you could have a “Full Vegetable Share” that has child shares within it with different frequencies AND different price points AND a special faculty share, as described above.

When do I NOT want to use templates?

You won’t want to use a template when the Product itself is different. For example, if you offer different types of yogurts on subscription–plain, vanilla, honey, and maple–, you would not use a template because you need to know if you have 15 vanilla and 25 maple. Similarly, you wouldn’t have pints and quarts together in the same template because you want to know how many of each you will need to take to distribution. 

How to Create a Template

1. Starting on the Products Page, choose “Add New Product”
   
2. Choose “Subscription or CSA Share”
   
3. Choose “Share Collection Template”
   
4. Add:
   
1. Template Product Name: the name that will appear on your Daily Summary, Location Summary, and all customer-facing Sign-in Sheets, as well as some other reports.
   
2. SKU: a farmer-facing code for inventory management.
   
3. Short Description: describe the share in short and descriptive language.
   
4. Long Description: describe the share experience to the customer. Some good details you might want to include in maybe the types of vegetables in the share, range of the number of items, general storage tips, suggestions on who this share is best for, or any info about pricing tiers. This is currently the only longer format field for all of your shares under a template, so if you need to give information on any differentiations between the templates, this is the spot!
   
5. Production Method: This is a text description of your production method. You can add any text that you'd like, such as IPM, Pasture Raised, Rotational Grazing, No-till.
   
6. Category: Select a standard category or create a new category for your CSA share. The category is only visible on the Farm Manager side for sorting shares on the product page. In your Farm Shop, this share will be shown under the name of  the CSA group.
   
7. Producer: If you produce the shares included in this template, you can put your farm name here or leave it blank. If someone else produces this share, you should be clear about the name of that producer here.
   
8. Suggested Family Size
   
9. Minimum number of items
   
10. Maximum number of items
    
11. Photo: This is the photo that will be for all of the shares under this Template. You may add up to 5 photos.
    

Once you have filled out the “Parent Template” it can apply to any associated “Child Templates.” The next step will be to create a Share. 

1. Return to the main Product page and choose “Add New Product.” Then choose “Subscriptions or CSA share.” Choose the type of share that you would like to create, either Primary or Add-On.
   
2. To create a share using the template, you need to click on “Use Template” located on the right-hand side under the Photo. Select the template that you want to use from the drop-down menu. That will autofill all of the details from your template.
   
3. Set the number of pickups and stock for this specific share. Choose the billing options and schedules to be associated with this share. Read more about shares here.
   

How to edit a template

Choose “Edit” on a share associated with this template or choose to create a new product with the template. Under the drop-down menu with the templates, you’ll see a “Edit Share Template” button. 

​

Where and how Do templates show up?

One of the main reasons that templates exist is to streamline how a farmer views the share options they provide. In some cases, the farmer will want to see the individual share name and not see the information aggregated. In other instances, it will be better to show the shares as aggregated by the Template Name. The chart below provides info on where you’ll see the shares aggregated and where you can see the specific share names. 

	HTML View	Exports
Daily Summary	Template Name with all shares aggregated	Template Name with all shares aggregated
Location Summary	Template Name with all shares aggregated	Template Name with all shares aggregated
Sign In Sheets	Shows Template Name in the Product column and the specific share name in the Buying options column	PDF: Template Name with all shares aggregated .csv: Shows Template Name in the Product column and the specific share name in the Buying options column
Packing Sheets	Specific share name, not aggregated	PDF: Specific share name, not aggregated .csv: Specific share name, not aggregated
Products		.csv: Shows the Product/Share name and the Template Name
Invoices, both Summary and Detail exports		Specific share name
Orders		Specific share name

Related articles:

How to add a share

• Related Articles

• Adding a Share or Subscription

  This article will provide detailed info on how to set up a Share in GrownBy. You can view this video with the section on adding shares starting at minute 3:42. What is a share? Shares are products that are sold on a subscription basis. A popular ...

• How to add a free share for a customer in 3.0

  A farm may have donated or free shares, perhaps for site coordinators or community members. To enter these shares into GrownBy, following these steps: Add the customer. If this customer already exists on your customer page, you don’t need to add them ...

• 3.5 Release Notes

  Version 3.5 is here Welcome to 3.5! We included many new features and bug fixes in this release, and more articles will be made available to dig into those features. Here is a summary of what changes you can expect to see: Farm Shop Our goal with ...

• Create a Farmer Account on GrownBy

  Creating an account is the first step for a farmer using the GrownBy platform. To get started, visit grownby.app. Click the drop down with the account icon at the top right of the screen and then click Sign in: For farmers, we strongly recommend that ...

• How to use GrownBy for different CSA types, including Custom

  Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share types have evolved significantly over the years and we see many innovations. Farmers use the phrase “CSA” and its framework to describe all kinds of selling strategies. With this chart, we aim to help you ...