Foodclub:Documentation:FAQ
From Foodclub
The Foodclub FAQ currently serves as the documentation for the Foodclub software. If you have a question about the software which is not answered here, please add a new question to the relevant section below. This wiki page is monitored for any modifications, so new questions will be answered in a timely manner.
NAME
foodclub.org FAQ - frequently asked questions
DESCRIPTION
These are frequently asked questions about foodclub.org. Please read this before sending me e-mail.
GENERAL QUESTIONS
What is foodclub.org?
It is a site designed to facilitate running an organic food-buying club.
What is a food-buying club?
A group of people who order food directly from a wholesale distributor.
Who should use foodclub.org?
It is designed to accommodate new or existing food-buying clubs who order from one or more distributors or directly from farms. The software supports any distributor since the order form is intentionally generic. The only thing it requires is that products you order have unique item codes.
If you already have an operating buying club (i.e. an account with a distributor, a group of people ordering food periodically, product catalogs from the company, an existing system to get orders placed, food distributed to people, and a way of figuring out how much everyone owes) then this site is for you, especially if your existing system is paper or spreadsheet based.
What does it do?
It is a collaborative forum for posting food orders, requesting splits, combining everyone's order into one to be sent to the distributor, and calculating how much everyone owes once the order comes in.
Does it cost anything?
No. It only costs a minimal time investment to set up accounts for users in your food-buying club, and the normal cost of internet access. If everyone in your club already has internet access, it is totally free.
How long has it been up?
I originally wrote the foodclub software for my buying club in Alsea in the Fall of 1999. It was up just for our club from late 1999 until Fall 2000. In the Fall of 2000 I rewrote the software for use by multiple buying-clubs simultaneously, and more suitable for open source development. I bought the foodclub.org domain sometime around Sept, 2000 and the site has been up ever since.
What's the catch?
There is no catch. I was once in a food-buying club and I loved it. I think more people should get their food this way. I hope this site will make food-buying clubs more widespread and organic foods more affordable and accessible to more people.
The only thing I would caution against is getting lazy. This site will make your chores much easier, but you are doing them now the hard way, so obviously you are dedicated. Technology tends to make people lose dedication (aka. get lazy... you know the tune). On the bright side, it will save you lots of time, so just try to do something productive with all that extra time!
Can I start a new food-buying club here?
No. You need to get a group of people together who are interested in ordering quality inexpensive, organic bulk food, and then contact a distributor to open an account with them.
An up-to-date list of organic and natural foods distributors across North America is maintained on this wiki:
http://foodclub.org/wiki/Main_Page#Distributors_and_farms
Once you have a group of interested people and an account with a distributor, Foodclub will make starting your food-buying club easy.
How do I join a food-buying club?
You need to find people around where you live who have one running, and join them. If you tell them about this site I'm sure they'll like you enough to let you join!
If anyone knows of a list of food-buying clubs around the country and/or world, please pass it along and I will add it here.
- Portland, Oregon Area Buying Clubs
TECHNICAL QUESTIONS
How do I start?
First you need to setup an administrator account. Go to:
http://foodclub.org/admin
and enter the requested information. Once you complete this, you will have your own URL (e.g. foodclub.org/my-club/) that you can give out as your world headquarters! You need to make people accounts before they can access it though. See next question.
How do I create user accounts for people in my club?
Go to your administration page (which was given to you after you completed the setup for your club). There are two types of accounts: group accounts and individual accounts. Group accounts are meant to be shared by more than one person. People using a group account are asked for their name when they place an order or request splits. Individual accounts remember all of the person's information so they don't have to keep typing it in every time.
What if people don't want to remember a username/password?
Sorry, they need to. You don't want just anybody going in and futzing with your orders, do you?
However, if you don't want everyone to have to remember their own username/password, you can just set up one single group account with an easy-to-remember password and have everyone use that. In this situation you will just have one administrator account and one group account for everyone else.
How do I change someone's password? (they forgot it.)
As of version 0.32, you can login as the account admin and change any user's password, except for other admin users.
How do I logout and/or login as another user?
Foodclub uses HTTP Basic Authentication, which means your browser will keep your user and password information for each domain URL as long as your browser is open. To logout and login as a different user, you can do one of two things:
1. quit your browser completely, and restart it 2. "trick" your browser by opening a new window and using an alternate but equivalent domain URL (e.g. for foodclub.org, alternate equivalent domains are www.foodclub.org, aurora.foodclub.org)
I forgot the administrator username/password! Help!!
You're going to have to send me e-mail. If it's really urgent, put "URGENT:" in the subject line and I will try to get back to you sooner.
What is the purpose of the "user suspend" and "unsuspend" options?
The user suspend feature is meant for disabling an account temporarily without altering their password or other user information. So unsuspending it brings it back with all the same information it had, unlike deleting it (where you'd have to add it back again with a new password).
This feature is not necessarily very often used by buying clubs. But maybe you'd have a situation where one of your members is "on vacation" or "out-of-the-country" for an extended period of time, and you wanted to increase security by making sure nobody else used their account while they were gone. When they get back their password and everything would be the same. Not deleting their account also preserves their username so other people can't take it, which is an issue on foodclub.org, because there are new clubs signing up all the time to test out the system.
How do I enter my order?
Go to your order form. It saves everything when you submit, so you can go back and change it later.
How do I request a split?
Go to the split request page. You can post requests for partial orders and if enough other people order it will be added to the final merged order that should be sent to the distributor.
How do I delete a split I've requested?
Click delete. Delete only shows up for splits that you originally requested.
How do I order some of a split someone else requested?
Click order and then type the amount that you want.
It is time to send in the final merged order to the distributor, but there are errors in the splits page that I need to fix. How?
Only the administrator can change splits. Login as the admin (there is only one; it is the person who setup the club in the first place) and go to the split page. You should see a "change" link next to every split request. Click this and then make the necessary changes.
How do I merge everyone's order together to send to the distributor?
Go to the final merged order page. This merges every individual's order plus all the splits that were filled up. It shows your group addresses at the top of the page, and no individual identifying information, perfect for faxing or e-mail'ing to the distributor.
Can I prevent users from modifying or adding items to their orders when I'm sending the merged order to the distributor?
Yes. You can "lock" the order which temporarily prevents modification of orders or splits by non-admin users. Click the "Lock Order" button at the bottom of the merged order page.
How does order merging work? AKA, Foodclub ordered too many of an item and we had to return some...
On occasion, users report that the merged order they sent to the distributor had an incorrect Qty for one or more items - usually that it is too high - resulting in some of the order needing to be returned to the distributor.
This is usually a result of not understanding how orders get merged together. The single most important thing to understand is that orders are merged together based on the single, uniquely identifying Code value for each item.
Other fields are ignored when merging, so two items with the same Code should be the same product - otherwise you will get an undesired result.
A specific example of this is that the Associated Buyers distributor allows ordering "repack" items. Repacks are not the same as normal items, so they should not have the same Code value. Buying clubs ordering from Associated Buyers should append an 'R' to the item code for repacks (e.g. 01234R).
How do I figure out how much everyone owes after the order comes in?
Go to the bookkeeping page. It lists every item that was ordered and an input field for you to enter the product's actual cost. Go through the distributor's shipping invoice and type in the price they charged you for each item. Note: if you are using a product database (see below), especially an official database which contains accurate prices, then some or all of these prices will be automatically filled in for you.
When you click calculate, it will show detailed price totals for each person's order and an overall order total which you can use to match against the distributor's invoice total. You can keep making changes until the Foodclub total equals the invoice total.
Can we calculate how much everyone owes before we send the order to the distributor?
Yes, but only if you are using a product database (see below) with accurate prices for all the items you order. Foodclub provides several "official" product databases, which come directly from distributors and would allow you to do this.
If you are using such a database, all you need to do is go to the bookkeeping page and calculate totals using all the prices pre-filled from the database.
A change was made on someone's order. Why isn't the change showing up in bookkeeping?
Certain changes made to individual user orders or to splits after books have been calculated require the books to be re-calculated. The main change that requires recalculation of books is adding a new item to someone's order or splits. The new item will not have a price, so will show as 0.00 until you go to the bookkeeping price entry page, enter a price, and click calculate.
Most changes, such as changes in qty for existing items and removal of items, will show up automatically in the bookkeeping status page even if books have already been calculated.
How do I archive all the data and start over for next month?
Only the administrator can do this; login as admin and click "Archive books."
Why do deleted users still show up in the order totals?
When you delete a user, it won't actually delete all of the data they've entered, it just deletes their account so they can't login and enter any more. If this causes a problem for you, you can simply clear all the items from the deleted user's order by adding them back again, editing their order, and then deleting them again.
Does the software support multiple distributors?
Yes. Each buying-club account on foodclub.org only supports one distributor, but you can create several accounts via the admin interface
http://foodclub.org/admin
and link them together. Linking accounts allows any user in any of these accounts to login to all of the accounts, and shows a dropdown menu of all the linked accounts for easy navigation between them.
What do the out-of-stock and returned-for-refund checkboxes in bookkeeping do? Can I use them if multiple people ordered an item but only half of the items were delivered?
The returned-for-refund feature in bookkeeping will add a separate line item (Refunds) for every person who ordered this item. The invoice totals will not change, but they will have a new refund line, and their overall total will decrease by the refund.
The out-of-stock feature is similar. Everyone who ordered the item gets charged zero (shows as Out-of-stock), but there is not a separate line item for it. It also subtracts the item cost before calculating the invoice total, not after.
The main difference between the two is out-of-stock is meant for items the distributor knew about, and deducted from your invoice total. The refund feature is for items you returned to them for some reason, but where you want to still have the foodclub invoice total match the invoice total from the distributor.
Unfortunately, if multiple people ordered an item and only half the items came in, neither feature will work. If this happens, then you need to go back and adjust individual users' order forms to reflect which users got the items that arrived (zeroing the Qty for those users who didn't get the item).
How do we keep track of refunds to co-op members if they paid in advance of order delivery, and then some items were out-of-stock?
If people are paying in advance and then get refunded later when the order arrives, you should probably use the Refund feature and not the Out-of-stock feature, since the refund is a separate line item and doesn't affect the invoice totals. This will allow you to keep a record of how much they paid, and then how much you refunded to them. The downside is that the invoice total in Foodclub bookkeeping will not match the invoice total from the distributor (unless the distributor shows your total before out-of-stock items).
Can the administrator go in and edit any user's information once they have been created?
Admin users can edit any user's order or splits information, but as far as personal info that a user sets on their User settings page, the admin user cannot modify that. They can however reset a user's password in case they forget it, and delete and re-create the entire user account. To edit a user's individual order, click on their name on the right side of the Group order page, or choose them from the drop-down at the bottom of Group order. Editing splits can be done using the "change" link for the item on the Splits page.
CSS styles... what are they and how do I use them?
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can be used to change the appearance of your Foodclub site. Various HTML elements that are rendered by the application have attributes which allow you to set a "style" for them. There is no comprehensive list of elements and/or pages which can be "styled" but you can use your browser's "View page source" to see the HTML and find the class attributes of the elements on the page.
Here are a few simple examples of what some users have done with CSS styles:
- hide the navigation links with full descriptions from the home page
table.indexLinksTable {
display: none;
}
- set the font of account news to Arial
table.indexAccountNewsTable {
font-family: Arial;
}
If you want to re-style your Foodclub site, we recommend reading about CSS a bit (do an internet search). Also, not all HTML elements in Foodclub have class attributes, so if you find some that you want to style but cannot, e-mail us and we can add a class attribute for you.
PRODUCT DATABASE QUESTIONS
How does the product database work?
You can choose to store your product data in a database on the foodclub.org server. If you have a database set up, you can choose to add item data to it each time you archive your order. You can also add item data from all past orders.
Once you have item data in your database, you can quickly search the database from the order form and splits pages. You can search on the item's description, manufacturer, code and various other properties. When you find the item you want, you can just click Add to add it to your order or split requests.
What data is stored in the product database?
Each product's item code, case size, manufacturer, description, price, and several other fields are stored. For a full description of all the database fields, see Description of product database fields.
Is any information about who ordered what stored in the database?
No. Only information about the products themselves is stored, not anything about who ordered it. As noted above, it keeps the date each product was last ordered, but not who ordered it then.
How do I set up the product database for my buying-club?
Login as the administrator account, and go to the Administration page. Near the bottom, you will see settings which allow you to choose how to set up your product database. If you choose to use a private database, a list of your past orders appears below the database setup options, with a button allowing you to add product data from all your past orders. If you choose to use an official product database, you cannot add past orders to it since it already contains the entire product line that the distributor carries, with accurate prices.
What is an official (read-only) database?
Foodclub provides several "official" product databases, which come directly from distributors that users of Foodclub commonly order from. They mostly contain up-to-date prices, and some even contain the current sale items for the month. If you are ordering from a distributor with an official database available in Foodclub, this is by far the easiest way to use Foodclub. If you want, you can even disable manual entry of items by non-admin users to prevent any mistakes in your order. Users will need to search or browse the database to find what they want.
Can I directly maintain the items in my product database?
Yes. If you use a private database, you can enable a phpMyAdmin account, which will allow you to login via a web interface to add, edit, or delete items in your product database.
What if a product in the database has wrong information?
Update it on your order form, and the newer information will be saved to the database when this order is archived. This is only true for private databases without phpMyAdmin enabled. If you have enabled phpMyAdmin, items in your product database will not be modified when your order is archived, since you have the ability to edit items yourself.
Brief step-by-step instructions for importing a pricelist from a distributor using phpMyAdmin
This process may vary depending on the format of your pricelist, but here is a simple step-by-step guide for importing a basic Excel pricelist.
- In Excel, or OpenOffice/Calc, save the pricelist in CSV format (e.g. File -> Save as... then change File type to CSV)
- Login to your phpMyAdmin account (created on Foodclub Product database page as an admin user)
- Click on foodclub (1) in the left-side frame
- Click on your private database table in the left-side frame, e.g. "private_<your-account-id>"
- Click the Import tab at the top of the right-side frame
- Under File to Import -> Location of the text file, Browse to select the file you exported in the first step, above
- Under Format of imported file, select "CSV"
- In Format of imported file -> Options -> Fields terminated by, change the ";" (semicolon) to a "," (comma)
- In Format of imported file -> Options -> Column names, enter the comma-separated list of Foodclub database columns corresponding to the data in your pricelist file
- See Description of product database fields for a full description of Foodclub database columns
- Example: size,unit_size,description,code,price,unit_price,origin
- Click the Go button
Troubleshooting tips:
- the code field is required; the import will fail if it is blank for any item in your CSV file - actually, it will result in a partial import
- the code field must be unique for each item; if there are duplicate codes (two or more items with the same code), the import will fail / result in partial import
- beware of embedded double-quotes in your CSV file, e.g. this will cause your import to fail: "some item ""description"" ..."
- the only quotes which should exist are the ones at the beginning and end of a field, right next to the commas
- if you need to have double-quotes in a field, they should be escaped with backslash, e.g. \"
CONTACT QUESTIONS
Who maintains foodclub.org?
Various people help with the maintenance of the site. For questions or problems you find, please e-mail <support at foodclub.org>.
Where can I discuss the software with other users?
You can use this wiki to communicate with other users. Anyone can edit these pages, so feel free to start a new section of the wiki to connect with other users.
A better way to communicate would be to use the Foodclub forums. However, at the moment these are only used by existing food buying clubs to communicate amongst their own members.
If you have a specific issue you want to discuss, the best way is probably to just e-mail <support at foodclub.org> and we will put you in touch with other users who can help you.
I have an idea to improve the software. How do I submit a feature request?
Send me e-mail. I will add it to the to-do list and it will be implemented in a timely manner.
