A member emails on Monday: "We're away the week of the 14th — can you skip us?"
This is the most common message a CSA farm gets, and it's the one place in TallyTill where the obvious control is the wrong one. Reaching for "hold" on the member stops their boxes for the rest of the season while they still owe every penny of it.
Here's what each option actually does.
Three of the four touch boxes and leave the money alone. Exactly one touches the money. Nothing refunds anything on its own.
Holding a member
CSA → Shares & sites (/portal/share-plans) → open the share → change the member's status.
Putting somebody on hold stops boxes being drawn for them.
It does not stop the money, and that is the opposite of what the word means everywhere else. A share is a share of the season. A member on hold still owes it, and their instalments stay exactly where they were. Nothing about a status feeds into what the season costs.
That's defensible — it's what a share is — but it's not what anybody expects the word "hold" to mean, so it's worth saying out loud to your crew before somebody uses it kindly and wrongly.
Use it for: a member who's genuinely out for an extended stretch, where you'll settle the money separately.
Holding one box
This is the right answer to "we're away the week of the 14th."
Hold that box, on the order, for that date. The member stays active. Every other week is drawn exactly as before. One week's box simply isn't packed — which also means produce you didn't waste.
Use it for: a holiday, a week away, a single missed pickup you know about in advance.
Cancelling a membership
Stops the boxes, the same way a hold does. And like a hold, it doesn't refund anything on its own.
Use it for: somebody genuinely leaving the season, after you've settled what's owed between you.
Crediting a balance
Customers (/portal/customers) is where balances and credits live.
This is the only control that changes money. If you've already billed a member for a stretch they're not going to receive, put a credit on their balance. It's visible to them on their member page and it comes off what they owe.
Use it for: settling a longer break you've already invoiced, or making good on a box that didn't happen.
The decision, in one line each
- Away one week → hold that box. Not the member.
- Away a month, already billed → hold the member, then credit the balance.
- Leaving the season → cancel the membership, then settle the balance by hand.
- You owe them money → credit the balance. Nothing else does this.
What a member can do for themselves
Not much, deliberately, and this is worth knowing so you're not waiting for a request that will never arrive through the software.
A signed-in member on your member page can see what's in their box, pay their balance, and — if you've turned it on — swap one item in their own box.
They cannot cancel, skip a week, or close their account from the member page. Every one of those comes to you as an email or a phone call. Plan for that: it's a real support load in a season, and it's the reason the four controls above are worth teaching your crew rather than leaving to whoever picks up the inbox.
If you want the item-swap option, the setting is Members Can Swap An Item. It ships off — a farm that hasn't thought about members reshaping a box on packing morning hasn't agreed to it. It's an advanced setting and isn't on your settings page yet, so contact us.
And the money you're owed
Instalments put a balance on a member's account on the day they're due. Nothing chases anybody — it's a balance, not a direct debit, and no card is charged automatically.
So build a habit around it. Customers shows who owes what, and there's a report of who's behind. Once a month during the season is enough; once a season is not.
A member with a balance can pay from their own member page if your account takes card payments. Otherwise you take it at the till on the checkout screen and put it on their account — which is also what you do at a pickup station, because that screen deliberately doesn't take money.
One sentence you can change
The sentence your shares page shows beside the status control is yours. If your farm settles breaks differently — say you always credit a held week — you can have that text say so, so the next person to use the control reads your policy instead of the generic one. Contact us and tell us what it should say.
More: pack day and uncollected boxes, how share plans and instalments work.
Create a free account — CSA is included on every plan, no credit card required to start.