Most CSA boxes draw themselves. A nightly job creates each member's order a few weeks ahead of their collection day, and you never touch it.
Then somebody phones. A member wants an extra box for a visiting family, a neighbour wants to try a week, you sold a share at the market on Saturday and wrote it on a receipt. That's what taking an order by hand is for — and there's one rule about it that's worth learning before you need it, not after.
How to take one
CSA → Orders (/portal/orders) → Take an order.
Pick the member, the pickup day, the site, what they're getting and how many, and an optional note. It saves as a draft, so you can still change it, and it joins that day's run like any other box.
The rule: exactly one product per order
This is the trap. An order carrying two or more products is not treated as a box at all. The box builder tallies it under "aren't boxes" for that pickup day, and that tally is your only notice.
It doesn't error. It doesn't warn. If you don't read the counts at the top of the box builder, the first you'll know is a member standing at the table with no box.
Why it works that way
A box is an order with exactly one share line, and its target value is that line's total. That's what lets the builder know how much produce belongs in it.
An order with no share line has no target, and an order with two has two — neither is a thing the builder can fill. Rather than guess, it counts them and reports them on screen, because "96 boxes" on a day holding 99 orders is a discrepancy a farmer finds eventually and then stops trusting the page for.
Being counted and surfaced is better than being silently dropped. It is not as good as being warned at the moment you save, and that's the gap to be aware of.
So how do I sell them eggs as well?
Two good options.
A sale at the till when they collect. This is usually the right answer. The member is standing in front of you; ring the eggs up as an ordinary sale. It keeps your share accounting clean — shares were settled when members signed up, and the extras are new revenue on their own line.
A second, separate order. If it genuinely needs to be fulfilled as part of pack day rather than sold at the table, make it its own order with its own single product.
What you must not do is add the eggs to the share order to save a click. That's the one thing that makes the whole box vanish from the run.
Read the counts at the top of the box builder
Every pickup day, before you build, three numbers are worth ten seconds:
- Already locked — these take no share of the harvest
- On hold, unclaimed or cancelled — not boxes; nothing is set aside for them
- Not a box — orders without exactly one share line
If that last number isn't zero, open those orders and fix them before you lock the run. After locking is harder.
The note is published
The optional note on an order is printed on the box label and shown on the box's public page. Anyone holding the box — or sent a photo of it — can read it.
"Two shares, one bag" is exactly what it's for. Addresses, phone numbers and anything personal are not. If you need to record something private about a member, put it on the customer record, not the order.
An order is not a sale
Worth stating plainly, because it changes how your numbers read.
An order is a fulfilment that hasn't happened yet. Nothing comes off your shelf until it's rung up. Building boxes doesn't move stock; locking a run doesn't move stock. Stock moves when a box is actually sold.
That's why your stock levels won't drop on Wednesday morning when you build, and why they do drop as members collect.
More: building the boxes, locking and pack day, or the full setup sequence.
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