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      Advance Orders

      Advance Orders allow customers to place an order beyond their usual delivery cycle. This is a useful feature for Christmas deliveries

      Overview

      • The Advance Order feature allows a customer to place an order for a core item, during a set week, ahead of their usual delivery cycle
      • This feature can be used for advanced Christmas orders

      How Does it Work?

      • If a hub choses to use the Advance Order feature (see steps below), every customer will automatically be given the selected advance order core item (only admin can change / delete the advance order core item). Not all customers will want an advance order, so, in most cases, it is necessary to make the core item a zero value, crew only, custom box
      • The hub owner is then able to start adding advance/Christmas items to their shop.
      • Advance orders can only be set for one week (i.e. you could not offer advance orders for the week before Christmas & Christmas week)
      • In this week, you have to receive your order on the day you would usually receive your order (this would be a problem if the day you usually receive your order is on Christmas day!)

      Current Limitations

      • Customers may have to email hubs to add core items to their advance order
      • A customer cannot have their Christmas order delivered on a different day of the week to their regular delivery day (e.g. if they are a Thursday delivery, their Christmas order delivery day will be a Thursday)
      • The advanced order period is limited to one week 

      Steps - Switching On Advance Order Feature

      1. In Crew Dashboard, go to Deliveries -> Advance Orders
      2. Fill in the fields as per below, and then click Save

      Advance Orders Week Start Date: The week in which your advance orders will be fulfilled. Set this to the start of the delivery cycle if deliveries occur on multiple days during the week.

      N.B. The customer cannot select a different day to their usual delivery day for their advanced order. i.e. if a customer receives their usual delivery order on a Thursday, their advance order will also be on a Thursday.

      Advance Orders Event Name: Shows up in the customer dashboard. E.g. “🎅 Christmas Advance Orders 🎅” (see screenshot below). We think it's a good idea to use emojis to make the Christmas tab stand out to customers

      Advance Orders Core Product: All orders must contain a “core product”. Usually this is a produce box of some sort. It might make sense to create a crew-only empty box product, this might be called a “Festive Box” or similar (which you can set up in the usual way)

      Advance Orders Visible: When checked, will show advance orders in customer dashboards.

      Specifying Products Only Available for Advance Orders:

      When adding a product that you would only like to be available for an advanced order navigate to Products > 1. ⭐ Product > choose 'Add Product' (see creating products)  or choose an existing product you would like to change.

      From the Order Visibilty dropdown select 'Advance Orders Only'. 

      You can also choose to have products set to 'Regular Orders Only'.

      The default is set to 'All Orders' so will not need to be adjusted if you are happy for products to exist in both lists.

      Adding an Advance Order Subscription on behalf of a customer:

      To add an advance order on behalf of a customer navigate to their Customer Overview > Subscriptions > press 'Details' > press 'Add Advance Order' button at the bottom of the page.

      Continue as you would with a normal subscription. 

      Early Cut Off of Advance Orders: 

      You may wish to stop further advance orders ahead of schedule.

      To do this go to Advance Orders > Edit Advance Orders > Uncheck "Advance Orders Visible".

      This will remove the Advance orders tab from the customer dashboard.

      Advance Order Confirmation Emails:

      If you have stopped your advanced orders early you may wish to send your customers a confirmation email, as the advance order dashboard will no longer be visible to them.

      • Go to Advance Orders > bottom of the page
      • The button will be greyed out if the advance orders are still visible (in case customers change their orders)
      • Once sent, the button will return to being greyed out.

      Example Confirmation Email:

       

      Customer Dashboard

      With Advance Orders switched on, customers will see an additional tab at the top of their dashboard, from which they can set up and adjust their advance orders.

      Steps For Customers

      1. Click on the new tab (below named: Christmas Orders)
      2. This will take the customer to a new dashboard 
      3. Add products to your Christmas order

      The advance order dashboard works the same as the regular dashboard, except that customers can not pause it. This also shows the expected delivery date for the advance order.

      If a customer does not have an active, ongoing subscription, they will see an option to sign up for an advance order by itself.

      Crew Management

      Once advance orders have been placed, an order overview can be seen by going back to the Advance Order page. This will show all products for which orders have been placed.

      Note: If a customer has exceeded their debt limit, they will be automatically excluded and their order will not count towards this summary.

      Individual advance orders can be altered by going to a customer’s overview page, and going to their Subscriptions details page.