Your first sale, start to finish: the district administrator's page

Follow it top to bottom the first time; after that you'll only need the bottom half.

1. Set up (once)

After you sign in, the dashboard shows a Setup checklist: five steps in this order, then opening the sale. Its one button is always the next step to do. The same order is used here.

1. District info. Fill in the Mailing address: the sale cannot open without it, and it is printed at the bottom of bulk email. Check District name (it is the payee on every check) and Time zone: the dates and pickup times you type are read in that zone. Fill in Contact email (Use my sign-in email fills it with the address you sign in with) and Contact phone. The sale cannot open without a contact email either. Customers see them on their receipt, and when a customer replies to an order email, the reply goes to your contact email, not to SeedStand. Press Save district info.

2. Add your plants. Every plant belongs to a sale, so the first time, this step asks you to create the sale: give it a name and year and press Create sale. A new sale always starts as Draft; leave it there while you build. While it is a draft the online store is invisible to everyone, you included; Preview your online store on Sale settings shows it to you. There is no separate "publish" step to forget: Open is what publishes it. (Closed, Pickup and Complete do not hide it again: the online store stays up with a notice saying ordering is closed. Only Draft has no public page.)

Uploading your order form is free. Upload last year's order form and check the plant list SeedStand reads from it before anything is saved. It is included at no extra charge.

Upload your order form (left menu) takes a CSV, an Excel file (.xlsx) or a PDF. SeedStand reads the column headings and layout as they are, and shows every plant it found with the row numbers beside it. Nothing is saved until you approve the preview.

Note. Re-importing the same file updates plants with the same name (safe for prices and typos). When the file has a Quantity column, the preview asks whether it replaces each plant's stock (the usual case: the file is the truth) or adds to it (you really did buy more). Stock never drops below what buyers have already taken.

Also check the Category column in the preview: SeedStand files each plant under a category from its name and your Category column.

Add stock. A plant imported without a quantity shows as sold out. In the preview, Set blank quantities to gives every blank plant one number at once; after that, add stock on each plant's page under Catalog.

3. Sale settings. Under Ordering dates, set Ordering opens and Ordering closes and press Save ordering dates. Online ordering opens and closes by itself at those times, in your district's time zone, while Status is Open. The online store prints an "Ordering ends …" line beside its Ordering open badge only if you fill in the closing date. Read the three policies (substitution, refund and missed pickup): customers see them at checkout.

4. Pickup places and times. On Sale settings, add at least one pickup location (the address they drive to; Use the district address copies it from District info) and at least one pickup window (a date with a start and end time). Buyers choose their window at checkout. The sale cannot open until at least one pickup time is still ahead, because buyers commit to a time at checkout. Don't know the site yet? Stay in Draft and take phone and paper orders, or enter the planned day and change it later: when you edit a pickup time, Sale settings offers to email every buyer who chose it.

5. Payments. Checks, cash and pay-at-pickup need no setup. Under Payments, tick the methods you take in Payment methods accepted and press Save payment methods. Card online can be ticked once card payments are set up. To take cards, read Before setting up card payments on the same page (it lists what Stripe asks for and how long it takes), then press Set up card payments. If the district must charge sales tax, set Sales tax rate there too: it starts at 0, and it applies to check and cash orders as well as cards.

Open the sale. When all five are done, press Open the sale on the checklist. It shows when customers can order and asks you to confirm. If your sign-in email address is not confirmed yet, the checklist shows Send the link again in its place. (On Sale settings, Status → Open → Save sale settings does the same.)

• Either way, the sale opens only when it has the district mailing address, a contact email, a plant customers can order (with stock) and a pickup time that hasn't passed, and, for a new account, once your sign-in email address is confirmed (see Confirm your email address first below).
• If anything is missing, the page says The sale can't open yet. Add: and links to each missing item; if your email address is not confirmed, it names the address the link went to and offers Send the link again. Everything else you changed is saved, and Status stays where it was.
• Until the opening time you set, the sale's badge reads Opens and the day (for example Opens Oct 12). Until then the online store takes no orders; to check it, press See your store as customers see it on Sale settings.
• Once ordering has opened, open the online store link and place a practice order with your own name and email address, paying by check or cash so no card is charged.
• Open it under Orders and press Cancel order: its plants go back on sale, it does not count in your reports, and the cancellation email comes to you, so you see what a customer would get. It keeps its order number, marked Canceled, so your first real order ends in 000002.

2. While orders come in

Paper, phone and walk-in orders go in under Phone or paper order. They draw on the same stock as the website: one number for both. Choose how it arrived (Mail / Phone / Walk-in) and how they paid.

Available on the Catalog page is the number everything turns on. A plant at zero shows Sold out in the online store but stays listed, with a Join waitlist button and "Similar in stock" links under it. Add stock on the plant's page and it comes back on sale by itself.

Suspicious orders. A pay-later order holds its plants until it is paid or canceled, so SeedStand limits how many unpaid orders one email (3) and one internet connection (10 an hour) can place. Change either under Sale settings → Unpaid order limits; 0 turns a limit off. If a run of odd orders gets through anyway, Orders → check for suspicious orders groups them by email domain, connection and minute, with one cancel button per group; canceling puts the plants back on sale. If a group is people you know (a family at one house, a church group, a school), press These are real orders instead: the orders stay as they are and SeedStand stops listing them. The link shows only while there is a group to look at.

Confirm your email address first. After you sign up, SeedStand emails a link to the address you signed up with. Until you press it, the dashboard, Sale settings and Messages say so and offer Send the link again. Until you confirm: your sale cannot open; an import adds people as customers but not to your mailing list; announcements, surveys and test copies go to at most 25 people a day, counted together with order confirmations and pickup reminders, and the rest is not sent (a phone or paper order is still saved, and once you confirm, Messages offers Send again for its confirmation); and an announcement can link only to your own online store. After you confirm, import the file again to add those people to your list.

Your mailing list in season one. It starts empty (a customer record only appears when somebody orders), so an announcement in your first year would reach nobody. Customers → Import customers takes a CSV of last year's buyers: Name, Email, Phone and Address, matched loosely, previewed before anything is saved.

• If the file carries an On mailing list column, that column decides row by row.
• If it does not, and your email address is confirmed, everyone in it with an email address goes on your list, unless the file marks them as unsubscribed: a column such as Unsubscribed or Opted out keeps those people off.
• Anyone who has already asked to be left off stays off, whatever the file says, and every announcement and survey carries an unsubscribe link.

One person at a time goes under Add a customer on the same page.

Messages sends reminders and announcements to customers. Before sending, open "See exactly who gets this" and read the list. Once your email address is confirmed, an announcement goes to everyone on it. Afterwards, Sent messages is the record: a row marked Not delivered (rejected by the email provider) means that address refused the message. The customer is still on the list, so pressing send again reaches exactly them and nobody twice. The top of Messages says how many emails failed in the last 7 days, Failed shows only those, and a failed order confirmation has a Send again button.

3. Pickup day

Pickup day (left menu) shows: how many are checked in, who still owes money, Pack lists and Pull sheet (by species) to print, and Walk-in sales for selling leftover stock.

Volunteers: Pickup day → Generate volunteer link → Copy link → text it. They don't need an account, and once volunteers have opened the link with signal, their phones keep checking people in without it (see the volunteer card). Volunteers check people in and take the money at the table; you record it.

Recording a payment. Open the order (Orders → search the name), press Mark $X paid, choose Check / Cash / Card on the district's own reader / Other, add the check number if you like. Cards run on whatever reader you already own; SeedStand records it so your totals reconcile.

Recording a refund. An order that says Refund owed is money the district pays back by hand: a canceled cash or check order, or a cheaper plant substituted. Pay the customer, open the order, press Mark refunded ($X) and choose Cash / Check / Other. A card refund made from SeedStand has already gone back to the customer's card. There is nothing to pay by hand.

At the end of the day: Pickup day → Review and mark not picked up. It shows exactly which orders never arrived and what the district keeps. Confirm, and those orders are marked. A late arrival can still be checked in later from their order screen. Nothing is deleted.

4. After the season

Once online ordering stops, the Dashboard shows Closing the season: refunds owed on canceled or voided orders, credits and removed item refunds still owed, orders picked up and not paid (as on Reports), money with volunteers not yet recorded, checks not yet received, orders still awaiting pickup, and volunteer links still working. Each line opens the list where it is settled. Setting Status to Complete turns off online ordering only: office orders, check-ins and refunds still work, so finish the list before you file the books. If another sale of yours still has money to settle, the Dashboard names it with a Switch to that sale button.

Reports has the board figures: gross sales, sales by plant, cash, checks and card, refunds. Customers is the district's mailing list. Export it any time; it belongs to the district. Sale settings → Copy a previous season carries plants and prices into next year (stock does not carry over; enter the new nursery numbers).

Good to know

• Re-importing a sheet with a Quantity column asks whether it replaces each plant's stock or adds to it (above).
• A new volunteer link doesn't switch off the old one. Each link stops on its own end date (the day after your last pickup time, or the number of days you chose), and Turn off all volunteer links ends every link at once.
• Changing Status to anything but Open closes ordering immediately.
• Confirmation emails come from orders@seedstand.org but replies come to you (your contact email) once Contact email is filled in.
• Each district has one sign-in, the email address you signed up with. Volunteers need no account: they use a volunteer link. To show your treasurer or board the figures, use Reports.
• Changing your password signs out every other device that was signed in as you, a laptop left open at the library included. District info → Sign out everywhere signs out every device, this one too, without changing the password.
• Questions: support@seedstand.org.