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

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

1. Set up (about an hour, once)

Create the sale. After you sign in, the dashboard has one button: Set up your sale. Give it a name and year. Leave Status on Draft while you build — while it is a draft the storefront is invisible to everyone, you included. There is no separate "publish" step to forget: Open is what publishes it. (Closed, Pickup and Complete do not hide it again — the storefront stays up with a notice saying ordering is closed. Only Draft has no public page.)

Where and when people pick up. On Sale settings, add at least one pickup location (the address they drive to) and at least one pickup window (a date with a start and end time). Buyers choose their window at checkout. Do this before you open the sale — SeedStand won't stop you opening without one, but then buyers have nothing to choose.

We build your catalog for you. Send us last year's order form — paper, PDF, a spreadsheet, or a link to your old store — and we build your catalog for you, free. Email it to support@seedstand.org once your sale exists and we load it for you. There is no charge for it, on either plan, and a person answers that address — ask when you send the file if you need a date.

Or bring your spreadsheet across yourself. Catalog → CSV import. Upload the file you already use. Only two columns are required — Species/Name and Price — and column names are matched loosely ("Price ($)", "Cost" and "Unit price" all count). Optional: Bundle size, Quantity, Max per order, Scientific name, Category, Description. Nothing is saved until you approve the preview.

Read this twice. Re-importing the same file updates plants with the same name (safe for prices and typos) but a Quantity column adds that much stock again every time. If you re-import to fix a name, delete the Quantity column first — unless you really did buy more.

Also check the Category column in the preview: when a row matches a plant in SeedStand's library, the library's category is used instead of yours.

District info. Fill in Contact email, Contact phone, and Mailing address. Customers see the email and phone on their receipt, and when a customer replies to an order email, the reply goes to your contact email — not to SeedStand. Bulk email can't go out without the mailing address.

Open the sale. Sale settings → Status → Open → Save. Set Ordering closes while you're there; the storefront prints "Orders close {date}" only if you fill it in. Open the storefront link and place one test order yourself.

2. While orders come in

Paper, phone and walk-in orders go in under New offline order. They draw on the same stock as the website — one number, one deadline. 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 on the storefront 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.

Fake 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.

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 no mailing-list column, everyone in it with an email address goes on your list, because they bought from you; if it does carry one, that column decides row by row. Anyone who has already asked to be left off stays off, whatever the file says, and every email you send carries an unsubscribe link. One person at a time goes under Add a customer on the same page.

Comms lets you email every customer in the sale — reminders, changes. Before either send button, open "Recipients" and read the list. It goes to everyone on it. Afterwards, Recent sends is your 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.

3. Pickup day

Pickup day (left menu) is your command post: how many are checked in, who still owes money, Pack lists (by order) and Pull sheet (by species) to print, and Surplus sales for walk-up sales against leftover stock.

Volunteers: Pickup day → Generate volunteer link → Copy link → text it. They don't need an account and their phones work in a barn with no signal (see the volunteer card). Volunteers check people in; you take the money.

Taking payment at the table. Open the order (Orders → search the name), press Mark 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.

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

Reports has the board figures: gross, by species, by payment method, refunds. Customers is your mailing list — export it any time; it's yours. Sale settings → Copy a previous season carries plants and prices into next year (stock does not carry — you'll enter the new nursery numbers).

Things that surprise people, once

• Re-importing a CSV with a Quantity column adds stock (above).
• A new volunteer link doesn't switch off the old one — Turn off all volunteer links does.
• Changing Status to anything but Open closes ordering immediately.
• Confirmation emails come from orders@seedstand.org but replies come to you (your contact email).
• Changing your password signs out every other device that was signed in as you — a laptop left open at the library included.
• Questions: support@seedstand.org.