Barn2Door Purchases, Orders & Payments: How It Works
Barn2Door is an all-in-one solution designed to help Farmers grow and manage their business. Our solution includes many proprietary and patented features to support the unique nature and requirements of Farm eCommerce.
Farming is Nuanced
Unlike eCommerce for consumer product goods (CPGs), selling Farm Products is different. A buyer purchasing a new stainless steel water bottle can expect to make that purchase once in a blue moon. The water bottle is nearly indestructible, could be manufactured anywhere, and drop-shipped through any third-party carrier without concern. As a result, the purchase process is straightforward.
Farm products on the other hand are different — they are often seasonal, may vary in weight, size, and dimension, may be perishable, require refrigeration, freezing, or precise temperature control, and they may be difficult to package and distribute. Moreover, Farmers often provide multiple purchase options. As a result, Barn2Door has built a specialized eCommerce solution to suit the needs of Farmers, while making the experience consumer-friendly.
The Nuances of Farm Purchases, Orders and Payments
Purchases. Farmers may configure multiple Purchase options in Barn2Door: one-time-purchase, paid-upfront (subscription), pay-as-you-go (subscription), deposit, or final payment (reconciled at a later date, upon harvest).
Orders. All Farm purchases translate to Order(s) in Barn2Door that are tracked daily based on the fulfillment timeframe of a given purchase(s). Orders are separate from actual receipt of payment - given a subscription may result in paid-upfront orders over multiple periods (e.g., a Farm bundle box delivered over 6 months). Additionally, there may be separate fees in the case of recurring subscriptions (e.g., delivery fees).
Payments & Deposits. On the Barn2Door Account page, the Deposit(s) reflects the actual settlement of payments posted each day to your Farm bank account. Corresponding order numbers are tracked to each payment deposit. Given many Farm purchases are paid-upfront subscriptions, orders often do not align with payments.
Order Tracking
Unlike CPG ecommerce, a subscription to seasonal Farm Products is a common use case (up to 80% of a Farm’s business). As a result, tracking orders independently of purchases is critical to facilitate more upfront payments for Farmers (increasing cash flow). Additionally, order tracking is a prerequisite to facilitate a Pick & Pack list for Farmers to manage their operations.
Payment Settlement
To confound Farmers and complicate reconciliation further, payments in the United States have a wide range of actual settlement time frames – from 1 to 5 days. This is attributable to our underlying payment infrastructure that varies from the Top 25 banks (settling in 1-3 days), versus 1000’s of small regional and community banks (settling in 2-5 days), which are built on third-party banking platforms.
Barn2Door: All-in-One Solution
The good news for Farmers is that Barn2Door provides an all-in-one solution to make handling purchases, orders, payments, and deposits much easier. We’ve become the largest vertical ecommerce business dedicated exclusively to Farmers, including a certified integration to Quickbooks Online, where a batch summary of all your deposits can be posted on a regular monthly basis (to streamline accounting & reconciliation).
Barn2Door provides an all-in-one solution to grow and manage your Farm business. If you’re curious to learn why successful Farms run on Barn2Door, watch this 5-minute video.