Connect 1.40 Release Notes

Release Date: Wednesday March 1, 2022

This release adds several new reporting capabilities that provide all the information that has been available through the legacy LFM producer profile. And now Order Item Notes are visible to producers for the first time. Producers can now bulk assign lot numbers to products and have those lot numbers show up on LFM market sites. Several performance improvements and bug fixes are included in this release.

New Features

Reports

A new report type, the Product List Report, is available now on the Sell page. After clicking on a market tab the producer will see a three dot icon which generates a report of all products listed on the Sell page. If the Sell page was filtered by category or by Show/hide Unlisted Products, the report will be filtered the same way. There is now a drop down menu that allows the producer to view prior period availability lists for each market they participate in.

1. Choose whether to view all products or only those currently listed as available.
2. Filter by category if desired.
3. Choose which period to view availability for.
4. Generate product list report

The product list report provides quick visibility of Product VIN, Unit Price, Quantity Listed, and remaining Quantity Available. The export of the product list report, available by clicking the print icon on the report, provides full product details including Product Type, Base Unit Name, UPC, Tagline, Description, Deposit, and Quantity Sold. This report take the place of the legacy reports "Products I Sell," "Current Products Listed," and "Items Sold vs Listed."

The Harvest Reports, Packing Reports, and Sales Reports have had a number of column options added to ensure that all information previously available in legacy reports can now be found in Connect reports. The columns that have been added are Order Number, Aggregation Date, Product VIN, Product UPC, Lot #, and Order Item Note. Order Item Note is especially noteworthy because it has not been previously visible to producers. Now when customers add a note to an order item about a special request or preference, producers can see it for themselves instead of needing to be told by the market manager. See our manual article Standard Reports for a detailed list of available reports and their contents.

Packing Labels are now named to indicate the Avery label format they fit. Labels can now be sorted by Product Name, or left in the original sort by Order to better suit different packing processes. Labels now include Route Name and Route Order if applicable.

Printable Purchase Orders and exportable Purchase Order Reports have been added to the Distribute page.

1. Choose which market you want to search.
2. Choose which PO status you want to search for.
3. Select the range of delivery dates.
4. All applicable purchase orders will appear in this list and can be printed by clicking the PO number
5. The three dot icon allows you to export PO Summary and PO Detail reports compiled from the POs you searched for.

Harvest Unit Option

By default Type A products are compiled in the Harvest page using the Harvest Unit and Harvest Multiplier, while Type B and Type C units are not. The new "Use Harvest Unit and Multiplier in Harvest Reporting" setting in the Product Information section of each Product Details page allows you to turn the Harvest Multiplier function on or off for any product. When the Harvest Multiplier is turned off the Harvest page will simply present the total number of each Selling Unit sold for each product. When Harvest Multiplier is turned on, all Selling Units will be combined into a total number of Harvest Units needed for the Harvest Date. This may be useful for example if a cheese is priced by weight and so it is a Type B product, but it is sold in 8oz, 1lb and 5lb selling units and you want to know the total number of pounds needed for a day's sales. Turning the Harvest Multiplier on would allow all units sold to be compiled into a number of total pounds sold.

Lot Number Functionality

Lot numbers can now be assigned to products on the Harvest page and the Pack page. These assigned lot numbers will flow through to the LFM markets the products were sold on and will show up there on appropriate reports and documents for traceability. To add the Lot Number on the Harvest page, click the note icon by the product name.

Products on the Harvest Page may combine selling units for multiple markets, and lot numbers assigned to those products will show up in both markets. If you need to use different lot numbers for different markets you can filter for market before assigning the lot number.

Lot numbers can also be assigned on the Pack page. Again, click the note icon by the product name to assign the lot number. On the pack page separate lot numbers can be assigned to each selling unit or to each sales line of each selling unit.

Changes made to lot numbers on the Pack page will not update the lot numbers recorded on the Harvest Page. Changes made to lot numbers in LFM by market managers will update the lot numbers on the Pack page but not on the Harvest page.

Improvements

Products deleted from LFM markets but that are still listed in the market in Connect will now generate clear messages on the Sell page saying that the product can not be found the market. You can re-add the product or inquire with the market manager as to why it was deleted.

Bug fixes

Product Photos on newly created products no longer get overwritten when a new product photo is uploaded.

Importing products no longer requires users to uncheck and recheck an item in order to make the Import Selected button work.

Labels bugs that prevent generation and printing of labels in some cases have been fixed.

Packed Status in Connect now updates the packed status in the the producer profile page of LFM, not in the admin Pack Orders page.