Organize with Tags: Streamline Customer, Order, and Product Management

They may not be flashy… but back office tags are a powerful tool for improving the searchability and organization of your farm data. By using tags, you can efficiently manage customers, orders, and products, enabling bulk actions, data retrieval, and list exports with ease. This guide will walk you through the five different back office tags on Local Line and their common use cases, helping you make the most out of this feature.

Types of tags

There are five main types of tags that can be utilized in both the back office and storefront of Local Line:

1. Keyword Tags (Storefront)
2. Customer Tags (Back Office)
3. Order Tags (Back Office)
4. Internal Product Tags (Back Office)
5. Internal Vendor Tags (Back Office)

Utilizing tags for improved organization and workflows

Storefront tags

Tags not only help with internal organization but also play a crucial role in enhancing your storefront. During a recent workshop, Maximizing E-Commerce Success: Crafting Offers to Boost Farm Sales, we discussed how keyword tags can be used in your farm storefront to highlight features such as "best sellers" or "farmers' pick."

If you want to learn the formula for crafting great offers, check out our article on ways to maximize offers in your farm store or watch our workshop recording, Maximizing E-Commerce Success: Crafting Offers to Boost Farm Sales.

Below, we explore the different back office tags you can find in your Local Line account and how farmers and ranchers use them every day in their operations.

Customer tags

Customer tags are incredibly effective for grouping customers by common elements, making it easier to filter and perform bulk actions, such as sending emails, assigning to a price list, topping off store credit, or sending account invites. 

Here are some practical applications for customer tags:

• Grouping by Preferences: Tags can help you categorize customers based on their preferences (e.g., no cabbage, kale instead of lettuce). This is especially useful for those running a traditional CSA model.
• Communication and Reminders: Use tags to send reminders to different customer groups. For example, a change in pick-up time for all those scheduled for Friday, or to notify CSA members of important updates.
• Adding Store Credit for Buy-Down CSA: If you run a buy-down CSA program, easily top up your customers’ store credit. Tag all relevant customers and simply press Edit Store Credit.

• Managing Subscriptions: For CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs, tags can identify members across different seasons (e.g., spring/summer).

Order tags

Order tags are essential for organizing and exporting orders efficiently. You can leverage order tags to categorize by fulfillment date and time, highlight important orders, and packaging information. In your orders table, you can also stack tags by filtering by customer and order tags at the same time. Making exporting the exact orders you need seamless. 

You can also leverage these tags to conduct bulk actions on your orders, such as: 

• Mark paid/unpaid
• Approve orders
• Edit payment methods
• Update fulfillment status (scheduled, fulfilled, unfulfilled, ready for pick up, and packed)
• Send or download invoices
• Download labels
• Send email
• And, close or cancel orders

Some common uses include:

• Pick-Up Time Slots/Delivery Days: To streamline logistics, tag orders based on the scheduled pick-up or delivery times.
• Packaging: Differentiate orders by packaging type or delivery needs (frozen/not frozen).
• Special Notes: Tag subscription orders for special treatment, such as adding a little extra something for first-time purchases, a customer referral, or identifying orders that used a coupon code.

Internal product tags

In your inventory table, you can add both keyword tags which are visible to your customers and on your storefront, and internal product tags. These are tags that only yourself and your team will see. They can be effective for communicating with the team and organizing by customer type.

Here are a few common use cases for internal product tags: 

• Product Types and Seasonality: Differentiate between fresh and stored products or classify products by season.
• Storage Locations: Tag products based on where they are stored, which is particularly useful if you manage multiple storage locations.
• Wholesale vs. Retail: Identify products meant for wholesale versus those for retail.
• Batch Numbers or Dates: Keep track of inventory using batch numbers or dates for better quality control.

Internal vendor tags

Similar to internal product tags, internal vendor tags allow you to organize your vendors. 

Here are a few ways you may use vendor tags: 

• Product Type and Location: Tag vendors by the type of products they supply (e.g., all apple growers) or their location.
• Delivery Schedules: Use tags to mark vendors based on their delivery days (e.g., those who deliver on Fridays).

Using back office tags keeps you and your team organized

Tags are an invaluable asset for organizing and managing various aspects of your business. By implementing customer, order, product, and vendor tags, you can streamline operations, improve data management, and enhance communication with your team. 

Whether it's conducting bulk actions, exporting data, or simply keeping track of preferences and schedules, tags offer a versatile solution to keep all your tables in Local Line organized.