Getting Started: Onboarding Playbook

Below is a high-level overview of how to set up your account.  Each Roastery has different processes and needs.  This document is a resource for finding many of our supporting help documents to answer questions about how to do things.  Please use this as your guide and reach out to support when you need help. 

PART 1: ACCOUNT SETUP - DATA INPUTS

For setup, we have a library of great videos to help with many aspects of getting your data setup.  Please checkout our training video page here

ACCOUNT SETTINGS 

These are some things to get set up as you dive into onboarding.  

• Add a Logo! Make it yours :) 
• Set up Delivery methods - (do you ship, offer local delivery, pick up?)  
• Review other tabs in the settings (such as Company Costs) and update as desired
• Enable the Wholesale Portal
  • You create a short version of your business name in the subdomain so it will appear:  {myroasteryname}.roastertools.com
• Team - Invite other team members to join. 

INTEGRATIONS

Integrations are a key part of how RoasterTools increases your roastery’s efficiency and decreases the amount of double entry your team has to do. The sooner you connect these things, the better. By enabling the connections early, you can map products as they’re entered in and identify things that could have been missed.  

Priority connections:

• Connect to your  Commerce platform
• Accounting integration (QB online or QB desktop and Xero (in beta))
  • Note: QB Desktop is a $99/month additional charge
  • Update QB Accounting Settings (noted in step 2 of help doc)
    • Choose how Commerce orders are Imported
    • Choose how invoice numbers go into the accounting platform

Can be done later:

• Connect to Shipstation (this can happen at any time before going live) 
  • Setup RT store in Shipstation {help doc}
• Connect to Stripe 

PRODUCT DATA

Coffee Products

We define a coffee product as a packaged product available for sale.  In order to set up the coffee products, first you will need to create all the components for each coffee product, which we call the ingredient data (green, pre-blends, roasts, blends). You can use this sheet template to help you organize your data before uploading it to the app.

Component Data: 

• Set up Bags
  • NOTE!! Bag weight is the filled weight  - so a 12oz bag is .75lb and a 2lb bag is 2lb
• Set up Grinds

Ingredient Data: 

• Create your Green coffees - If you use a roast profiling software, you can import your list of green coffees via a CSV 
• Create Pre Blends - What coffees are blended before roasting
• Create Roasts - details of batch size and % weight loss
• Create Blends (post roast) 

Create your Coffee Products: 

• Create your Coffee Products

Non-Coffee Products: 

You will want all products that you sell wholesale or on your commerce site entered into RoasterTools. We help process and fulfill all orders, both wholesale and commerce. You can also make use of the template sheet referenced above to help you organize the data before uploading it to the app

• Create the Non Coffee Products you sell both wholesale and retail
  • Options sets first
  • Then Non coffee products

Unique Product Setups:

You may have certain items that you sell or produce that aren’t as straightforward.  Review the list below and if any pertain to your roastery, review the guides for setup. 

• Do you sell Cases? Create Bundles.
• Do you sell subscriptions on your commerce page? Here’s how to set them up in RT to map to your Commerce items
• Do you produce Cold Brew in bulk to bottle? If you do, follow our Cold Brew 101 guide for setup
• Do you roast large batches to send to a Co-Packer? See this guide

CUSTOMER AND CONTACT DATA

A customer is the Business.  

A contact is the individual assigned to customers (the Business)

Customers remain constant while contacts may change more frequently.

You can assign more than one contact to the same customer.

Add your Customers

• You can enter customers in manually, one by one, or
• Upload a CSV import
• After the customer is initially created, there are additional fields you can fill out including: 
  • Payment terms
  • Payment Method
  • Preferred Delivery Method
  • Assign Production Day (optional) 
  • Portal Settings

Note: You can use the customer CSV import to do a bulk update of many of these customer settings

Add Contacts

• Create contacts and assign them to the customer account. 
  • Create one by one
  • Or create in bulk with CSV import (see help doc for contacts above) 

Create A Test Customer

It’s good to set up a test customer so you can easily review what the portal will look like.

• Turn on the portal
• Setup a test customer
• Become familiar with the email sequence sent to a contact to invite them to the portal  

INTEGRATIONS - MAPPING

You now have your integrations connected for both commerce and accounting. And your product and customer data is in. Now it is time to make sure you’ve mapped everything correctly so the data can flow seamlessly between Commerce - RoasterTools - and Accounting. 

Accounting: 

• Map Products to Accounting Platform (QB online help doc)
• Map Customers to Accounting Platform (QB online help doc)

Commerce: 

• Map Products to e-Commerce platform (Commerce help doc)
  • Monitor the Commerce orders page for orders that are not importable to identify additional products that need to be created and/or mapped

PART 2: CUSTOMIZING

RoasterTools allows you to set up automations for pricing, discounts, product exclusivity and more. We also enable you to easily customize the Portal for each customer so you can be confident they see the right products at the right price. 

Exceptions: Discounts, Price Levels and Exclusive Products

• Customer Groups 
  • Create groups of customers that will have the same discounts or other exclusivity settings applied to everyone in that group.
• Automatic Discounts including:
  • Free delivery Discounts
  • % off discounts
  • Set prices for a product
  • Time-bound promotions
  • And more!
• Product Groups
  • Product Groups help organize how products are displayed on the portal
  • They can be exclusive and you can choose if they are displayed on the portal
• Bag and Grind Exclusivity
  • You already set up the bags and grinds, now you can set if any of these should be exclusive to certain customers and/or available on the portal 
• Exclusive Products
  • Set it up so only select customers can order/view a product
• Price levels (*only available on some plans and by request)
• Catalogs
  • Used to limit the products that a customer can view on the Wholesale Portal

Organizing the Portal View

This is completely optional.  But if you want to dive into this, There are many ways to customize how things are displayed on the portal.  

• How Arrange and Sort Products on the Portal 
• How to Arrange and Sort Bags and Grind Portal Display
• How to organize the Product Categories on the Portal

Ready to begin using operations? 

PART 3: OPERATIONS GO LIVE

See our overview video of using Operations on the training page {here} 

Recommendation

Often users will go live using the operations section for a week or two and then begin inviting customers into the portal.  This will highlight some of the things you could have missed during setup as you enter in orders manually. 

Your commerce integration should be set up, and the commerce orders should be importing. (goodbye data entry for commerce!)   

Operations: Go Live Checklist

Note: Some items may not pertain to your situation.  Take what you need. 

Ingredient / Product Data

• Verify data is up to date (green, roasts, blends)
• Have any new green coffees have been added?
• If a green was added - does a roast need to be updated or created?
• Do any blend components need to be updated?
• Verify bag weights are correct (super important!)

Complete Inventory Counts

• Inventory of non-coffee items - see this video with instructions
• Green Inventory - Create Initial Green Inventory Counts {see help doc} 

New Items

• Update promotions/discounts 
• Are there any new/seasonal products that need to be added?
• Any new customers to add?

Connections

• Turn on Auto Import in commerce connection
  • Timing - usually the day before you will begin processing orders in RT. 
• Skip commerce orders that weren’t imported: use this link to see all importable orders on one page: https://app.roastertools.com/commerce/orders?items=1000
• Are customers mapped to QB?
• Are products mapped to QB?
• Are products mapped to commerce?
• Update Subscriptions/Mapping according to current offerings 

Settings

• Update any remaining account settings (bag costs, label costs, company costs, etc.)
• Review QB settings

Other External Things: 

• Check if you have any other external (not connected to RT) automation or apps you want to disable or update because RoasterTools will take over that work.

You're Ready to Go Live with Operations!