Shared database
Each food cooperative manages its own information, that's the idea with Foodsoft. But does that mean that every collective needs to manually update the articles every time?
That's the problem the shared database tries to solve. While as a foodcoop, you manage your own article lists, you can synchronise with a shared central database (for suppliers that are connected).
The central database would usually be run by someone hosting Foodsoft (though technically it can be elsewhere). They'd run the sharedlists application, which keeps the article information up-to-date. In Germany some members of N-BNN are available. In The Netherlands, farmers like BioRomeo and organic wholesalers like De Nieuwe Band are available. Information is received from the suppliers by email or on ftp and imported automatically. See also the documentation of file formats for article lists.
In general you'll first contact the supplier you'd like to buy from, and arrange that you can order from them. Then you can add the supplier in Foodsoft.
From the Suppliers screen, press the button Import supplier from external database (this is only available when your Foodsoft hoster has configured sharedlists). You'll then see a list of suppliers that are available for synchronisation.
Find the supplier you want, and press subscribe. Confirm that you want to create a new supplier, and you have it in your system. Now you'll need to import the articles you want (unless you've chosen All articles in How to synchronize). Choose articles (...) for the new supplier. You'll see that there are no articles yet. Press Import article button to see which articles are available in the shared database.
You can search and browse through the list of articles, and choose the ones you'd like to order as a food collective (you'll need to choose a category). These are added to your articles. Then when you open a new order, just these will be present.
Next week, when you want to open a new order as a food cooperative, prices and availability may have changed. So before opening the order, press the Synchronize button. All your articles are then compared with those in the shared database. The next screen then shows the articles that were changed since the last update. You have a chance to review (and optionally adapt) the changes, and confirm. Now you have an up-to-date selection of articles.
Tip: You might want to check if there are any new articles. There is currently no dedicated feature in Foodsoft to do this, but pressing the Import article, and choosing the last page(s) of the full list will generally bring you to new articles.
As a group you may want to order a 2.5kg bag of rice. But most members may want to order in 500g instead. Sure you can change the unit, and the unit quantity, and compute the price manually. But Foodsoft can help with that.
After you've imported the article, press the edit button. Enter 500g in the unit box, and press the sync button (right next to the unit). This will recompute the unit quantity and price. You'll see that 500g fits 5 times in 2.5kg (unit_quantity=5).
And this keeps working during synchronization: when you synchronize, Foodsoft keeps your existing unit, and recomputes the unit quantity and price.
