Box builder – Growing Good

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The Growing Good box builder enables you to effortlessly plan and publish box contents for your veg box products for any future weeks. This guide will take you through all the different elements of the ‘box builder’ page including adding and publishing box contents through to the relationship with our automated preference swaps.

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Adding Products to Boxes

Only enabled 'veg box' products appear in the list.

Click ‘Add products’ to open search dialogue box, then type to search. Select items to add.

Quantity can be chosen from predefined weights or typed manually (e.g. 0.6 for 600g).

The 'Available in boxes' setting must be active for products to be addable.

Estimated Boxes (Est boxes)

Editable number indicating how many boxes you expect to pack.

Affects quantity totals in the summary.

Use Live Baskets Overview to estimate based on confirmed orders.

Pricing Views

Switch between Retail and Wholesale pricing using the cog icon.

Retail view:

Shows price per item and total retail value.

Displays value difference (box value vs item total).

Wholesale view:

Editable Cost Price (CP) fields for each product.

Shows gross margin (retail price - cost price).

CP updates apply across weeks (but not the main product record).

Summary Table

Located on the right-hand side.

Totals quantities based on box contents × estimated boxes.

Editable origin (Retail view) and CP (Wholesale view).

Publishing Box Contents

Click the yellow tick to publish; it turns green when published.

Publishing:

Posts contents to the storefront for customers.

Enables swaps if configured.

Triggers automated preference swaps.

Automated Preference Swaps

Replace disliked items in customer boxes with alternatives.

You can re-run swaps:

After changing box contents.

If customers update their preferences.

After changing available swap items.

⚠️ Avoid re-running after orders have processed—this could change what customers were told.

Box Builder Lock

Locks automatically for the current week to prevent accidental edits.

Click the lock icon to unlock and edit if needed.

Getting started with the box builder

You can access the ‘box builder’ in products > box-builder in your Growing Good admin.

When landing in the box builder it will default to the current week. Here you can either start from ‘empty’ or ‘copy box contents’ from a previous week.

You can also change the week you are planning box contents for by either using the week picker to move to another week or click on the week number to bring up the calendar to select a week from there.

Starting with empty boxes.

When selecting ‘empty boxes’, you will start with completely clear box contents, starting the veg box planning with no data from previous weeks. From here you can start adding products within the veg boxes.

Copying box contents from the previous week

When choosing to copy box contents from a previous week you can select from any previous week that has box contents defined. Move the week selector across to the chosen week and click ‘copy box contents’ this will pre-populate the box contents from that week.

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If you do not want to add and publish accurate box contents you can use our ‘example box contents’ feature.

Adding box contents

Any product that is created as a ‘veg box’ product and is currently enabled will appear in the box builder for you to add contents to.

Adding a product to a veg box

To add a product within a veg box for a particular week. Click ‘add products’ this brings up a search dialogue box for you to search and select items. You can search and select multiple items before adding to your veg box contents. You need to enter a min of 3 characters to start a search. When the products you want to add are visible after search, click on the ‘tick box’ to select the item. Repeat the search and selection until all of the items you want to add are selected. Click ‘add products’ to then add the items to your box contents. The quantity added for the item will be the default quantity associated with the product. This can be adjusted once added.

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For a product to appear in this list ‘available in boxes’ must be active in the individual item.

Inputting weights and quantities

Once you have add the line items to the veg box you can then apply a quantity. Click on the quantity field. This will bring up any weights or quantities that are associated with the product. You can also just type in any quantity you wish.

For example if an item has the weight options 1kg, 750g and 500g set up - you can use a custom weight by just typing in the field for example 0.6 for 600g. Any pricing will be adjusted accordingly in the box builder.

Est boxes

This figure is the ‘estimated number’ of boxes you will be planning contents for in that week. This is an editable field allowing you to adjust up or down depending on what that week looks like in terms of order numbers. This will adjust the quantities in the summary table based on the box contents and that number.

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Top tip you can take a look at the ‘live baskets overview’ and toggle on ‘show veg boxes’ to get the current confirmed veg box numbers for the next week, if all your orders for the current week have processed.

Retail and Wholesale pricing view

You can change what pricing is being used whilst you are planning your box contents. To change the box builder pricing select the ‘cog icon’ as highlighted above. You can then toggle between either ‘retail’ pricing or ‘wholesale’ pricing.

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The term ‘wholesale’ pricing is essentially custom pricing that is different from the retail price - it does not exclusively have to be the cost price from the wholesale. For example it can be the cost of the produce that you have grown if the item hasn’t been supplied through someone else.

Retail vs wholesale cost view on the box builder

Depending on which view you have activated the box builder will appear slightly differently.

When using ‘retail price’ this is detailed on each product line in the box builder and the ‘retail value’ is totalled at the bottom of the table.

The ‘value vs price’ is the difference between the ‘retail value’ of the products within the veg box and the ‘retail value’ of the veg box product itself. For example if the value difference exceeds the retail value you can use this to quantify how much more value you are providing customers if they chose a veg box products rather than creating bespoke orders.

When in ‘Wholesale cost’ view is displayed along side ‘Gross margin’. Gross margin is the difference between the ‘cost price’ of the items in the box and the ‘retail price’ of the veg box product itself. A percentage difference is displayed next both figures.

Summary table

The table on the RHS of the box builder page summarises and totals all of the quantities that have been entered into the box builder. You can sort this by group or alphabetically to help you organise the data. The TU (Total units) column takes the ‘Est boxes’ number and multiplies this by the individual quantities for a product that has been entered into the box builder to give you predicted quantities.

Depending on whether you are using ‘Retail price’ view or ‘Wholesale cost’ view the tables will look slightly differently.

Retail price view

When in ‘retail price’ view the retail price of the product is shown along with associated origin. In this view the price is not editable and is taken from the price of the product that has been set. You can edit the ‘Origin’ from within the table.

Wholesale cost view

When in ‘wholesale cost’ view the CP (cost price) is an editable field where a custom price can be entered. This amount will be re used in future weeks and links between other weeks. For example if you update the CP in a future week it will also update it in any other weeks where the product is entered.

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When updating the CP this does not update anything in the product record itself. This is just for planning purposes and margin management whilst building the boxes.

Publishing box contents and swaps

To publish box contents click the ‘yellow tick’ that’s crossed through - this will then change to a green tick to confirm the box contents have been published.

When publishing box contents this posts the contents to your storefront website. This enables customers to view and also then make swaps in the boxes if this setting is active on your veg boxes. You can read more about veg box swaps here What are box swaps and how does this work?

When publishing box contents this action also runs the ‘automated preference swaps’, if you have swaps set on your veg box products. This automatically replaces any disliked items in your customers veg boxes with a new item.

Re running automated preference swaps on a box level

You can also choose to re run ‘automated preference swaps’ on a box level. Click the ‘refresh’ button on the veg box table to initiate the swaps again. This icon only appears if ‘swaps’ are enabled on that veg box product.

This can be used for various purposes such as :

If you change the box contents after originally publishing. You can then re run the swaps so that any dislikes for the new contents are then swapped out.

If customers have changed their swap preferences since you published the box contents, this will help catch those missed dislikes.

You could also adjusting your swap availability before running again if you wanted to use different products as swaps.

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Box contents must be published in order to re run the automated preference swap feature on a box level. Customer made swaps will be retained and not changed as this is actively chosen by the customer.

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Be careful using this function after your orders have been processed as this will change any swaps that have been made by the system - the customer will already have been told what they are getting.

Box builder lock

If you are in the current week in the box builder, it will automatically lock so no changes are made to current week’s contents by mistake. You can unlock by clicking on the lock symbol at the top. This will enable you to edit the box contents again for that week.