Steve McGill

Van de Pallande, Oirschot

LEAF

The back office of an organic vegetable farm.

Products, customers, subscriptions, webshop, packing lists, invoices, direct debit and newsletters in one system.

I built it for my wife, Jess, who runs her week on it.

It went into production in August 2025. Every line of it was written by agents under my direction, with around seven hundred Playwright browser tests.

Why LEAF exists

A farm that invoices in arrears

Most farms with a box scheme charge for the whole season up front, because one amount and a fixed list can be managed by hand.

Jess's customers pay in arrears, can skip any week, and can add to an order. She tracked every skip and addition by hand.

The customer records lived across several spreadsheets, next to Mailchimp and the bookkeeping. Invoicing took days, and the mistakes ran both ways: someone who skipped a week sometimes got a bill anyway, and a forgotten addition produced none at all.

The printable packing list for one pickup point

A fresh list per pickup point, every Friday.

LEAF now produces those lists and invoices for 87 active subscriptions across eight Friday pickup points, in arrears, for what was delivered. It matches incoming payments to the right invoice itself. Invoicing is one run, and a new customer adds no admin.

What it does

From order to payment

One system instead of the spreadsheets, Mailchimp and the bookkeeping.

The customer list in the vendor portal, with the filter bar and dozens of customer rows.
Vendor portal: the customer list

Selling

  • Customer records with order history
  • Subscriptions customers change themselves
  • Webshop for one-off orders
  • Newsletter and email

Boxes

  • Week planning
  • Packing lists per pickup point
  • Delivery days and pickup points
  • Customer feedback

Payments

  • Invoices and credit notes
  • iDEAL/Wero and direct debit through Mollie
  • A bank feed that reconciles payments automatically
  • Invoicing and direct debit run on a schedule
  • Every change stays traceable

Because it all sits in one system, the webshop knows the customer who also receives the newsletter. An email to one pickup point is a filter on the customer list, and anyone who logs in already sees their own pickup point and current order. Doorbell, a WhatsApp assistant, turns a request into an action for Jess to confirm; it is in testing now.

Access

Two portals

Jess runs the farm. Customers manage their own subscription.

The subscription screen in the vendor portal

Vendor portal

Jess's daily work: orders, packing lists, invoices and the week plan.

The orders overview in the customer portal

Customer portal

Skip a week, add to an order, change details and pay invoices.

Scope

What it does not do

It was built for one farm.

  1. More than one farm

    Every farm on LEAF with its own customers and its own figures.

  2. Supplier network

    A shared catalogue, so farms order from each other instead of by email.

  3. Planting plan driven by demand

    A planting plan built from what customers ordered before.

Screenshots

A look inside

The data in these screenshots is not real. Names, addresses and payment details have been replaced.

The customer list in the vendor portal, with the filter bar and dozens of customer rows.
Vendor portal: the customer list
The subscription screen in the vendor portal, with lines, box sizes and the orders it generated.
One customer's subscription
The orders overview in the customer portal, where a customer skips a week.
A customer skips a week
The printable packing list for one pickup point, with each customer's box size and contents.
The printable packing list
The webshop with this week's selection and a button to add something to the box.
The webshop for one-off orders
The week plan, where the contents of each box size are put together for that week.
The week plan: what goes in the box
The product catalogue with hundreds of products, units and prices.
The product catalogue
The list of pickup points, with the delivery time and number of subscribers for each.
The eight pickup points
One customer's invoice list, with the status and payment date of each invoice.
One customer's invoices, with payment status
The scheduled jobs that create invoices, collect direct debits and read the bank.
The scheduled jobs
The customer portal, where a customer adds something that applies to that week only.
Adding to one week only
The feedback overview, with customers' thumbs up and down for each week.
Feedback by week
Incoming bank transactions matched to an invoice automatically.
Payments that match themselves to an invoice
An invoice as the customer receives it, with the product, VAT and payment status per line.
The invoice as the customer gets it
A pricing rule that automatically discounts customers who host a pickup point.
A discount for lending your yard as a pickup point
The customer portal with upcoming deliveries, and a button per week to change or skip.
The customer manages their own weeks
One customer's orders, with the uninvoiced lines and a button to invoice them together.
From delivered weeks to one invoice
A subscription showing the pickup point for each week and the orders it produces.
A subscription, week by week
A sent garden bulletin with the number of recipients and how many opened and clicked.
The garden bulletin, and who opened it
The audit log, showing what changed, by whom and when, for every action.
Every change stays traceable
An invoice in the customer portal, summarising the five delivered weeks it covers.
One invoice for five delivered weeks

Build or buy

Why I built it instead of buying it

Webshop subscriptions assume a fixed amount on a fixed day. Here the amount changes every week and a week can be skipped.

Add something to a subscription for one week in most webshop tools and it becomes part of every renewal after it. Jess's customers can cancel a box until Tuesday and add to it until Thursday, and the invoice is for what was delivered. LEAF is written to that process exactly.

The customer portal, where a customer adds something that applies to that week only.
In LEAF: an addition that applies to this week only

Selling aside, none of them has pickup points, packing lists, week planning or a bank feed that reconciles against invoices. Building those took a hundred and fifty working days; an extension would have covered the shop and left the rest in spreadsheets.