Market Management Software and Apps
There are 3 software programs that were built specifically for farmers markets to use to manage their vendor contacts and relationships. These programs can be useful tools for keeping your vendors’ contact info, designing vendor applications and managing approvals, making stall assignments, invoicing stall fees, creating interactive site maps, and more.
While none of the above software programs are perfect or without annoyances, many growing farmers markets invest in them for the all-in-one features they provide. The programs also make it easy for vendors to search for markets with open applications. Choosing to use them will help vendors find you.
Markets without management software use a combination of other solutions to manage their vendors.
They use spreadsheets for tracking information like vendor contact info, vendor sales, stall fees, and vendor attendance.
For vendor applications, they create forms using Google Forms, Jotform, Cognito, or other form-making programs. Some offer paper applications that can be printed off their website and mailed to the market.
Design software like Canva or Adobe Photoshop can help you produce sitemaps to share with your vendors and customers.
Quickbooks, Xero, and other bookkeeping tools can be used to invoice vendors and track stall fees.
If you use Gmail, you can use Google Groups to create an easy way to email updates to all your vendors at once.