Learn
CSA delivery routing without replacing your membership software
You do not have to replace your CSA membership stack to fix delivery day. Keep the portal members already use for shares, skips, and billing. Export or send that week's stops into Porch Routes, build temperature-hard routes across your own vans, text drivers a link, and let members track under your farm name.
Last updated 3 min readBy Porch Routes
The false choice CSA software ads sell
Many CSA platforms sell membership, billing, pack lists, and routing as one swap. The pitch is tidy: stop juggling tools. The cost is a member migration — new logins, new skip habits, new pack-station workflows — when what actually hurts is Friday's Google Maps tab.
If membership and billing already work, the expensive part is usually not the maps. It is moving every member. Split the jobs instead.
Split the jobs: membership vs routing
- Membership tool. Shares, payments, cutoffs, skips, vacation holds, pack lists.
- Routing tool. Stops to vehicles, drivers on the road, customer tracking, status back to the order system.
- Porch Routes owns the second job — including frozen / refrigerated / dry as hard vehicle rules.
Tools people keep for the first job include Local Line, Harvie, Farmhand, Smart FDS, Rootie, and others. Naming them here means they are examples of stacks farms already run — not partnerships or built-in connectors unless we say so elsewhere.
A normal week with your stack + Porch Routes
Cutoff hits in your CSA tool
Pack lists and skips stay where they are. Only active deliveries for the week matter for routing.
Export or send the week's stops
CSV import, manual entry, or the orders API keyed by your own order IDs. Skips that never left the membership tool never become stops.
Mark temperature where it matters
Frozen meat shares, chilled dairy, and dry goods get the class each vehicle must respect.
Build routes across your vans
Porch Routes plans the fleet so frozen never rides dry. Unassigned stops show why.
Text drivers a link
No app install. Drive mode is one stop at a time in the browser, with an undo window before the member is told delivered.
Members track under your name
Scheduled, on the way, almost there, delivered — under your farm brand. Outcomes can return over a signed webhook when you use an order system.
When built-in CSA routing is not enough
One driver and a tight town loop can live inside a membership suite's light routing. Multiple vans, a wide rural radius, and mixed frozen / chilled / dry boxes need hard constraints. That is the moment to keep the membership tool and add a routing layer — not to rip out what members already know. For the temperature deep-dive, see temperature-aware farm delivery routing.
What you do not have to give up
- Member login and farm brand.
- Billing, skips, and vacation holds.
- Pack-station habits and pick lists.
- What you gain: multi-vehicle plans, hard temperature rules, driver links, branded tracking, and an undo window on a mis-tap.
Porch Light for one real CSA week
Porch Light is free up to 150 orders a month with no credit card — enough for many weekly share runs to test the workflow on a live delivery day. Start at porchroutes.com/signup.
Questions
Do I have to switch CSA platforms to get better routes?
No. Keep the membership tool members already use. Use Porch Routes for routing that week.
How do weekly skips and vacation holds show up in routing?
They stay in your CSA tool. Only the stops you export or send for that week are routed.
What if some shares are frozen meat and some are produce?
Mark temperature classes and give each vehicle honest frozen / refrigerated / dry capability. The optimiser will not put frozen on a dry truck.
Do drivers need another app on delivery day?
No. They open a link in the phone browser.
Do you integrate with Local Line, Harvie, or Farmhand?
Do not assume a named connector unless the product lists one. Today the default paths are CSV, the orders API with your IDs, and signed webhooks back.
Is there a free tier for one real delivery week?
Yes. Porch Light is free up to 150 orders a month with no credit card.
Plan your next delivery day in a few minutes.
Add your vehicles and a day of orders — by hand, from a CSV or over the API — and build your first routes.
Free up to 150 orders a month · No credit card