Plant templates

What a template holds

Each template has a common name and a scientific name, a watering interval in days, a light level, placement guidance, and a free-text notes field for anything specific to how you sell that plant. You can also attach a photo. A template for a Japanese maple might set watering every four days in the first season, bright indirect to partial sun, a note about protecting new growth from harsh afternoon light, and a note that yours are field-grown and will drop some leaves after transplanting.

There is one watering schedule per template. Plantorbia adjusts that schedule for the customer's climate and season after they claim the plant, so you are setting a baseline cadence, not a fixed calendar.

Templates are reusable, and that is the point

You do not write care notes per sale. You build a library of templates for the species you carry, and at checkout a staff member picks the right one. If you sell forty pothos in a month, all forty customers get the same schedule from the same template, and you maintained it once.

When your guidance changes, for example you move a species from weekly to twice-weekly watering for summer, you edit the template. Sales recorded from that point carry the new version. Guidance a customer has already claimed is a snapshot and does not silently change under them; if you need an existing owner updated, that is a support message, not a template edit.

Archiving instead of deleting

Templates are referenced by past and pending sales, so deleting one outright would break the claim screen for a customer who has not claimed yet. Instead, a template you stop selling is archived. It disappears from the active list and the checkout picker, and it stays resolvable for any sale that still points at it. Your active template count is what counts toward the Basic plan limit, so archiving a discontinued species frees room.

Plan limits

Basic allows up to 15 active templates, Starter up to 50. Editing and archiving are never limited; only creating a template past that count is blocked, and archiving one you no longer sell brings you back under. Growth removes the limit entirely. A single nursery with a focused range often fits inside Basic or Starter; a garden center with a broad catalog will usually want Growth.

How templates connect to the rest

• At the register, a template becomes a line item on a customer handoff.
• When the customer claims it, the template's fields are copied onto their plant and drive their reminders and care guidance.
• The watering interval you set is the schedule the Care Trail checks against when a warranty claim is reviewed.