Fancy Spread Sheets

[jdg364]

What are growers using to track their revenue and expenses by a crop by crop or field by field basis? I've been using excel for the last number of years because I'm cheap and don't want to pay a whole bunch for this service. However it's starting to look like a jumbled mess and I was wondering if there was a program out there worth paying for. A few known examples are compass, farm at hand, agexpert field 360, granular, trimble, myJD and the trusty pencil and paper. TIA.

[helmsdale]

What are growers using to track their revenue and expenses by a crop by crop or field by field basis? I've been using excel for the last number of years because I'm cheap and don't want to pay a whole bunch for this service. However it's starting to look like a jumbled mess and I was wondering if there was a program out there worth paying for. A few known examples are compass, farm at hand, agexpert field 360, granular, trimble, myJD and the trusty pencil and paper. TIA.

I tried excel... spent more time screwing with it than I do with a coil bound book and pen. I HATE sending my information outside my direct control.

[LEP]

I have used several over the years. I prefer a homemade excel spreadsheet that I built myself. I keep track by crop not by field, that would get too onerous.

I started out with a simple sheet which only calculated variable expenses which was used more as a spreadsheet to make my projected crop mix. I would used it to compare the variable expense budgets of about 10 crops. As I got older it was 6 or 7.

Now I have built a more encompassing spreadsheet to allow for owned vs rented vs crop share land plus it tracks my average price as I sell throughout the year and updates the spreadsheet to actual numbers versus budgeted numbers.

I find whatever you use you need to work with a fair amount to get a good feel for it.

[woodland]

Paper, pen, and a calculator. Kinda figure it out after harvest and then try to get the best price possible regardless.

Tried a few times to do the same thing for the cows but my head hurts just thinking about it. Example.... silage made and sits for several years before being fed to a calf that’s retained as a bred heifer, that heifers calf is kept and grassed and sold at 20 months old. That silage could take 5 years ( not counting the investment of seeding alfalfa a year or two prior) before it’s actually turned into cash. It could have cost between $20-$50/t to produce and then worth in the same range when it’s actually fed. Easy to price out parts of the production cycle but the whole “enchilada” becomes a big sticky mess. 😉

[Marusko]

I use Google Sheets. doesn't quite have the capabilities of Excel, but it's super easy to access from anywhere including phone.

It would be too onerous to split everything by field, I've got 'blocks' - so everything is split by crop, and then it's split again for owned vs rented.

A summary page pulls the totals from each block. Formulas everywhere. It's a bit of a pain, I've considered purpose-built programs like FCC Agexpert Field, but I like that excel/spreadsheets are infinitely customizeable.

[blackpowder]

Cropchoice by Ab ag has some interesting statistical probabilities ideas.


Confession.
Am I the only old fart that eventually gives up on that stuff?
Pencil and paper for projections.
Before you scoff, I know its not the best. And doesn't catch trends. Or benchmarking.
But bus x $ in your head.
Hardly even think about it long any more. Rotation dictates a lot.
Going with gut.

I do use Excel for records.
And yes, occasionally compare year over year yields against rents etc.
Got to. But paper.
Quicker than messing with a program.
Confession over.

[GDR]

A bit of planning always good but some extent guys go to seems irrelevant to me. For me we are limited to very few crop choices so rotation is more important sometimes than profitability and often the worst looking prospect in the spring by fall fundamentals have changed and may turn out the best. I know you need to know your costs and the pros say to continuously sell throughout the year while profitable but most of us sell by cash flow needs and gut feelings of a decent price.

What works the best for me is I keep an updated balance sheet and inventory with realistic values and compare from year to year. As long as it keeps growing things are good. Too many variables like Woodlands heifer scenario and machinery depreciation that are too complex to put in a single equation.