At Croptracker, all of our features are designed in collaboration with our users to prioritize the features that matter most. This week we’re getting ready for the growing season with the Punch Clock and Production Practices modules.
Operating a farm is a lot more than just planting and harvesting. With production practice tracking, you can record every activity performed across your organization. The Production Practices module is a highly flexible tool that can be used to record work of any kind in the field or orchard. Combined with our Punch Clock module, the result is a powerful labor tracking tool that can be fully customized to your needs.
Every activity performed on your farm or orchard requires labor and equipment, which can quickly add up to significant expenses. As the need to verify the profitability of production practices has increased, so has the need to log employee work activity. With Punch Clock and Production Practices, you can accurately track the costs associated with every production activity, providing valuable insights into the profitability of your operation.
Here's how the Punch Clock and Production Practice modules can work together to measure and manage costs:
Customize Your Activity List
The first step is to customize your activity list to best reflect your organization. Every farm or orchard is different, and the Production Practice module allows you to easily add the tasks most relevant to your operation. You can choose from dozens of pre-existing production practices from the Croptracker database or create your own custom activities. This customization ensures that you are tracking the exact activities that are taking place on your farm.
Track Time Against Every Task
Once your activity list is set up, use the Punch Clock feature to track time against every task. With Punch Clock, you can attach work logs to any activity, ensuring that you have an accurate record of how much time is spent on each task. You can also track piece rate pay in any ‘unit’ produced, performed, or harvested, regardless of the activity. Per piece units could look like the number of rows sprayed or weeded; trees trimmed, or fruit picked.
Track Equipment Costs
In addition to labor costs, equipment costs are also an important factor in the profitability of your operation. The Production Practice module allows you to track equipment runtime and costs for every activity, ensuring that you have a complete picture of the costs associated with each production practice. Enter an hourly operating cost for a piece of equipment, select pieces of equipment when punching in, and the total work cost report will include a column for equipment hours and cost. Tractors, sprayers, weed whackers - save all of your equipment information and easily assign equipment and PPE to workers.
Analyze Your Data
Once you have started tracking your costs for each production practice, you can use the data to analyze your operation and make informed decisions. Croptracker provides a variety of reports that allow you to see the costs associated with each activity, as well as the overall profitability of your operation. Whether there’s a need for all employee activity within an operation to be represented on accounting software, or it’s just a matter of wanting to review hours of a single worker, there’s a report to suitably represent the data. Find out which production practices are the most profitable and which ones are costing you money. This information can help you make adjustments to your operation to increase long-term profitability.
Experiment and Fine-Tune Your Practices
Finally, the Punch Clock and Production Practice modules allow you to fine-tune your practices to improve quality and yield. By experimenting with different techniques and recording them all on the cloud, you can identify patterns across time to make informed decisions about your best practices. For example, if you see that blocks that were pruned differently produced more fruit, you can adjust your pruning practices accordingly going forward.
Together, the Punch Clock and Production Practice modules offer farmers and orchard managers a flexible and customizable tool to track every activity performed across their organization. By accurately tracking labor and equipment costs for every production practice, farmers can gain valuable insights into the profitability of their operation and make informed decisions to improve quality and yield. With the ability to experiment and fine-tune practices, Croptracker empowers farmers to optimize their operations and increase profitability.
Croptracker creates advanced solutions to complex industry problems. Our goal? To help you replicate your success with the same confidence, every time.
Interested in learning more about Croptracker? Learn more about our Farm Management Software, or book a demonstration to schedule a meeting with our product experts.
