Farms have a lot of moving parts. Farmers deserve accurate, fail-safe records, so they can manage their resources with confidence and best control what they can control.
Purchasing and Inventory streamlines the tracking of purchase orders, costs, and goods received. As a manager, you're able to instantly account for every tiny cost, every gallon and case of inputs used. Seeing all this information in one place gives you in-the-moment power to know what you need, make informed purchasing decisions, and negotiate a better deal with suppliers.
Cornerstone Farms
Be prepared to do the work. When the on-the-ground work begins, you're organized and ready. You know at a glance exactly what inputs you have and where they’re located, because you can see all it all in real time. You can track and manage purchases and inventory activities from anywhere, and avoid inventory shortages or overages.
Inventory management becomes a breeze when it’s all being tracked in real time within one system. And time is saved, too—always a good thing on the farm.
Aaron Lee of Cornerstone Farms in southern Indiana, explains: “In the spring, it's nice to know with machine integration, how much we're planting. I can pull up my iPad and see how many units of a seed that I have or how many gallons or ounces of a certain chemical. If we're running low on something, I can go back and order something without the lag time of waiting on chemical to come in.” (Read the Cornerstone Family Farms case study.)
“It's live action, it's right there. We can pull the report instantly and know where we are on our production or inventories.”
Wiens Farms
Track all inventory in one system for accurate accounting of goods. You can see what was purchased from each supplier along with how much was paid, and understand the monetary value of inputs applied. You're able to reconcile inventory with purchase orders, making sure you received what you paid for, and you're readily able to spot discrepancies. You'll understand exactly what's going on with your inputs to improve the financial integrity of your farm.
Depending on the operation, you can be managing thousands of gallons and pounds of inputs that touch many different people and equipment before getting to the ground. Andrew Wiens is a Nebraska farmer raising corn and soybeans. When describing the tracking of large amounts of inputs for his operation, Andrew lights up.
“It's just been a godsend. It's been really close every time, close enough to where I feel comfortable we can just reconcile it out.”
Lone Star Farms
Curtis Neely, Operations Manager at Lone Star Farmily Farms, feels the same. "The reason I've pushed to drive adoption of this through other channels besides harvest was to get the information flow back to the office," he said. "Plugging the holes of leakage on something this size is pretty hard to do. Making sure our inventories are right and the applications went to the right fields and we know what happened is huge."
Scott Burdge, Equipment Manager at Lone Star Family Farms, reflects back on his former ways of recordkeeping compared to farm management software. "It may have the same data, but going straight from their iPad on the handheld to the office for the inventory people, it’s more accurate just because it delivers it more reliably," Scott said. (Read the Lone Star Family Farms case study.)
Capture purchasing data for more accurate budgeting and informed buying. With all your purchasing information in one easily accessible system, you can monitor what’s on order and what’s in inventory and use historical purchases to guide future buying decisions. You're able to negotiate agreements with suppliers based on actual plans, not guesswork, and manage the purchasing process with transparency and efficiency.
Marc Nutter at Lone Star Family Farms appreciates the way this aspect of the system helps with making purchases as well as managing the work in the field. "Conservis helps us with communication. Our recommendations go into work orders and that helps us communicate with the sprayers what needs to be done. And that flows into everything, to the sprayers, but also to inventory," Marc said.
Growers are often surprised at the magnitude of change in their workflow when adopting farm managment software, and Purchasing and Inventory is no exception.
“Now that we're doing it, I can't imagine trying to track our inventories without this kind of accuracy.”
With Conservis, you have an accurate record of purchases, inputs, and costs—all in one place and accessible on all your devices. You'll be confident that deliveries match what was ordered and you'll have quick access to the true cost of inputs applied to your fields. You can share reports on inventory ownership with your stakeholders to avoid surprises and build trust.
With this aspect of our farm management software, you’ll always know where you stand. Out-of-date spreadsheets, manual reconciliation, duplicate data entry? These will be things of the past. With Conservis, you’ll gain actionable insight to manage inputs, inventory, and costs with greater control. In an industry where so much is out of your control, getting a handle on what you can feels really good.
Interested in what Conservis farm management software could do for your operation? Let’s start with a conversation.