Costing is what we were asked for most often, and it took longer to arrive than it should have. It is here now, on the Applications page.
It works like a pivot table: you choose what goes down the side, what goes across the top, and what each cell shows. You get the useful part of a pivot table without having to build one — no formulas, and no spreadsheet expertise.
That shape is the point. Every farm costs its work a little differently, and the question you need answered this week is not the one you needed last month.
Three questions, one report
The same report, laid out three ways:
- "What did each block cost me this season?" Block down the side, nothing across the top, cost and cost per hectare in the cells.
- "Where did the fungicide money go, month by month?" Product down the side, month across the top, filtered to the fungicide category.
- "Which crop is carrying the spend?" Crop down the side, category across the top.
Either axis can be product, category, production unit, block, month, crop or cultivar, and you can stack two of them down the side — production unit and then block is how it opens.
What the cells can show
Any combination of five figures:
- Cost — what was spent.
- Cost per hectare — the number most decisions actually turn on.
- Product applied — how much went out, in the product's own units.
- Unit cost — what you paid per litre or per kilogram.
- Area — the hectares behind the figure.
Cost and cost per hectare are on by default. Turn the others on when you want to see the working.
Narrowing it down
Filters for date range, category, production unit, block, crop and cultivar, all of which stack. The date range opens on the current season rather than the calendar year, so the first thing you see is the period you were probably about to select anyway.
Taking it away
PDF for something to hand over, with the layout you built printed as you built it.
Excel for something to keep working in. The spreadsheet is not a picture of the table — it carries the rows behind the report, one line per figure, with the product, category, production unit, block, month, crop and cultivar all in their own columns. Sort it, filter it, or build your own pivot over it.
One thing worth knowing before you use the numbers
A chemical's cost is a weighted average over the period you asked for, not the price on the drum that particular litre came out of. It is the only way to cost a store where two deliveries at two prices end up in the same tank — but it has a consequence: run the same application over a different period and it can come out at a different cost, and neither figure is wrong.
It is worth ten minutes: How chemical costs are worked out covers the average, what happens to the mixture you mixed but did not spray, and why a chemical with no priced receipt behind it comes out free.