A new farm, a field list and a request for a price
A farm that has been doing its own work wants to hand it over, or its current contractor is retiring. The farmer sends a field list and a rough cropping plan: so many hectares of winter wheat, spring barley, oilseed rape, some grass for silage. He wants a price for the season: cultivations, drilling, spraying, fertiliser spreading, combining, carting, baling, maybe hedge cutting.
You sit down in the evening with the list, a calculator and the rate card. Hectares have to become acres, or the other way round. Some operations happen more than once. The farm is twelve miles away, so road time matters. Some fields are small and awkward. It takes most of the evening, and by the time you send the quote, you are not quite sure you have not missed something.
Why a season quote is slow to put together
A season quote is many small calculations, each with its own unit and assumptions, and it is usually built from scratch every time.
- Field areas come from the customer's list, which may not match the fields on the ground.
- Each crop needs a different set of operations, some repeated several times.
- Rates differ by operation and unit, and some depend on field size or conditions.
- Road time depends on how far the farm is and how often you go there.
- Materials such as seed, sprays or wrap may be included or not.
The quote also has to be easy for the farmer to read, and easy to compare with what he currently pays. A single total does not help him; a long list of lines without explanation does not either.
What slow or rough quotes cost
Slow quotes lose work. A farm choosing a contractor may take the first sensible price it gets, and a quote that takes a week to arrive can arrive too late.
Rough quotes lose money. An operation missed, a repeated pass counted once, or road time forgotten means doing a season of work at a lower price than you meant to. And if the farmer later finds items he did not expect, the start of the relationship suffers.
Quotes built from fields, operations and your rates
What we build is a quoting tool that uses the farm's fields, the operations each crop needs and your rate card.
- The farm's fields are drawn or imported on the shared map, from the farmer's boundary files or drawn on satellite imagery, with areas measured. Where the farmer's list differs from the map, both are shown so you can agree the figure.
- Each field is given its crop from the farmer's cropping plan.
- Each crop has a template of operations you normally do, with how many passes, set by you. You can adjust for this farm.
- Operations are priced from your rate card, including any size or condition adjustments you use.
- Road time is estimated from the distance to the farm and the number of visits each operation needs.
- The quote is laid out by operation and crop, with totals, as a PDF you can send. If the farm accepts, the quote becomes the season's job list on your booking board.
| Quote section | Built from |
|---|---|
| Field areas | Map, checked against the farmer's list |
| Operations per crop | Your templates, adjusted for this farm |
| Prices | Your rate card |
| Road time | Distance and number of visits |
| Materials | Included or excluded, as you choose |
You can keep the quote as an estimate, with actual invoices following the work done, or as a fixed price per operation, depending on how you prefer to work.
A quote sent the next morning
The farmer sends his field list on Monday. On Monday evening you draw the fields, which takes a while for a new farm, and set the crops. The templates fill in the operations. You remove an operation he does himself and add hedge cutting. The quote is priced and ready by Tuesday morning, laid out by crop, with the road time shown. He asks one question and accepts on Friday.
When the season starts, every operation on every field is already on your booking board.
Is quoting a new farm an evening's work?
- Season quotes are built by hand from a field list.
- You are never quite sure everything has been included.
- Road time is guessed or forgotten.
- Farmers find your quotes hard to compare with what they pay now.
- Accepted quotes have to be turned into jobs from scratch.