'Can you send me everything you did for us last year?'
It starts with one customer. His assurance audit is coming up, or his adviser is putting together his scheme evidence, and he needs to know every operation your business did on his fields: drilling dates and seed, spraying if you did it, cultivations, hedge cutting dates, slurry, baling. He asks you to send it all over.
Then another customer asks, and another. Each request means going through invoices for the year, finding worksheets, working out which fields were done on which dates, and typing it into an email or a spreadsheet. The invoices say what you charged for. They do not always say which fields, on which dates, with what details.
Why a full work record is so hard to produce
Your records are organised for billing. Your customers need them organised for their records.
| Customer needs | Your records usually hold |
|---|---|
| Every operation by field | Operations by job or invoice |
| Exact dates | Invoice dates or week of work |
| Details: seed, rate, product, method | In worksheets, if written |
| Operator and machine, sometimes | Rarely |
| Their field names | Your field names, or none |
Some customers need different things. An arable farm wants drilling and spraying details. A dairy farm wants slurry and silage dates. A scheme customer wants hedge cutting dates by boundary. Each request is its own piece of research.
What records a customer must keep for their audits or schemes is their business, with their adviser. We do not advise on it. The contractor's part is being able to give an accurate account of the work done.
What piecing it together costs
Time is the direct cost. Answering one request might take an evening. Answering many in the run-up to audit season takes days, at a time when you are also busy. None of it is paid.
There is a business opportunity missed too. Customers value a contractor who hands over clean records without fuss, and contractors who can offer it have an edge when farms choose who to use. And if a record you piece together has a wrong date or field, it may end up in a customer's audit or scheme evidence.
A job history that any customer record can be drawn from
What we build is a job history organised by customer and field, filled in as work is done, from which any customer's record can be produced.
- Every job is recorded with customer, fields from the shared map, date and times, operation, operator, machine and the details that matter for that operation: seed and rate for drilling, products and rates for spraying, volume and method for slurry, bale counts for baling.
- Field names are stored as the customer uses them, alongside yours, so records come out in their language.
- A record for any customer and period is produced with one click, grouped by field or by date, as a PDF or spreadsheet.
- Where a customer's farm software accepts imports, the record can be exported in its format.
- Customers can have a login to view and download their own records at any time, if you want to offer it.
- The same history feeds invoicing, so what customers see matches what they were billed for.
Details that operators enter are checked in the office before they appear in customer records, so an error is caught before it leaves your business.
Seed and products supplied by the customer are recorded as customer supplied, with the variety or product name they gave you, so the record is complete without implying you sourced them. Jobs handed on to another contractor appear too, marked with who did the work, because the customer's record should show everything done on their land on your booking, not only what your own operators did.
Audit season without the evenings
In January, three customers ask for last year's records. You open each account, choose the year, and send a PDF grouped by field. One customer asks for a spreadsheet instead, for his crop records software, and you export it. The whole lot takes less time than one request used to.
The next year, you offer the records as part of your service, sent automatically in December. Customers mention it when they recommend you.
Do customers ask you for their records?
- Customers ask for a year's work records for audits or schemes.
- Answering means going through invoices and worksheets.
- Your records do not always say which fields or exact dates.
- Customers use different field names from yours.
- You spend unpaid evenings putting records together.