Harvest is over and the store is a best guess
Harvest is finished. The combine is in the shed and the grain store is full. The question from the merchant, the accountant and your own planning is simple: how much wheat do we have, in which bins, and how much of it is already sold?
The answer is a best guess. Trailer loads went into the pit all through harvest, some weighed on your weighbridge, some counted, some not. Bin 3 was topped up from the drier twice. The floor store at the back has malting barley and feed barley separated by a wall of bags, roughly. Two lorries of feed wheat have already gone. Somebody has a notebook with most of the loads.
Why store records drift during harvest
Harvest is the worst time to record anything. The people bringing grain in are driving trailers, running the drier and moving the combine. The office is catching up on sleep.
| What happens | What usually gets recorded |
|---|---|
| Trailer tipped into the intake pit | Sometimes a tally mark, sometimes a weighbridge ticket |
| Grain dried and cleaned | Nothing, even though weight and moisture change |
| Grain moved between bins | Nothing, or a note on the bin door |
| Samples taken | Bagged and labelled, maybe with the bin number |
| Lorry loaded out | The haulier's or merchant's paperwork, and the grain passport |
Different crops and varieties add another layer. Milling wheat and feed wheat need keeping apart, and a load that fails a quality test may be moved from one to the other. By October, the only reliable figures are the lorries that have left, because they were weighed by someone else.
What not knowing costs
Selling grain without knowing what is in store is uncomfortable. You either sell cautiously, and miss opportunities, or you commit to a tonnage and find in spring that the bin is empty earlier than expected. The last load out of a bin is where the gap shows, and it is the worst time to find it.
It also costs admin time. Every time a merchant rings, somebody walks to the store to look at bin levels. At year end, the accountant asks for a stock valuation, and the figure is estimated. And quality information, which samples went with which bin, gets lost when the only link is a label on a bag.
What we build: a store record that follows the grain
What we build is a simple stock record for each bin and floor section, fed at each point grain moves.
- A store map: each bin and floor section with its capacity, crop and variety, set up before harvest.
- At the intake, a phone or tablet screen where the person tipping records the trailer, the field it came from and the bin it is going to. If you have a weighbridge that can export, the weight comes from it. If not, trailer loads use a load weight you set per trailer.
- Drier and cleaner runs are recorded as moves, with a moisture reading if you take one, so the weight in the bin reflects the grain after drying.
- Moves between bins, and reclassifications from one quality to another, are recorded as they happen.
- Lorries out are recorded from the grain passport and the merchant's weighbridge ticket, against the bin they came from and the contract they fill.
- Each bin shows what went in, what went out and what is left, with sold and unsold tonnage from your sales contracts next to it. Sample results can be attached to the bin they came from.
The figures are only as good as the weights behind them. Where loads are counted rather than weighed, the record says so, and weighed loads out adjust the estimate for that bin.
The phone call from the merchant, answered at the desk
In November the merchant rings asking if you have another load of feed wheat for December. You open the store record: bin 4 has an estimated amount left, part of it committed to an existing contract, and the rest unsold. You can answer the question on the call. In February, when the last lorry empties bin 4, the record shows the difference between the estimate and the actual, so next year's trailer load weights can be adjusted.
At year end, the stock figures for the accountant come from the record, bin by bin, with the basis for each shown.
Does your grain store work like this?
- You walk to the store to check bin levels when a merchant rings.
- Trailer loads in at harvest are counted on paper or not at all.
- Moves between bins and drier runs are not recorded.
- Sold tonnage is in one place and grain in store in another.
- You have been caught short at the bottom of a bin.