Fields, crops and machinery in one system

A field is not a database row, it is an area with a history. What grew there last year decides what is possible this year. What was applied decides what the record has to show. And which machine ran there decides who owns the hours and the costs. Separate programmes only ever know one of those threads.

FarmManager puts the area on the map as a polygon and derives the hectare figure from it. Everything else hangs off that one area – crop and rotation, soil samples, plant protection, fertiliser demand and the work carried out there. The rotation is checked while you plan it rather than in hindsight, and the machine that was on the field brings its hours along.

That is why the fleet lives in the same area as the land. Maintenance falls due either by operating hours or by time, safety checklists sit on the machine and can lock it until it is released again, and depreciation keeps running in the background. Whoever puts a crew together plans it in the same place where the field is.

Day to day this removes the question of where a number came from. The hectare figure on the map is the hectare figure in the fertiliser plan and in the plant protection record. The hour a machine spent on a field is the hour that shows up in that field's cost accounting.