Overview:
Many of our farms are also associated with livestock operations. In these instances, a significant portion of the crop they produce can oftentimes be sold to the livestock operation, as opposed to being sold conventionally through an elevator, coop, or processor.
We know that Traction Enterprise is a great tool to use to manage your harvested product as it's sold and removed from inventory. However, if an adjacent component to your grower operation consists of a feedyard, dairy, or other cattle or livestock operation, you can also use Traction Enterprise to manage harvested grain, hay, or silage that isn't necessarily sold conventionally, but is removed/deducted from inventory (that is, fed to cattle or other livestock).
Requirements:
To track crop moving between entities, you will first need to:
- Add all crops you need to you Traction Enterprise account.
- Crop Plans created and assigned to fields.
- Inventory Locations set up for each entity and crop.
Process:
There are several components we need to consider:
- Physical removal of the grain from inventory
- Tracking and accounting for this removal of grain from inventory
- Properly accounting for the revenue associated with this transaction
This article uses crop removal from Traction Enterprise Farms to Traction Enterprise Dairy to illustrate this process.
- Identify the components of your operation that make up this transaction.
- While it is likely that you already specified your grower operation as an Entity, set up an Entity for your livestock operation as well (read more on setting up Entities). In this example, our transaction occurs between Traction Enterprise Farms (the grower) and the Traction Enterprise livestock division, Traction Enterprise Dairy.
- Ensure there is an Inventory Location (Dairy) configured to accept loads of grain, hay, or silage that are hauled to Traction Enterprise Dairy (read more on configuring Inventory Locations).
- Set up the transactions between Traction Enterprise Farms and Traction Enterprise Dairy that result in inventory reduction.
- One way to accomplish this is to set up a contract between Traction Enterprise Farms and the Dairy. That way you can track loads against the contract as they are taken to the Dairy (and consequently removed from inventory at the original Storage Location). Read more on configuring Contracts here (be sure to set up your livestock division as a Customer, as well).
- After the Contract is established between Traction Enterprise Farms and Traction Enterprise Dairy, it is time to transport loads between the grower and the livestock operation.
- Whether you get a monthly report from the livestock operation regarding the amount of grain, silage, or hay used as feed or if you haul inventory to the livestock operation to be used as feed on an as-needed basis, you would carry out this transfer of inventory as follows:
- A Crop Transfer made via the Crops>Inventory>Transfers page for the desired amount of crop that has been transferred from the grower operation to the livestock division.
There are several benefits of configuring this type of transaction as a Contract between the two Entities:
- You can track the amount of silage or hay transferred to the Dairy by navigating to Crops>Inventory> Transfers and searching for the name of the Contract.
- Alternatively, you could navigate to Crops>Contract Manager and click into the crop to view the amount of silage or hay transferred to the Dairy.
- If needed, you're also able to tie a dollar value to these Contracts. This will allow you to view a dollar value associated with your contracted grain, silage, or hay on the Profit Analyzer page.
Related Articles:
Getting Started: Contract Manager
How do I tie a delivery to a Crop Contract?