Buying from farmers
Before you start, open these pages: Operations / Collection runs, Settings / Business Locations, Cash / Cash Accounts and Sales / Contacts.
Can’t find one? It may be turned off for your business, or your account may not be allowed to open it. Ask the person who set up your FeePrime. They can fix both.
This is where a farming business works very differently from a shop. It is also where being able to work in the field, with no signal, really matters.
The trip is the record
A collection run is one buying trip. It holds:
- A run number and date.
- The vehicle carrying the goods.
- Where the goods are going.
- The agent doing the buying.
- A cash float, which is the money they set out with.
A run moves through departed, arrived and closed.
Record each purchase in front of the farmer
Your agent records each purchase as it happens. Who they bought from, what, how much, at what price. With no signal at all.
The phone holds it, and sends everything once the vehicle is back in coverage.
This is not just convenient. There is a real difference between these two things.
- A record made standing in front of the farmer. The amount is agreed there and then, and both of you saw it.
- A notebook typed up in the evening. This is where every argument and every missing receipt comes from.
→ Working offline explains what works without signal and what does not.
The money is tracked too
The cash float is a real account with a real balance.
What the agent took out, what they spent, and what came back. It is checked when the run closes, not worked out from memory days later.
Farmers are contacts
Every farmer you buy from is a contact. The warning from the main course matters even more here. Search before you create.
Type one farmer’s name three slightly different ways and you now have three suppliers. Then you cannot answer the one question you need at the end of the season: how much did we buy from this farmer?
Close the run
When the vehicle comes back, the goods move off the truck and into the store, and you close the run.
Leave a run open and your records show stock still sitting on a van, and cash nobody has accounted for. Closing it is what makes the day real.
→ Full detail in Collection runs: buying in the field
Bills can come later
For a farmer you buy from again and again, you can link a bill to the run. Then a whole month of buying becomes one document to settle, instead of forty.
Try it
On staging.feeprime.com, run a collection with a cash float. Buy from two farmers. Then look at the stock and the cash sitting on the vehicle before you close it.