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| [21:14:11] | <scollette[m]> | Hi All! I'm new to farmOS - I'm curious if there is a "how much $" feature? (like the who, when & where?). This could be an event with a cost or income attached to it. It would be nice to look at $ tabulations over a range of dates or possibly over a range of common farms to help manage operations. The whole system looks great! (we have 2 small farms started in Haiti & s few in Africa underway) |
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| [21:22:50] | <paul121[m]> | Hello! Your question peaks my interest - I certainly dont know everything about farmOS here... But can point out a few things |
| [21:26:08] | <paul121[m]> | There is a Sales log included that can be attached to assets on the farm. |
| [21:26:08] | <paul121[m]> | https://farmos.org/guide/logs/ |
| [21:26:09] | <paul121[m]> | As the docs day, this is to "connect the dots for final food traceability" :) I like this! |
| [21:27:10] | <paul121[m]> | Expanding beyond that, some of the features may be in the works. There's been talk about increasing ways export and generate reports on farm data. |
| [21:28:02] | <paul121[m]> | Also, we're working on a farmOS Aggregator tool that would, theoretically, be able to pull data from multiple farms and manage in a separate app |
| [21:43:24] | <scollette[m]> | Yes, that's well said. I've a good degree of PHP/accounting background & may have some resources over at Poznan (of Poland) to help develop, if needed. My exact question is - can Income (sales +) be attached to events (present & even future) AND the Cost (ie: purchase of equipment) be attached to events so that Income vs Cost could be compared over a time period. (just 1 farm for now). It looks to me like |
| [21:43:25] | <scollette[m]> | Assets are covered. Could we use a Liabilities column? We are definitely looking at the AgriBusiness side of things to obtain possible grants etc... & definitely want to manage any of our farms w/ a complete picture to insure sustainability. |
| [21:50:27] | <paul121[m]> | Ahh I see. That does seem to turn into an accounting problem.. but may be possible in farmOS. I'm not sure where that would fit in right now, bug it seems similar to the logic behind inventory tracking. Hopefully someone else can chime in |
| [21:51:05] | <paul121[m]> | Out of curiosity, what kind of farms in Haiti/Africa? |
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| [22:01:48] | <scollette[m]> | The farms are all orange-flesh sweet potato. (Vit. A rich) The Aggregator tool sounds very intriguing. I created a SiFTeR * tool years ago that would "Sort, Filter, Tabulate & Report" (in MS FoxPro, unfortunately - I do have some old slide shows available). If anything is needed please let me know as we have some experienced software guys willing to contribute. |
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| [22:49:01] | <paul121[m]> | Great!! |
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| [08:08:19] | <mstenta[m]> | @scollette:matrix.org: great questions |
| [08:08:58] | <mstenta[m]> | Right now farmOS doesn't track income and expenses on each log, but that is precisely where I would like to go with it |
| [08:09:32] | <mstenta[m]> | I've always thought of logs (the individual events in farmOS) as parallel to transactions in a bookkeeping system |
| [08:09:56] | <mstenta[m]> | I also like your idea of adding a "Liabilities" section in the future |
| [08:12:00] | <mstenta[m]> | My thought is that we will eventually want to either add a basic double entry bookkeeping system directly to farmOS (eg, https://drupal.org/project/ledger) and/or develop modules that can connect and integrate with other systems like QuickBooks |
| [08:12:34] | <mstenta[m]> | The Sale and Purchase logs in farmOS currently are a step towards that, but they are still pretty limited |
| [08:12:44] | <mstenta[m]> | (beta) |
| [10:16:42] | <scollette[m]> | Could we use an asset w/ a negative value to show an expense? If the event has a future date, could the events be filtered to say, "show what expenses are coming up next month"? How about "what assets will we need next month (they could simply have that negative value) |
| [10:18:31] | <mstenta[m]> | Hmm that's interesting |
| [10:18:53] | <mstenta[m]> | So we have a basic start to "asset inventory levels" in farmOS now... but it is only enabled on Animal assets |
| [10:19:16] | <mstenta[m]> | The use-case is: I want to have a single asset record that represents a number (head count) of animals |
| [10:19:40] | <mstenta[m]> | So if you have a flock of 500 chickens, and you don't want an individual asset record for each chicken, you can use the inventory to keep track of how many are in the flock. |
| [10:21:13] | <mstenta[m]> | It is not hard to enable it on other asset types, but the current challenge is that it does not track specific "units" for each... so for example we want to have a "Materials" asset (for fertilizer, etc), but it doesn't help to just say "I have 100 of this fertilizer" |
| [10:21:25] | <mstenta[m]> | "100 what??" |
| [10:21:38] | <mstenta[m]> | You also need to be able to say "100 kilograms/liters/etc" |
| [10:21:52] | <mstenta[m]> | So that's the next step |
| [10:22:05] | <mstenta[m]> | https://www.drupal.org/project/farm/issues/2916551 |
| [10:22:34] | <mstenta[m]> | (I'm not sure if the asset inventory would be useful for what you describe or not... we could give that some thought...) |
| [10:22:48] | <mstenta[m]> | (And actually... I've never tested it with negative values, but it should work I think) |
| [10:23:07] | <mstenta[m]> | (Although that might make things confusing...) |
| [10:23:21] | <mstenta[m]> | (It's an interesting suggestion in either case!) |
| [10:29:03] | <scollette[m]> | Yes, that is a "unit of measure" (UOM) - maybe just an extension of the "what"? For finance the UOM could be dollars, pesos, etc... Also, is it possible to see examples of the Sale and Purchase logs to see just how creative we can be to show future farm needs to insure success? Another question I have is can a future harvest (we cut slips from our sweet potatoes to replant new fields & wonder if the "harvest slip" |
| [10:29:04] | <scollette[m]> | event (farm A) can correlate to a "ready for slips to plant" event (Farm B). A correlation is a database match up - a need matched w/ an asset - over a certain date range. |
| [10:29:58] | <mstenta[m]> | Yea, unit of measure is exactly what we'll be adding. |
| [10:30:28] | <mstenta[m]> | Re: sale and purchase - do you have a farmOS instance set up? The sale and purchase logs are added via the "Ledger" module, which is disabled by default. |
| [10:30:42] | <mstenta[m]> | So you can turn that on, if you are hosting yourself, or if you are using Farmier let me know what your URL is and I can turn it on. |
| [10:32:01] | <mstenta[m]> | Re: harvest asset correlation... I'm not sure I entirely understand your question... |
| [10:32:21] | <mstenta[m]> | But the way I would represent sweet potato slips is that you would create a Planting asset for the current sweet potatoes... |
| [10:32:42] | <mstenta[m]> | And another Planting asset for the future sweet potatoes (or even for the slips themselves) |
| [10:32:52] | <mstenta[m]> | And the second Planting would reference the first as a "Parent" |
| [10:33:19] | <mstenta[m]> | And you can record a Harvest of the first planting specifically for the "slips harvest") |
| [10:33:46] | <mstenta[m]> | In the future, I would like to be able to say "This harvest CREATES this other asset (eg: the second planting)" but that isn't implemented yet |
| [10:34:21] | <mstenta[m]> | (My thought is that a "Harvest" is really just an "output" of an asset - and that output could be a new asset itself! But we need to make that a more formal feature first.) |
| [10:35:12] | <mstenta[m]> | That will enable creating a new "Product" asset later - so that you could, for example: "Harvest an animal asset, and from that create a set of Product assets (for each cut of the animal)." |
| [10:35:33] | <mstenta[m]> | Or: "Harvest potatoes and increment the inventory of your "Potatoes for sale" Product asset" |
| [10:36:33] | <mstenta[m]> | These are all things that I generally am putting into the "farmOS 2.x" plan (after we upgrade to Drupal 8 - or perhaps as part of the upgrade) |
| [10:36:51] | <mstenta[m]> | So it's great to talk them through with more people first, to make sure we're planning ahead |
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| [15:18:12] | <scollette[m]> | Mike, Thank you for the insight into a quite incredible system. Is it possible to contribute to the software design (PHP?) / database effort? (my expertise is w/ mySQL, but have worked w/ several others). I do own a legacy data aggregator & reporting tool, which I would gladly share w/ the group if it could serve as a working model to leverage from. (I described it earlier in this |
| [15:18:13] | <scollette[m]> | thread (SiFTeR - Sort, Filter, Tabulate, & Report) see: http://www.foonow.com/sifter |
| [15:20:42] | <mstenta[m]> | scollette: Absolutely! We're actually working on making a better guide into getting started with contributing to farmOS development. |
| [15:21:04] | <mstenta[m]> | Have you ever worked with Drupal? It is written in PHP and MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL |
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| [15:56:20] | <scollette[m]> | I'm learning Drupal but have used PHP/MySQL for about 7 years. I also have written a variety of accounting modules (MS FoxPro) & would be willing to share any & all databases tables if ever needed for study or conversion. I think adding a numeric field (decimal 10,2) to the farmOS events would give us the ability to "plug in" cost/expense values ("-") as well as income/profit ("+"). ie: The event of a worker |
| [15:56:21] | <scollette[m]> | working 8 hours could yield a numeric entry of $80.00 (we can do some of the math). Purchasing a piece of equipment could yield 2 entries: 1 for the purchase ("-") & another to show the addition of an asset - the equipment itself. MY BIG QUESTION is can we enter future (proposed ) events, such as the proposed purchase of a tractor next month. ("-") Proposed (or projected) income can be viewed in a similar |
| [15:56:22] | <scollette[m]> | fashion to anticipate if we can afford the tractor. ("+") ( I believe a clear financial picture will help insure success! especially 1 that can be monitored remotely) |
| [16:18:48] | <scollette[m]> | Yes, I answered my own question - Future log events can be entered. It would be great to add that numeric field. Thank You for your time! |
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| [17:03:08] | <mstenta[m]> | > I think adding a numeric field (decimal 10,2) to the farmOS events would give us the ability to "plug in" cost/expense values ("-") as well as income/profit ("+"). |
| [17:03:09] | <mstenta[m]> | Ah this actually exists! In a flexible "Quantity" field (on most log types) |
| [17:04:04] | <mstenta[m]> | You can attach one or more "quantity measurements" to a log, which consist of a "Measure" (length, weight, time, count, etc), a "Value" (decimal stored as a fraction behind the scenes), a "Unit" (meters, grams, seconds, etc), and a "Label" (free form text field) |
| [17:05:04] | <mstenta[m]> | > Future log events can be entered. |
| [17:05:05] | <mstenta[m]> | Yes! and you can mark logs as "done" or "not done", so a log in the future that is "not done" is considerred a "planned event", while a "done" log in the past is considered a historical record of something that actually happened. |
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