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🎯 Objective
Our objective with this module is to update the finances section to better reflect the nature of running a diversified farm. For V1.0, we showed farmers a break-down of how much money they made by selling each crop on their farm. We also let them document many categories (including “Other”) for their expenses. For many farms, this was a huge step up and may have been the first time they were able to understand the profitability of their farm - let alone how much revenue they make from individual crops. However, it wasn’t a silver bullet and several updates have been requested by users.
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Ability to document non-crop revenues; we know that more than 50% of LiteFarm users (based on survey data of several hundred farms) have revenues beyond the crops they’re selling. Examples include second jobs, ecotourism activities, and value-added products
Ability to export financial records; right now LiteFarm shows a high level revenues / expenses / profit break-down at the farm level. However, this doesn’t tell the whole story and there’s no way for users to drill down or view the whole story on a single page.
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The look and feel of the finances section needs to be refreshed; the app has changed significantly since Finances V1.0. We’ve had a few minor refreshes to finances, but many of the screens are now quite out of date and feel inconsistent with the remainder of the app both in terms of UI and palette.
\uD83D\uDCCA Measuring success
We know we’ve been successful when a farmer can:
Configure the revenues and expenses to reflect the operations on their farm
Quickly document any kind of revenue or expense that is likely to take place on their farm
Export the relevant financial data
Goal | Metric |
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Introduce the ability to customize revenue categories | Users have created X custom revenue categories within Y days of release |
Introduce the ability to customize expense categories | Users have created X custom expense categories within Y days of release |
Greater adoption of “Add Revenue” as compared to current “Add Sales” flow | Increase in the number of “Sales” created (1,198 as of ) in the weeks after release |
Greater adoption of “Add Expense” as compared to current “Add Expense” flow | Increase in the number of “Expenses” created (1,788 as of ) in the weeks after release |
Introduce the ability to export income statement | Users have generated X incomes statements, using Y filters, within Z days of release |
\uD83E\uDD14 Assumptions
Income statement is the most important financial statement to generate. Supporting argument: this is the closest to what LiteFarm shows now in a non-exportable fashion.
Financial statements should be exported in xlsx. Supporting argument: xlsx allows complex manipulation and can be easily converted to other formats.
\uD83C\uDF1F Milestones
Summer 2023 to include (from highest to lower priority):
Add revenues flow V2.0
Generate income statement
TBD
\uD83D\uDDD2 Requirements
Requirement | User Story | Importance | Jira Issue | Notes |
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Add revenues flow V2.0 | As a farmer I want to be able to record any revenues that help me keep my farm operating so that I can have a holistic view of the profitability of my farm | Highest |
| Finances V1.0 only had a concept for crop sales. This definition needs to be expanded to support other farm-based and non farm-based revenues. |
Add expenses flow V2.0 | As a farmer I want to be able to record any expenses that need to be planned for and paid in order to keep my farm operating so that I can have a holistic view of the profitability of my farm | High | The V1.0 version of this flow has the right information, but no longer fits the updated look and feel of the app. This flow needs a facelift and light tweaks. | |
Manage custom revenue categories | As a farmer I want to be able to add, use, and remove categories of revenues that are useful for my particular operations so that I can accurately mirror and understand my operations financially | High | V1.0 has no concept of non-crop revenues. | |
As a farmer I want to be able to add, use, and remove |
types of expenses that are useful for my particular operations so that I can accurately mirror and understand my operations financially | Medium | V1.0 has an “Other” category that should probably be removed in favour of documenting custom expense categories. | ||
Generate income statement | As a farmer I want to be able to generate an income statement so that I can understand if my farm has been profitable over a set timeframe | Highest | Should include revenues, expenses, and gross profit | |
Finances dashboard | As a farmer I want to be able to understand my financial position at a glance when landing on the finances page so that I can quickly understand the financial footing of my operation | Medium | More functional and visual replacement for:  | |
Build a CSA box | As a farmer selling through CSA boxes I want to be able to define the contents of my CSA box so that I can accurately record and attribute revenues for that CSA box to the crops that are included in it | Lowest | Likely needs to be saved as a “template” to be re-used for multiple sales over time. | |
True crop by crop profitability | As a farmer planning for an upcoming season I want to be able to review the revenues and expenses attributed to each crop so that I can choose which crops to grow in the coming season | TBD | In V1.0 revenues are crop-by-crop, but many expenses are not. The algorithm for calculating this needs to be reviewed. | |
Generate export of transactions | As a farmer I want to be able to filter and export a complete list of all revenues and expenses over a period of time so that I can use more powerful accounting software to manage my finances | TBD | My guess is this is very valuable as well Carolina di Lello (Unlicensed) - lets vet with users though. |
\uD83C\uDFA8 User interaction and design
Open Questions
Question | Answer | Date Answered |
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When you say “income statement” you mean the ability to export a report? Do we want to make it as a statement, meaning we would have expenses a -N and inocme as +N | An income statement means a very specific thing: https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/income-statement-analysis https://online.hbs.edu/PublishingImages/Company-B-Income-Statement-version2.jpg |
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Is income and revenue the same thing? | Yes; income and revenues are both money coming into the farm. |
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We should decide if we are going to use “income” or “revenue” to align the wording of the finances flow. This also goes for “Generate income statement” or “export report”? We use “export” on the websitie already, so we should go for “export” and if we go for income, we would have “export income statement”. And the last one, are we going for “statement” or “report”? | Agreed; we should see if users have a preference. I know in Spanish, we typically talk about “ingresos” so perhaps we go with the closes to that. “Income statement” is a very specific document (which ironically typically has revenues on it). | |
Export as pdf and xlsx? | Both if possible. Otherwise xlsx first so that users can modify it post-export. |
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Income categories:
| What’s the question here? | |
We should consider Livestock related income, for future release. | Yes, I think we’ll probably modify revenues / expenses as part of the livestock scope when we work on that module. | |
For retiring custom expense types – should it possible to reassign all expenses with the retired to a new expense type? |
Out of Scope
This module will be released over time as part of several different releases. Scope may change over time.