Investigation into "Other" category of expense types
- Lite Farm
- Joyce Sato-Reinhold
- David Trapp
Investigated by @Lite Farm
If you just want the guidance, jump to Investigation into "Other" category of expense types | Proposed list of default expense types. Otherwise, the analysis is first.
Analysis
As of Sep 25, 2023 there were 1,973 instances of farmExpenses on production. They are broken down as follows:
Type | Count |
|---|---|
Other | 487 |
Machinery | 425 |
Seeds | 254 |
Soil Amendment | 246 |
Equipment | 219 |
Fuel | 188 |
Pesticide | 91 |
Land | 64 |
We can see from this list that “Other” makes up a plurality of expense types (roughly 25%). I was curious how many of these “Other” expenses were truly outside one of the existing types, a modification of the existing type, or the introduction of a new type. Through analysis of these (exported and analyzed document attached), I classified each farmExpense into one or more of the following types. In order of frequency:
Type | Instances | Status of type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
Labour* | 101 | Confirmed this should be introduced as a type. | We should probably also spotlight that completing a task automatically creates a labour expense as well. Thoughts @Loic Sans ? |
Machinery purchase or rental* | 26 | Proposed as a new type | Noted in document as “Equipment rental”. Renamed here to be more consistent with “Machinery” vs. “Equipment” types already in use. |
Utilities | 18 | Proposed as a new type | Commonly used for monthly or annual expenses such as electricity, gas, and water (including irrigation). |
Services | 17 | This feels too broad to be a new type… may need deeper analysis across all types. |
|
Equipment, supplies, and maintenance | 15 | Documented in the analysis as “Building supplies” but proposing “Equipment, supplies, and maintenance” with a new mechanical / construction icon as a new type. | Did a brief review of the existing “Equipment” type which consisted of many parts. |
Transport | 13 | Proposed as a new type, perhaps “Transport & logistics” |
|
Other / Miscellaneous | 9 | Current type. Suggest retaining but making it less accessible than other types. |
|
Licensing or dues | 8 | Not a current type. Suggest combining under “Licenses, taxes, and dues”. |
|
Irrigation | 6 | Not a current type. Suggest combining with “Utilities”. |
|
Tax | 6 | Not a current type. Suggest combining under “Licenses, taxes, and dues”. |
|
Harvest processing | 5 | Not a current type. Not a current type. Suggest combining under “Machinery purchase or rental”. |
|
Maintenance | 5 | Not a current type. Suggest combining under “Equipment, supplies, and maintenance”. |
|
* It was often difficult to disentangle whether something was purely labour, purely machinery rental, or a combination of both. For example, one note read “barbechos y rastras en pequeños pedazos de tierra del repartidor 700 + 1200 ” (translated to “fallows and harrows on small pieces of land from the dealer 700 + 1200”) which is likely a breakdown of labour for each piece of each activity. Another read “deshierba con motoguada“ (“Weeding with a brushcutter”) which is unclear if the cost was for labour, or the rental of the brushcutter, or both.
Proposal
I propose we have 13 default expense types - as follows:
Type | Short description | Status | Justification |
|---|---|---|---|
Machinery | Expenses related to the purchase, lease, rental, and maintenance of machinery. | Retained | Heavily used. |
Utilities | Recurring expenses related to electricity, gas, water (including irrigation), garbage collection, and other periodic services. | Proposed | Commonly used for monthly or annual expenses such as electricity, gas, and water (including irrigation). |
Labour | Expenses related to employed and contracted individuals. | Proposed | Heavily used. |
Seeds and plants | Purchases of seeds, starts, and seedlings used in planting and transplanting. | Renamed | Combination of existing “Seeds” and many entries under “Other” related to transplanted seedlings or starts. |
Soil Amendment | Expenses related to additives such as fertilizers that improve the attributes of your soil. | Retained |
|
Equipment | Expenses related to simple tools, supplies, and parts for operating your farm. | Retained | Combination of existing “Equipment” with “Building supplies” and “maintenance” found during “Other” analysis. |
Fuel | Expenses related to the fuelling of infrastructure, vehicles, machinery, and equipment. | Retained |
|
Pest control | Expenses related to the purchase of ingredients, products, and devices used to manage unwanted species. | Renamed | Renamed from “Pesticide”. Includes purchases of ingredients and services for both weeds and pests. |
Land | Expenses related to the purchase, financing, lease, rental, access, tax, and other fees for land ownership or use. | Retained | Renamed from “Land” to more clearly define different relationships to land relationships described in “Other” analysis. |
Infrastructure | Expenses related to building or improving structures on the farm. | Proposed | Asked for by user feedback group. Small set of existing examples from “Other” type. |
Transportation | Expenses related to moving inputs, outputs, and people. | Proposed |
|
Services | Expenses related to other services such as licensing, certification, agronomy support, testing, marketing, and others. | Proposed | Combination of “Tax” and “Licenses and dues” found in Other analysis. |
Miscellaneous | Everything else. Consider creating a custom expense type if you will have additional expenses like this in the future. | Renamed | Renamed from “Other”. Should be less visible than other types. |
Miscellaneous should be slightly more difficult to interact with than the others to prevent it becoming a bucket.
Follow-up questions
Question | Answer | Date |
|---|---|---|
What migrations - caused by changing existing expense types - need to take place? | As of Sep 27, 2023, only “pesticide” → “Pest control” @Duncan Brain. | Sep 27, 2023 |
Does it make sense for custom expense types to be at the end? Should they be elsewhere? | No - include them in alphabetical order. | Sep 29, 2023 ; reiterated Nov 15, 2023 |
How do we make types both short and crisp and descriptive? | Make the short descriptions searchable such that if someone searches for “lease” it brings up “Land” and “Machinery” since both of those might have the idea of a lease embedded within them. | Sep 27, 2023 |
Is alphabetical sorting the best ordering for expense types? | Yes, we will use alphabetical sorting and custom expense types will be embedded along with standard expense types. | Sep 29, 2023 |
With 13 default types, it feels like we’re right on the edge of tiles being a useful tool. Do we need to rethink the selection process / flow? | Include a search bar. Remove or reduce icons role and move to list view rather than tile view. @Loic Sans thinks he can also support longer titles on a list view as needed. | Sep 27, 2023 |
Should the UI for selecting revenues be updated to be consistent with the expenses UI? | Not for V1.5. Reasoning: Expenses are a batch selection process and revenues are not. Revenues will stay consistent with task tiles (which are also single selection) for now. | Sep 29, 2023 |
It’s often difficult to disentangle whether something is purely labour, purely machinery rental, or a combination of both. Do we need to be able to answer this or is it sufficient to allow the user to select one or both? | Guidance for user onboarding and support
| Sep 27, 2023 |
Is there a way to make “Services” more useful of a type? Examples from the data include:
| Short description helps with this. Will re-evaluate a few months post-release. | Sep 27, 2023 |
Other context
There were roughly 20 instances of “Other” expenses that related to livestock (@Loic Sans). These fell into 6 main types:
Animal purchases (e.g. “Chicks”, “35 egg layers” “50 Cornish Cross Broilers”)
Animal feed (e.g. “Feed - poultry layer”, “Goat feed - hay no receipt”)
Veterinary care (e.g. “Vet consultation organic”, “Vet barn cat”)
Animal equipment (e.g. “Chicken waterer”)
Animal housing (e.g. “Building Goat Town 2022”)
Animal nutritional supplements (“Shamrock Goat Mineral”)
We also had 5 entries related to post-harvest processing (e.g. “Trilla de haba” - translated as “Bean threshing”). We’ll probably want to expand on this with our elaborated products module, but for the time being this can live under “Machinery purchase or rental”.
A note on current usage of farm expenses - right now 283 users have ever created an expense. Of those, 40 have created more than 10 and 229 have created 5 or fewer. The “core” demographic of current users for this feature is probably around 25 people. Kevin will reach out to the “top 10” as defined in the below query to vet the new types:
-- Users that have used expenses (283 as of 9/26)
SELECT u.email, COUNT(fe.created_by_user_id)
FROM "farmExpense" fe
JOIN users u ON fe.created_by_user_id = u.user_id
GROUP BY u.email
ORDER BY COUNT(fe.created_by_user_id) DESC
LIMIT 10Supporting documents
