Ratio of Data Entry Time to Reward

It seems like about any product, tool, or service that you use has an effort/reward ratio. The more effort you put into it, the more you'll get out of it. Coupled with that is the law of diminishing returns. The first 20% of effort is likely to give you 80% of the returns.

Effort

Data, you have to enter it in. It takes time to get it in. Time seems to be in limited supply. Or perhaps it would be better said to say that the supply is fine, there are just too many demands for the supply. How much time do you have to invest before you'll get meaningful results? Do you have enough time to actually get the results from Profit per Acre that you want to? On this page, we're going to go through some of the ratios of data entry to output. Once you've decided what data you want out of the app, you'll be able to know what data you'll need to put into the app.

Lowest effort

If you're looking for instantanous results, that sweet spot of near zero effort but still extracting some value you'll be best served just by viewing the example data. Having example data with a live demo serves two purposes. It allows you to try out the app, and if you don't particularily like signing up for things, you can still get value out of the product.

Now, the example data is just that, an example. You being you, you'll instinctively know that the data is wrong, but if you know in what direction it's wrong, and by how much, you'll still be able to get a breakeven number that will give you some direction.

Just a little more effort

Okay, so you've decided that the example file just isn't going to cut it for you. Whoever put that data together must not have farmed in real life, or something. And besides, you want to be able to save your changes for the next time you come and look at it. You do have the option of copying the example file, and then making the changes that seem to better fit the reality that you are a part of.

The next step is to be able to get some data entered in for crops. You'll need to enter in your inputs. This isn't such a big task, but it's not so small either. Having records of last year's inputs and a price list from your supplier makes this data entry process faster.

After getting the inputs entered in, you'll need to put them together in a crop. This usually works the best just to mentally go through the farming year and add the costs as you think about them.

Land cost, there is almost always going to be some land cost. Even if you have all all the ground paid for, the government is still going to want their little piece of flesh called taxes. You'll need to enter in the rental agreement, or the amount of fixed costs that your land has.

At this point, we need to get the crop and the land cost together to come up with a breakeven cost.

Crop Comparisons

The easiest place to put the crop costs together with land costs and then compare them with other similar or different crops is under the Crop Comparison section.

You'll need to have added a rental agreement and then you can add an item under a crop comparison and keep tabs on how they perform against each other.

Max T. User

Some of the users of Profit per Acre use it. A lot. They have a lots of crops entered in with many different chemical and fertilizer programs. If you're going for this level, or if you're wanting to know your breakeven on unsold commodities, you'll need to set up a scenario, with all your acres being planted to one crop or another. Profit per Acre will give you a lot of actionable information at this point, but it will take you several hours of setup to get to this point.

So try it out, check out the live demo, sign up for an account, use the data to your advantage, and may you have prosperous crops.