Finances Guide
Record farm income and expenses, understand profitability, keep receipt evidence, and see money that is still moving through approval or payment.
Quick Start Checklist
1. Overview
Finances is FarmSentry's operational record and analysis workspace for farm money. It combines direct transactions with expenses posted by connected workflows so you can review income, costs, trends, and profitability in one place.
Recorded income and expenses
These are transaction rows saved in Finances. Overview totals currently include matching records whether their payment status is received, paid, pending, partial, or cancelled. The status gives context; it does not switch a row in or out of the totals.
Profitability
Net profit is recorded income minus recorded expenses for the selected dates and currency. Enterprise and field/herd views group the same records in different ways; they are not a bank balance.
Money in flight
This is a current workflow queue: open petty-cash balances, spends awaiting review, Requests awaiting approval, and approved Requests awaiting payment. It is not the same as posted expenses, pending direct transactions, or money in a bank account.
Connected workflows
A petty-cash spend becomes a Finances expense when it is approved. An approved Request becomes an expense only when it is marked paid. A Project budget is a plan; actual project spending is represented by linked expense transactions.
Important: Finances does not implement complete bank reconciliation, tax preparation, or double-entry accounting. Use it to run and analyze the farm, and use your accountant or accounting system for formal books and statutory reporting.
2. Quick start
- Open Finances. Select the farm first so every record is stored against the right operation.
- Choose the right entry path. Select Add Transaction for a sale, subsidy, or direct farm cost. If a team member is spending a cash float, log the spend in Petty Cash. If money needs approval before payment, start a Request. The Log money out command routes a float holder to Petty Cash and other users to a new Request.
- Choose Income or Expense. Pick the category before entering details; the category decides whether a field/herd step appears.
- Enter the record. Confirm the date, description, amount, currency, and whether the money has been received or paid.
- Add evidence. Attach the receipt in the transaction form, or upload it in the Receipts tab and create an expense from the receipt when appropriate.
- Review the result. Check Recent Transactions, open View details, and confirm the amount, status, resource link, and receipt.
Desktop shortcuts: On the Finances page, Cmd/Ctrl+N opens Add Transaction, Cmd/Ctrl+E opens Export, and Cmd/Ctrl+K opens commands.
3. Record income and expenses
Step 1: choose a type and category
Select Income or Expense, then choose one of the current category cards.
Income categories
Crop Sales, Livestock Sales, Milk, Eggs, Subsidies, Custom Work, and Other.
Expense categories
Labor, Materials, Equipment, Services, Overhead, Transport, Livestock, Seedlings, Buildings & Structures, Water & Site Infrastructure, Security & Surveillance, and Other.
Step 2: link a supported resource
Categories that support attribution open a field or herd selector. Choose one or more resources, or use Skip linking. Overhead, Subsidies, Custom Work, and Other income skip this step because the current category rules do not support a resource link for them.
Step 3: enter the transaction details
Required for both types
- Date: defaults to today and cannot be in the future.
- Description: name the sale, purchase, or event clearly.
- Amount: enter the total in the currency shown beside the field.
- Money received? / Money paid?: Income defaults to Received; Expense defaults to Paid. Choose Not received yet or Not paid yet when that is the truth.
Optional income details
Quantity, Unit, Customer, Notes, and Receipt / Attachment. The Add form does not currently show an income subcategory or sales-channel field.
Optional expense details
Quantity, Unit Cost, What was it for? (a subcategory restricted to the chosen category), Vendor, Notes, and Receipt / Attachment.
Payment method and later status changes
The current Add wizard asks for payment state but not payment method. After saving a direct transaction, open its row menu and choose Edit to set Payment Method to Cash, Mobile Money, Bank Transfer, Check, or Other. Edit also offers Received/Pending/Partial/Cancelled for income and Paid/Pending/Partial/Cancelled for expenses.
Save one or enter a batch
Add Transaction saves and closes the dialog. Save & add another keeps the category, date, currency, payment state, and resource choice while clearing per-entry values such as description, amount, and receipt. If a save fails, use Try Again; FarmSentry keeps the values you entered so a weak connection does not force you to start over.
4. Connect costs to farm resources
Resource links answer a practical question: “Which field or herd earned or used this money?” Those links power the By field/herd profitability view and its coverage meters.
| Category | Current link choice |
|---|---|
| Crop Sales; Seedlings | Fields |
| Livestock Sales, Milk, Eggs; Livestock expense | Herds |
| Labor, Materials, Equipment, Services, Transport, Buildings & Structures, Water & Site Infrastructure, Security & Surveillance, Other expense | Choose Fields or Herds |
| Overhead; Subsidies, Custom Work, Other income | No resource step |
What allocation percentage means
If one transaction belongs to several resources, its percentages decide how much of the amount appears under each field or herd. Selected percentages must total 100%. New multiple selections split equally until you change a value, and Split equally can restore an even split.
Example: a 1,000 expense allocated 60% to Field A and 40% to Field B contributes 600 and 400 to those fields' cost totals. It remains one 1,000 transaction in Finances.
About animals: Finance records can carry an animal link from another workflow or integration, and profitability rolls that amount into the animal's herd. The current Add and Edit transaction dialogs expose Fields and Herds—not a direct Animals picker—so do not look for an animal selector there.
5. Read the overview
Choose the period first
Use Last 30 Days, This Month, Last Month, This Quarter, or This Year, or pick a custom date range. The range is kept in the URL, and FarmSentry remembers your last-used period for this farm. The period controls the financial cards, charts, profitability, and Recent Transactions; Money in flight remains a current workflow snapshot.
Key totals
Income, Expenses, and Net profit (income left after expenses) use recorded transactions in the selected dates and farm currency. When comparison data is available, percentage arrows compare with the previous equivalent period.
Trends and breakdowns
Income vs. Expenses Trend groups the current overview into monthly periods. Expense Breakdown and Income Breakdown rank categories; when a transaction has a subcategory, that finer label is used in the breakdown.
Profit views
Profit by Enterprise groups records into Crops, Livestock, and Other. By field/herd shows income, costs, net profit, transaction counts, coverage, and money not linked to a resource. Unlinked money still belongs in the farm totals; it simply cannot be attributed to one field or herd.
Operational rollups
Capital Projects shows committed budget, spent, and routine expenses. Petty Cash shows entrusted and available cash plus missing receipts. Requests shows pending approval and awaiting-payment totals. Select Open Projects, Open Petty Cash, or Open Requests to work in the owning module.
Cost analysis and recent activity
Expand See where your money goes for top costs and more detail. Recent Transactions shows the newest records in the selected range; View All opens the full searchable list.
Plan access: Basic finance transaction capture is available on Free, Essentials, and Premium. Finance analytics—including summary, trends, breakdowns, enterprise, and field/herd profitability—are configured as Premium. If an analytical panel cannot refresh on your plan, your transaction records are still available in the transaction list.
6. Understand Money in flight
Money in flight answers “What farm money is currently held or waiting for a decision?” Its four rows are live workflow states, not a date-range report.
Cash held by team members
Counts open or review-stage petty-cash floats and sums their available balance. Issuing a float moves cash into someone's custody; the float itself is not an expense. A submitted spend becomes a posted expense only after approval.
Spends waiting for review
Submitted petty-cash spends that still need an approver. Select the row or Review approvals to open the Approvals queue.
Requests waiting for approval
Pending purchase Requests. Approval authorizes the request but does not yet create a Finances expense.
Requests waiting to be paid
Approved Requests that have not been marked paid. Marking one paid creates the matching expense in Finances; before that point it remains in flight.
Do not treat this card as cash on hand. It does not read a bank account, reconcile statements, include direct pending income, or replace the posted Income and Expenses totals. Each row links to the workflow that owns the next action.
7. Review and correct transactions
Find the record
From Recent Transactions, select View All. Search matches transaction descriptions. You can also filter by Income or Expense, filter by category, sort newest or oldest first, remove individual filter chips, or use Clear all. The list loads 25 rows per page.
View details
Open the row menu and choose View details to inspect the amount, date, description, payment state and method, customer or vendor details, resource allocations, notes, receipt, and created/updated dates. Source badges identify rows posted from Petty Cash or a Request.
Edit an eligible direct transaction
Owners and managers can edit direct transactions. Workers can edit direct transactions they created. Edit can correct category, date, description, amount, currency, payment details, optional fields, receipt, and supported field/herd allocations. A direct Project expense remains editable in Finances; the change is also written to the Project's event history.
Delete with Undo
Owners can delete eligible direct income. Owners and managers can delete eligible direct expenses. The row disappears immediately and a short Undo toast delays the real delete for about seven seconds. If the delete fails, FarmSentry restores the row.
Source-controlled expenses are protected
- From petty cash: Edit and Delete are removed. Choose Open original spend and correct or void it in Petty Cash so cash custody, receipts, and approval history stay together.
- From a request: Edit and Delete are removed. Choose Open original request and use the correction available there. Removing an eligible payment record returns the Request to Approved and removes its linked Finances expense; it does not reverse money already paid.
8. Receipts
Attach evidence while entering a transaction
The Add and Edit transaction forms include Receipt / Attachment. Drop, browse, or paste one JPEG, PNG, WebP, or PDF up to 10MB. Images may be compressed before upload. Open View details later to view the image or open the PDF.
Use the Receipts library
- Open the Receipts tab and select Upload Receipt.
- Drop, browse, or paste a JPEG, PNG, WebP, or PDF. FarmSentry shrinks photos automatically; PDF size limits are shown in the upload dialog.
- Add Vendor, Date, Amount, Category, and an optional Description.
- If the receipt itself represents a new expense, select Also log as expense in finances. Amount, Date, and Category are required for this option.
- Open a receipt to edit details, download the file, or choose Log as Expense later. This creates a Paid expense using the receipt's amount, date, mapped category, currency, vendor, and available payment information, then marks the receipt Linked.
Linking limitation: The Receipts library does not currently offer a “link to an existing transaction” picker. To add evidence to an existing eligible direct transaction, use that transaction's Edit form. To create a new expense from an uploaded receipt, use Log as Expense.
Find linked, unlinked, and missing evidence
Switch between grid and list views, then filter by vendor, receipt category, Linked or Unlinked, and From/To dates. An unlinked receipt is a stored file that has not created a transaction. It does not necessarily mean a transaction is missing evidence.
Missing-receipt counters in the Finances rollups belong to the source workflows—especially Petty Cash, and Project/Request rules where configured. Open the source module to resolve those gaps. Direct Finances transactions are not all scanned into one universal missing-evidence queue.
AI extraction
AI Extract is Premium-only. It can suggest vendor, date, total, payment information, and line items from a receipt. Suggestions are not saved automatically: check them against the image, choose Use these details, review the edit form, and press Save. Extraction can fail or misread a file, and not every layout or scan quality is supported; always verify the original receipt.
Deleting a linked library receipt removes the evidence but leaves its transaction in place. The receipt delete offers Undo for a few seconds, and the Receipts tab also keeps a short restoration grace record.
9. Saved views and exports
Saved views
Select a date range and one of the three main tabs—Overview, By field/herd, or Receipts—then choose Save view and name it. A saved view remembers only that start date, end date, and tab for this farm in the current browser. It does not remember transaction search filters, chart/list toggles, a field-versus-herd toggle, or receipt filters. Saving the same name again replaces the earlier view.
Export access
Finance exports are available to Essentials and Premium plans. Select Export Report on desktop or use Cmd/Ctrl+E, choose PDF or Excel, and export the currently selected date range. Demo-farm exports are allowed, but the demo remains read-only.
A branded Financial Report with the farm and date range, summary totals, expense and income breakdowns, and optional sections controlled by Include Charts and Include Transaction List. The “charts” option currently adds a tabular Performance Trends section for up to the last six periods. The transaction section includes up to 100 recent rows.
Excel
An .xlsx workbook with a Summary sheet and, when data exists, Expenses, Income, Transactions, and Trends sheets. Each transaction row includes date, type, category, subcategory, description, amount, currency, and payment status. The current Excel generator includes available sheets regardless of the PDF-oriented Include Charts and Include Transaction List checkboxes.
Currency: Exports and analytics use the farm's configured/default currency and query transactions stored in that exact currency code. They do not convert live-farm transactions from other currencies before combining them.
10. Permissions and common questions
Who can review, edit, and delete?
- Farm members with read access can review the data allowed by farm security and open transaction details.
- Owners and managers can edit eligible direct transactions; workers can edit direct transactions they created. Viewer rows do not offer Edit or Delete.
- Only owners can delete direct income. Owners and managers can delete direct expenses.
- Petty Cash and paid-Request expenses must be corrected in their source workflow, regardless of the user's Finances role.
- Approval actions in Petty Cash and Requests also follow the farm's owner/manager approval policy and any manager limit.
Why can I see a button but not complete the action?
The final save is checked against farm membership, row security, plan access, source protection, and—where relevant—approval policy. If an action is unavailable, check whether the row is source-controlled, whether your role owns the action, and whether the feature is included in the farm's plan. Ask an owner or manager when the action belongs to them.
Can I change the currency?
The Amount field starts with the farm currency. Choose Change to store another three-letter currency on a direct transaction, but FarmSentry does not perform automatic foreign-exchange conversion. Live-farm dashboards query the farm currency and omit rows stored under a different code. For consistent totals, record transactions in the farm currency unless you intentionally need a separate-currency record.
The demo farm is the exception for display only: its seeded amounts may be converted to a preferred/detected display currency. That demo conversion does not alter stored transactions and is not available as live-farm FX accounting.
Can I edit the demo?
No. Any authenticated user may explore the demo data, details, profitability, receipts, and allowed exports, but all demo-farm mutations are blocked. Switch to a farm where you are a member before adding, editing, deleting, uploading, or linking records.
What should I do after a failed save or load?
- Use Try Again on a failed transaction or data panel. Transaction entry values are preserved after the optimistic save fails.
- If Save & add another fails, keep the dialog open, check the named field, and retry without re-entering the whole record.
- For a failed receipt upload, check the connection or storage message; the selected file and typed details remain in the dialog.
- If an export times out, reduce the date range or turn off Include Charts.
- If a transaction seems missing from totals, clear filters, confirm the date range, and check that its stored currency matches the farm currency.