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Tracking farm income and expenses in Farmeter Buff

How to record a sale or a cost in Farmeter Buff's income and expense tracker, what Balance really means, who can see it, and the Analytics charts.

Beginner8 min read

On this page
  1. 1. Where do I find it?
  2. 2. What am I looking at?
  3. 3. How do I record a sale or a cost?
  4. 4. What do Balance, Total income and Total expense mean?
  5. 5. Which income and expense types can I choose?
  6. 6. Why are the category charts empty?
  7. 7. What should I record?
  8. 8. Can my workers see the money?
  9. 9. How does it show up in Analytics?
  10. 10. What it isn't

Many small farms know their animals by name, by temperament, sometimes by the sound of their footsteps. Fewer can say, off the top of their head, whether last month left them ahead or behind. That isn't carelessness. Money on a farm comes in big, rare pieces (a sale) and leaves in small, constant ones (feed, medicine, a trip to the vet), and the small ones are easy to lose track of.

Since version 1.2.0, Farmeter Buff can record the farm's income and expenses in the same app you already use for your buffalo. The Google Play listing carries the same release note. It's a simple ledger, not an accounting package, and that's the point. This post answers the questions I'd expect a farmer to ask the first time they open it, in the order they tend to come up. Button names are given as they appear in the app, in English and in Thai.

1. Where do I find it?

On the home screen, look for the Quick menu (เมนูลัด), a block of round shortcuts, four to a row. One of them is Finance (การเงิน), with a wallet icon. By default it's the last shortcut in the menu.

The screenshot below comes from an earlier version, from before the Finance shortcut was added, when the Quick menu was a single row. It still shows where the menu sits on the home screen.

The Farmeter Buff home screen in an earlier version, showing where the Quick menu sits
Screenshot: Farmeral Technology

Two things have to be true before it opens:

  • You're signed in. In guest mode the app asks you to log in first.
  • A farm is selected. The ledger belongs to a farm, not to you as a person. If no farm is selected, the app says Please select a farm first.

The screen that opens is titled Income & expenses (บันทึกรายรับ-รายจ่าย), with your farm's name underneath. Internally we call it the money tracker, and so does the rest of this post.

2. What am I looking at?

From top to bottom:

  1. A summary card with Balance (ยอดคงเหลือ), Total income (รายรับทั้งหมด) and Total expense (รายจ่ายทั้งหมด).
  2. Two buttons: Record income (บันทึกรายรับ) and Record expense (บันทึกรายจ่าย).
  3. Two tabs:
    • Transactions (ธุรกรรม): the list of what you've recorded.
    • Statistics (สถิติ): charts by month and by category.

On a brand-new farm the Transactions tab says No transactions yet and suggests you start with your first income or expense. That's normal. Nothing is broken, the page just has nothing to add up yet.

3. How do I record a sale or a cost?

Tap Record income for money coming in, or Record expense for money going out. A form slides up from the bottom with these fields:

Field What to put in it
Item name (ชื่อรายการ) A short name you'll recognise later, such as "Sold young bull" or "Rice straw"
Amount (จำนวนเงิน) Whole baht, digits only
Income type / Expense type (ประเภทรายรับ / ประเภทรายจ่าย) Pick one from the list (see question 5)
Date (วันที่) Today by default; tap it to pick another day
Note (optional) (หมายเหตุ (ไม่บังคับ)) Anything that helps future you, such as quantities or who you bought from

Then tap Save (บันทึก). You'll see Saving transaction... and then Saved successfully.

From the receipt to the list: tap Record expense, fill in a few fields, save, and the month's totals update

The app checks two things before it saves. If the item name or the amount is empty, it asks you to fill in both. If the amount is zero, it tells you the Amount must be greater than 0. There is no "negative income": a cost always goes in as an expense, with a positive amount.

Tip: the date matters more than it looks. The summary and the charts group records by the date you pick, not the day you typed them in. If you're catching up on last week's feed bill, set last week's date.

4. What do Balance, Total income and Total expense mean?

This is the question worth slowing down for, because "Balance" (ยอดคงเหลือ) sounds like the money in your bank account. It isn't.

  • Total income is everything you've recorded as income this month.
  • Total expense is everything you've recorded as an expense this month.
  • Balance is simply Total income − Total expense for this month.

So if you sold a calf this month and bought feed, the balance tells you whether the sale covered the feed. It knows nothing about money you had before you started using the app, or cash that never went through a record.

Income on one pan, expenses on the other: the balance is what's left when you weigh them against each other

When last month's balance wasn't zero, a small badge next to the balance shows how this month's balance has changed against last month's, as a percentage. A loss month shows up as a negative balance. That's not an error, it's information. Some months a farm just spends, for example when buying feed before the dry season or paying for a vet visit, and the balance is meant to show that honestly.

5. Which income and expense types can I choose?

The list is fixed by the app, so everyone's records stay comparable:

  • Income: Buffalo sale (male), Buffalo sale (female), Calf sale, Other income.
  • Expense: Animal feed, Medicine & health, Labor, Equipment, Utilities, Transport, Other expense.

You can't add your own types. If something doesn't fit, pick the closest one (or Other) and let the Item name and Note carry the detail. The app's own hint for an expense note (shown in Thai) is a good model: mixed feed 50 kg × 3 sacks. A note like that turns a number into something you can check later.

6. Why are the category charts empty?

Open the Statistics tab on a new farm and you'll see messages such as Categories appear after you record transactions, and No monthly data yet above the monthly chart. The app doesn't come with sample categories filled in. Each category card is built from your own records, so a category appears only once you've recorded something in it.

The Statistics tab has three parts:

  • Monthly summary of recent months: income and expense bars side by side for each month.
  • An expense breakdown: how this month's spending splits between feed, medicine, labor and so on.
  • An income breakdown: the same for this month's sales.

7. What should I record?

My honest answer: start with what you'd regret not knowing in a year. Some suggestions, all of which map onto the types above:

  • Every animal sale. Use the male, female or calf type so you can later see which sales actually carry the farm.
  • Feed, including the small purchases. Rice straw, concentrate and minerals add up quietly.
  • Medicine and vet costs. They're often irregular, which is exactly why they're easy to forget.
  • Paid help. If someone helps at calving time or with fencing, that goes under Labor.
  • Equipment, utilities and transport. A new water trough, the pump's electricity, fuel for taking animals to market.

What not to bother with: household spending that isn't the farm's. The ledger is most useful when it only describes the farm.

How often? Whatever you'll keep up. Recording each item on the day takes a minute. Some farmers prefer a weekly sit-down with a pile of receipts, and the date field makes that work too.

8. Can my workers see the money?

Farmeter Buff lets several people work on one farm, with roles and access rights for each team member. When someone signs up, they pick between Farm owner and Farm worker / veterinarian / researcher, and the owner manages people from Members & invitations (สมาชิกและคำเชิญ).

For the money tracker, in the version I checked:

  • Members of the farm can open it and read it, including the balance and the list of transactions.
  • Saving a new income or expense record is reserved for the farm owner. If a member tries, the save won't go through.

So think about this before you invite someone. If the farm's numbers are private to the family, keep that in mind when you decide who joins the farm in the app. And if a worker buys feed for you, the simplest flow is for them to hand you the receipt and for you to record it.

9. How does it show up in Analytics?

The Analytics tab (การวิเคราะห์) at the bottom of the app has a Finance (การเงิน) category, next to growth, breeding and the others. Until you've recorded anything, it shows No finance data yet and suggests you start recording income and expenses to see your farm's trends.

The Farmeter Buff Analytics screen with a date range at the top and category tabs
Screenshot: Farmeral Technology

Once there are records, you get a view over the date range you choose at the top:

  • A strip of key figures: Latest profit, Cost/head and Profit margin.
  • Monthly income–expense chart.
  • Monthly net profit, where green bars are profit and red bars are loss.
  • Cumulative balance, a running profit line over time (higher is better).
  • Cost per head, which divides your expenses by the number of buffalo in the herd (lower is better). It only appears when the farm has active animals.
  • Breakdown cards for expenses and income.
Month by month: income and expense side by side, and the running balance that adds them up over time

Cost per head is where the money tracker meets the rest of Farmeter. Your herd records already know how many animals you have, so once your costs are in, the app can tell you what each animal costs to keep.

10. What it isn't

The money tracker is a farm ledger for your own decisions. It is not a tax tool, an invoicing system or a bookkeeping package, and it doesn't produce documents for anyone else. Keep your paper receipts and bills, and if you need proper accounts for tax or a loan, talk to an accountant. The app's records can help you have that conversation, but they don't replace it.

It also only knows what you tell it. A balance built on half the receipts is a balance that flatters you. Two minutes per entry is a small price for numbers you can trust.

If you remember one thing from this Q&A, make it question 4: Balance is this month's income minus this month's expenses. Everything else follows from that.

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