You'll see one of our most requested features in your Farmbrite system this month - employee time tracking! You can now track the hours a staff member worked in a week, and what tasks they worked on. These hours are reportable, so you can easily export them and send them to a separate payroll system as well. There are also updates to the market to better handle picking inventory, new livestock measurement reports, streamlined crop plantings, tasks and QR codes, and some changes to user roles.
Employee Time Tracking
Managers and farm workers can now work together to track labor hours directly in Farmbrite. This new feature provides weekly timesheets for employees which track the hours spent on all of their tasks for the week. Employees supply hours and details for anything they worked on, and then submit their completed sheets for managerial review. Managers will see all team member timesheets in their Farmbrite account, and can review and approve them. Of course, if any discrepancies are found that require changes, the manager can reject the timesheet and send it back to the staff member for review. Managers can also run reports and exports to get the timesheet data out of Farmbrite to send to a payroll system.
You'll find three articles to help you navigate this new feature. You can first see an overview of the feature in this Getting Started Guide, and then access unique guides for managers and employees separately as well. Note that this feature is included in Farmbrite's Premium plan. Learn more about upgrading and plans here.
Market Improvements
The Farmbrite market has been updated to improve your customer selection and inventory picking workflows, and more clearly define your documents sent to your customers.
- We've made a few enhancements to picking market orders. You'll now see item varieties when picking your products from inventory, making it easier to select the right product for the order and keep accurate inventory numbers. You'll also be able to access pick lists from completed orders, which helps you find trace and lot numbers directly from the order.
- When creating an order, you'll now be able to select a customer from any of your contact records. This was previously limited to customer type contacts, but we know your workers, consultants, and vendors (and many other contacts!) buy your products too, and you can now connect them to your orders.
- Your customers will now see different wording on their order documents based on payment status, with unpaid orders sending an invoice and paid orders sending a receipt.
Livestock Updates
You'll find a new custom report option for Livestock Measurements this month. You can use this to see measurement records for multiple animals within a date range, and filter to find just those that you're looking for.
There are also new group feeding enhancements that better account for set groups mixed with indivdiual animals in Smart and Basic groups. As an example, if you group your indivdiual roosters together with your set of layer hens in a smart of basic group, Farmbrite will now use the number of hens in the set to more accurately distribute the feed.
Crop Enhancements
There are three new improvements to the crop system this month.
- Plantings that are marked complete will no longer be shown on the current plantings tab for your grow locations and crop types. You'll now see them under History and Harvested instead. This helps clean up your plantings list after your have harvested your spring crops as you prepare for the next season.
- Printed QR Codes linked to harvests now include additional information, including the amount, date, and where it was harvested from. You'll now see this information on the printout without having to scan it.
- Tasks associated with planting beds will now display the grow location and bed number on the main task list. This helps you see what planting the task is for at a glance, rather than having to click into it and investigate.
Users and Roles
To go along with Timesheets, you'll now have a way to deactivate users to prevent them from accessing the software without deleting their user login. This could be useful for seasonal employees that need access for only a short time. Additionally, we've also created a new user role for veterinarian, which provides the user with access to livestock records only.