Setting Your Record Straight
March 2, 2010 ADVERTORIAL
Cotton Incorporated’s Jeanne Reeves didn’t think she’d have much trouble when she set out to keep track of the company’s production costs on some of its research production plots. She soon found herself with more problems than she’d imagined.
While agricultural record keeping is nothing new, Reeves discovered that cotton requires a system that is more complex than what other crops require. Further, Reeves realized that creating a solution to this problem would not be an easy task.
“So I worked with some companies who were interested in working with Cotton Incorporated and working with each other to — within their already existing, very nice software — add a cotton component. And that’s what we’ve done,” says Reeves.
Together, Red Wing Software and MapShots, Inc., brought more than 50 years of computer software and computer tracking of farm operations to the table. Along with Cotton Incorporated, they set out to make cotton record keeping a more profitable and user friendly experience.
The end result was MapShots’ updates to the company’s already existing EASi Suite product, which allowed for more manageable crop record keeping. Likewise, Red Wing’s CenterPoint product was customized for cotton record keeping.
The beauty of the revamped software from Red Wing and MapShots is that it’s designed so that it won’t overwhelm growers who are accustomed to more basic methods of record keeping.
“To really keep track of your information, you have to track as much detail as possible, without getting too much detail,” says Mathew Hilton, Sales Consultant with Red Wing Software. “You never want to get to a point where you’re having paralysis through analysis.”
To aid with that, the new software is designed to separate information into multiple, easily identifiable tiers. Data such as overall expenses can be broken down into multiple groups — “fertilizer”, “equipment”, etc. — and tracked in a more easy-to-follow system.
With the software, says Hinton, “I’ve got the ability to track information to a vendor. And I have the ability to do multiple levels of details of transactions so that I don’t have to do that through journal entries, and I don’t have to do this information throughout individual transactions.”
And that level of detail is also found in profit tracking.
“I have the ability to track profit centers. So I can apply that to what I’m actually growing, no matter what the commodity may be,” says Hinton.
The system can even go so far as to help a producer with tax preparation. While the software can go into great detail, a major strength is that it remains user friendly.
“Our operating model is to build it complex, but to make it simple,” says Tim Taylor of MapShots, Inc.
For more information on these cost-saving products, visit www.mapshots.com and www.redwingsoftware.com.
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