Why Farmers Should Track their Time

All farmers track yields and inputs. some will track machine hours. I have met very few farm operations that track labor time.

If you have never tracked your time, it probably feels unnecessary. You know you’re busy and the job gets done. But time is our most valuable resource and not being able to analyze how you – or your employees – spend there day is a major loss of insight into your operation.

Effectively tracking time will allow you to:

1.      See where effort is going

Most operators underestimate how much time gets consumed by “everything else”: running for parts, moving equipment, waiting, etc. Without tracking time, those hours disappear into the day. With tracking, they show up and generally give you something to think about. You might find:

• Equipment inefficiencies eating up labor hours

• Certain fields or enterprises requiring disproportionate effort

• High-value management time spent on low-value tasks

Time-tracking does the same thing as managerial accounting; breaks the farm information into smaller, manageable pieces so you can see where resources are actually being used. By seeing what happened before, we set expectations for what should happen in the future.

2.      Make objective management decisions

Time-tracking gives you a hard measure to evaluate decisions. When you combine time-keeping data with financial data, you start answering bigger questions:

• Cost per acre isn’t just dollars—it’s hours

• Profitability isn’t just margin—it’s return on labor

And once you see that, priorities change quickly.

3.      Manage your time and your employees’ time

Time-tracking creates accountability without micromanaging. You can put the right person in the right place by objectively seeing their efficiencies. Everyone knows what they’re working on and how their time contributes to the farm as a whole. You can also see how employees are (or are not) improving. You should be able to see efficiencies in their time sheets as they progress. If they aren’t getting better, it gives you an opportunity to address the issue with data, instead of “it seems like your not picking it up very quickly”.

4.      Turn “keeping busy” into project management

Instead of planning for the day, you’re managing weeks ahead. You can see the time crunches and who should be where and when. This is the same shift that happens when farms move from cash-basis records to accrual-adjusted financials. When timekeeping data is used alongside accrual financials, you move closer to measuring true profitability by enterprise, task, and employee; not just whether there was cash left at the end of the year.

5.      Where to Start

Start with a 30-day trial. Do not try to build the perfect system on day one. Pick five or six categories, have everyone record their time daily, and review the results at the end of the month. The first goal is not perfection. The first goal is visibility.

 Use broad categories at first: field work, livestock chores, travel, repair and maintenance, hauling, administrative/bookkeeping, training, management/planning. Add more categories and detail once the habit is built.

 Precision farming tools may already provide some time-related data for field work, especially around planting, spraying, tillage, and harvest. That information is valuable but incomplete by itself. Precision field work data will not usually tell you how much time went into repairs, meetings, bookkeeping, hauling grain, loading hogs, or training employees. That is why precision farming data works best when it is paired with basic time records for non-field work.

 Do build a system that you will grow with you. Look for tools that can handle multiple employees, mobile entry, job or project codes, approval workflows, and reports by task, enterprise, or employee. The system does not have to be complicated. It just has to be used consistently.

Conclusion

If you do not track time, you are missing one of the largest inputs in your operation. You do not need a complicated system to start. You need a system that is simple enough to use every day and strong enough to grow with the farm. Track time for 30 days. Review where the hours went. Then decide what needs to change.next opportunity, or next generation.