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Running the lot
Five numbers every smallholder should write down each month
Not everything needs recording. These five are the ones that turn into an actual answer when someone asks how the lot is doing.
A working lot generates a lot of small facts — a harvest here, a bag of fertiliser there, a diesel top-up for the brushcutter. Trying to record all of it is how record-keeping dies within a month. Five numbers cover almost every question worth asking.
The five numbers
- Tonnage harvested per round, per lot — the raw output.
- Price received per tonne, per sale — not just the day’s CPO news, what you were actually paid.
- Fertiliser applied — date, product, and kg or bags — both for cost and because it’s the record that tells you when the next round is due.
- Harvest-day costs — cutter wages and haulage, logged against the round they belong to (see what a round really pays).
- Any other cash cost on the lot — weeding, pest control, repairs — lumped as “other” is fine as long as it’s logged at all.
Why these and not others
Every one of the five feeds directly into a question a smallholder actually asks: is this lot profitable (needs 1, 2, 4, 5), is fertiliser on schedule (needs 3), is yield trending up or down (needs 1, over time). Anything more detailed — exact weather, individual palm health notes — is useful but optional; these five are the load-bearing ones.
The minimum viable habit
The habit that survives is the one that costs the least at the moment it matters — which is standing at the ramp or the fertiliser sack, not sitting at a desk later trying to remember. Whatever tool you use, the test is simple: can you log one of these five numbers in under a minute, right where it happens?
Frequently asked
Do I need to record every single small cost separately?
No — lumping infrequent small costs into an "other" category is fine. The value is in not letting them disappear entirely, not in itemising perfectly.
What if I only track tonnage and price — is that enough to start?
It’s a reasonable starting point and far better than nothing, but it only answers "what did I earn," not "did I actually profit" — adding costs is what completes the picture.
Should I record data per lot or for the whole farm at once?
Per lot, if you have more than one — a whole-farm total hides which specific lot is pulling the average up or down, which is usually the more useful thing to know.
Five fields, logged in under a minute
SawitSync’s forms are built around exactly these five numbers, so the habit costs almost nothing to keep.
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