Farm software that works the same in the paddock as at the desk
Why every part of Phase works on a phone as well as a computer, so no job has to wait until you are back in the office at night.
There is a habit in farm software that we think is wrong. The phone app does the simple things: look at a map, tick off a job. The real work, such as planning, budgets and reports, is kept for the computer in the office.
That suits the people who build software. It does not suit the people who farm.
The office is the wrong place for farm records
Farm records are made in paddocks, sheds and cabs. If the tool that keeps them only fully works at a desk, then every record is made twice: once in your head or on a scrap of paper where the work happens, and again at night when you finally sit down.
The second time is when things go missing. The rate was changed on the day and nobody remembers to what. The wind was from somewhere, at some speed. The chemical came out of one shed or the other.
And it is done at the worst possible time of day, by the person on the farm who can least spare the hour.
So Phase is the same everywhere
Phase on your phone is the same Phase as on your computer. Not a cut-down companion app. The same thing.
That covers the parts other software keeps for the desk:
- Crop plans, budgets and gross margins
- Spray, seeding and harvest records
- Inventory, grain storage and livestock
- Maps, soil and yield
- Jobs, machines and servicing
- Reports and Phase Agent
It runs in any web browser, on iPhone and iPad, and on Android. Whatever is nearest is the right device.
What that changes on an ordinary day
You change a rate standing beside the sprayer, and the plan, the cost and the stock needed all change with it.
You mark a job done from the cab when it is done, with the weather from that hour, not from memory at nine at night.
Someone asks at the silo what a paddock yielded last year, and you can tell them.
The agronomist calls with a change, and you make it before you have put the phone down.
None of those are big. Added up over a season, they are the difference between records that are right and records that are roughly right.
Everything you pay for, wherever you are
There is a fairness side to this too. If you pay for a feature, you should be able to use it where you work. Not only when you have driven home, washed up and turned a computer on.
That is the rule we build to: no going back to the computer. It makes some things harder to build, because a budget grid has to work on a screen the size of your hand. We think that is our problem to solve, not yours.
For what Phase covers, see What is Phase. For why it exists at all, see why we built Phase.
