Farms and organizations

Every advisory and every field operation belongs to an operating organization. The organization record holds its code, time zone and working currency. Client farms and ranches sit under it, each with a code, the contact person, the address and an eligibility note that says what the farm has agreed to receive. Team members link a signed-in user to one organization, with a role name and their own time zone.

This matters most when one advisory firm serves several regions or business units. A reviewer in one organization should only decide on that organization’s work, and a farm coordinator should only see the farms they serve. Dates recorded in the field are read against the organization’s time zone, so an early-morning rainfall reading lands on the right day.

• Organization first. Create the organization with its time zone and currency before adding farms or people. Everything else points back to it.
• One record per farm. Each client farm or ranch gets a stable code. The eligibility note records what the farm has signed up for, such as spray advisories only, or spray advisories and pest scouting.
• Team members carry scope. A team member is active or inactive and belongs to one organization. Retire a person by marking them inactive so their past plans and decisions keep their name.

Agree farm codes before import and use them in every spreadsheet you load. Agree the wording of eligibility notes so the planner can tell at a glance whether a farm should receive a spray schedule. Decide who adds farms and who retires them; the Operations Manager owns both in the standard setup. Agree the role names you will use for team members, such as Planner, Reviewer and Coordinator, and the time zone for each person who works across regions. Confirm each organization’s currency before any costs are discussed with farms.

An advisory firm serves orchards in two valleys through two organizations, North Valley and South Valley. The Operations Manager adds a new apple orchard to North Valley with code NV-114, the grower as contact and an eligibility note that reads “spray advisories and codling moth scouting”. A planner in North Valley then opens a spray operation for NV-114.

Later the grower leaves the program. The Operations Manager sets the farm’s Active marker to No. The orchard drops off Active Farms, so no new work is planned for it, while last season’s operations and their evidence stay readable. A reviewer from South Valley who opens NV-114’s records should find nothing to decide, because review is kept to the reviewer’s own organization.

• Active Farms — Client farms currently in the program, with contact, address and eligibility note, used before planning new work.
• Team Directory — Active team members with role name, time zone and organization.

• Field plan to authorization: Plan work for an active farm and take it through review.

Review the data model before loading farms, and check roles.