Operation receipts

Planning, authorizing, completing and correcting a field operation each leave a receipt. The receipt holds a stable operation key, the action taken, the revision the action expected, the time it occurred and its result: Pending, Completed, Failed or needs review. It also lists the records the action produced and, where another system is involved, the external reference in that system.

The operation key means a repeated request is recognized as the same action. If a coordinator taps Complete twice on a weak signal in the field, the second request finds the first receipt instead of completing the work again. A failed action keeps its failure reason, so someone can see what went wrong and put it right.

• One key per action. Each controlled action has its own operation key. A repeated request with the same key returns the earlier result.
• Expected revision. The receipt records the revision the action was based on. An action against an out-of-date revision is refused and the receipt says so.
• Reconcile the exceptions. The Operations Manager works through receipts that are Pending, Failed or needs review, compares the linked records with the external source and closes each one.

Agree who reconciles receipts and how often; on spray days that may be twice a day. Agree what the external reference points to, such as a job number in your sprayer log or a record in your agronomy system. Decide what happens to a receipt that cannot be matched: who investigates and how long it may stay in needs review. Agree that receipts are never edited to hide a failure; the failure reason stays on record.

A farm coordinator completes a vineyard spray from the field. The signal drops and she presses Complete again. Both requests carry the same operation key, so the work is completed once and the receipt shows Completed. Later that day a second completion is attempted from the office against revision 4, while the operation is already on revision 5 after a correction. That action is refused and its receipt shows Failed with the reason “stale revision”.

The Operations Manager opens Receipt Exceptions, reads the failure reason, and confirms the field completion was the right one. A third receipt sits at Pending because the sprayer log reference has not arrived. When the log shows the same block, rate and date, the manager marks it Completed. If the log had shown a different block, the receipt would move to needs review with the discrepancy noted.

• Receipt Exceptions — Receipts that are Pending, Failed or needs review, with operation key, action, expected revision, external reference and failure reason.

• Receipt reconciliation: Compare pending and failed receipts with their source and close them.
• Correction and cancellation: Receipts for cancelled and corrected work.

Plan your integrations before linking external references.