Every shilling out,
written once
Diesel, a vet's visit, a roll of wire, a fundi paid in three goes. Spending is the one record every farm already keeps, on paper or in a head. Famu asks for it once, keeps the receipt behind it, and remembers what is still owed.
Ten litres of diesel at 8,500, tagged Transport. Quantity × price, so the total wrote itself.
Seed, NPK, twine and gumboots from one hardware slip. Four expenses, one photograph.
The fundi's 900,000 for the sty, agreed up front and paid as the work goes.
The amount, what for, and a bucket
Three things are required. Everything else makes the record more useful later.
Every expense needs an amount, a description and a date. Bought several of something? Fill the quantity and the unit price and the amount works itself out, or type the total and Famu works out the price for one. Pick a category so Reports can group it.
The optional parts each answer a later question. Which enterprise and which animal, planting or batch answers "what does the piggery cost?". Equipment adds the cost to a machine's lifetime. Water / power meter with the units bought tells you how long they will last. Paid from takes it out of a cash box.
Photograph the slip, keep the slip
One photo of one receipt, however many lines it turns into.
Tap the camera on the expense form and photograph the receipt. Famu reads the amount, the date and the supplier for you to check. It is a suggestion, not the truth, and nothing is saved until you say so. A slip with several items comes back as one line each. Change a line's quantity, price or total and the other two follow.
The photo is kept for good, and every line from it points to the same picture. So Receipts shows one card per photograph, not one per expense. Switch the view below.
Reading a receipt uses your AI allowance. Typing the expense in by hand never does.
Agree the whole, pay the pieces
The expense keeps the agreed total. The instalments are what has actually moved.
Record the expense at the full agreed amount, then open Paying in instalments and add each payment, with who it went to, the date it is due and, once paid, the date it was paid. An instalment with no paid date is still owing.
The pieces do not have to add up to the agreement. A farmer who agreed 900,000, paid 880,000 and shook hands must be able to save exactly that, so Famu states the difference instead of refusing. Tick the instalments below.
While anything is owing, the fundi appears on Money Owed under You owe, aged from the earliest unpaid due date. Settled for less? Change the agreed amount, or the gap stays owing. If the money comes from a cash box, it leaves the box one piece at a time.
Your buckets, your suppliers
Expense Categories are the buckets Reports groups spending into. Famu starts every farm with a sensible set (Transport, Labour, Repairs & Maintenance, Seeds & Seedlings and a few more), and you add, rename or archive them to match how you think. Archiving keeps the history of every expense already filed under it.
Suppliers are the people you buy from: the agro-vet, the feed mill, the hardware. Save their name, phone, where they are and what they supply, and find the right one by category when you need to reorder. An instalment can be paid to a supplier, a worker or just a name, and Money Owed groups the debt under them.
The rules that keep the ledger clean
A wage is one expense
A worker's payment is filed as one expense of its full amount. Buying them an item, or paying out their savings, is not a second one.
A closed batch is closed
Expenses tied to a completed batch are read-only until it is reopened, enforced by the database.
Who can do what
By default an admin can do everything. A manager can record expenses and see receipts, but changing or deleting one is the admin's. Workers do not see spending.
Receipts follow the expenses
Anyone who can read expenses can open the shelf, and nobody else. A receipt shows an amount, so it is guarded like one.
Bring the old book in
Expenses can be imported from a spreadsheet, a whole workbook or a Google Sheet, checked row by row before anything is saved.
Where the ledger stops
What it does not do
Reports counts an expense at its agreed amount from the day it is recorded, even when it is being paid off in pieces. What has actually been paid is on the expense and on Money Owed.
Something you built or bought to keep for years, like a tank, a house or a pump, is not an expense. Record it under Capital Costs so one month does not carry it all.
Earns its keep for
- Any farm that wants its profit to be a real number
- Shoeboxes of receipts nobody can find at year end
- Contractors and suppliers paid over weeks
Does little for
- Buildings and machines: those are capital costs
- Loan repayments: only the interest is a cost, and Loans & Grants adds it