Who has access to Zone Economics?
If you have machine integration in Conservis, your Operation has access to Zone Economics. But as a user you must also have a "role" that allows financial access.
View Performance of all your fields.
When you access Zone Economics from the Insights menu, INSIGHTS > Zone Economics, it displays all your fields visually on a map and in a list on the left. Both are color coded to indicate performance.
Use the fields on the left to change crop years, search for a particular field, or leave that as is and see all your fields for a particular year. Then select whether you want to display either Cost or Profit and you can sort the fields to change the order of the list.
Now that you have a list, click on a field, in the list or on the map, to see the details.
See key metrics and select the map view you want
Key metrics such as cost, profit and yield display on the left. From the View menu, select what you want to see on the map:
Profit mapping
Here's an example: Let's use the View menu to select Profit per Acre on the map. It takes into account your total costs and revenue, and maps out what areas are making money and what areas aren’t. Understand what zones are underperforming, see what variable practices are paying off.
Side-by-side comparisons can help you see "why"
To see two views at the same time, select Side by Side from the Compare menu. Here's profit and yield:
by comparing your profit map and your yield map, you can analyze which practices are working for you from a profit perspective and which ones might have a great yield, but aren't as profitable. This analysis let's you change your plans for next year to grow your profits.
Compare profitability of seed trials
Select Varieties from the Compare menu to see the profitability of each variety on the field. This option will only be there if the field has more than one variety. In the list view, such fields have this icon:
Key metrics for each variety are on the left. You can see more details for a variety by clicking on the map.
You can also get a more detailed comparison with bar graphs by clicking Graph & Details:
Get metrics for an area of interest
Want to investigate application trials or other zones in a field? From the Compare menu, select Area of Interest and easily create your own boundaries:
You can easily draw complex boundaries with the different tools and even select whether to add to or remove from the boundary. Save it when you're done, and you'll be able to come back to it.
Exactly like seed varieties, get metrics on that area compared to the rest of the field. For example, see if the corners on this pivot were worth planting. Maybe not!
Other Tips
For profit analysis, control the source of financial data with Settings
Click Settings to select the budget to use and whether to use Plan or Actual indirect costs. You'll want to select Actual once you've entered all or at least most of your actual land costs, overheads, other revenue, etc. Settings work the same way as in Analytics. In fact, if you've entered your Settings in Analytics, you're good to go because Zone Economics and Analytics share Settings.
NOTE: Selecting a budget is required to get Profit metrics.
Use after harvest; You need a combine record
If you try to view Profit prior to harvest, such as on a 2023 field, you will see this message:
You can adjust Profit "buckets"
If you'd like to adjust the $/acre thresholds on Profit maps, click Edit, enter your changes, and click Save.
Now that you have the basics down, explore Zone Economics and see what having clear data by zone can do for the profitability of your farm.