Farm expense categories are used to organise expenses according to the type of cost incurred on your farm.

Instead of keeping every farm expense in one general list, you can group related expenses under categories such as Feed, Medication, Transportation, Labour, Equipment, Utilities, or Farm Maintenance.

For example, several purchases of pig feed may be recorded as separate farm expenses. When these expenses are assigned to a Feed category, Pigax can group them together, making it easier to locate and review feed-related costs.

Why farm expense categories are important

Farm expense categories provide structure to your financial records. They help farm owners and managers understand how money is being spent across different areas of the farm.

Properly categorised expenses can make it easier to:

• Locate related expense records.
• Review spending within a particular area of the farm.
• Identify categories where farm costs are increasing.
• Prepare organised information when balancing farm accounts.
• Separate operational costs such as feed, medication, labour, and maintenance.
• Reduce the time required to review a long list of farm expenses.

Categories and expenses are different records

A category is a grouping method. It does not represent an actual purchase, payment, or financial transaction.

A farm expense, on the other hand, is an actual cost recorded on the farm. It may include information such as the expense description, amount, date, and category.

Creating a category does not automatically add expenses to it. After creating a category, you must assign new or existing farm expenses to that category.

To learn how to create a category, see How to Create a Farm Expense Category.

To learn how to place expenses under a category, see How to Assign a Farm Expense to a Category.

How categories support expense filtering

Once expenses have been assigned to categories, you can use the category filter on the farm expense overview to display expenses from one category at a time.

For example, selecting the Medication category will show only the farm expenses that have been assigned to that category. Other expenses will remain recorded but will be temporarily hidden from the filtered overview.

Filtering does not change, delete, or move any expense. It only limits the records displayed on the screen.

To learn how to use this feature, see How to Filter Farm Expenses by Category.

Managing categories over time

The way you organise farm expenses may change as your farm grows. Pigax allows you to update a category name when the existing name no longer accurately describes the expenses grouped under it.

You may also delete an unused category. However, a category cannot be deleted while it contains expenses.

For more information, see:

• How to Update a Farm Expense Category
• How to Delete a Farm Expense Category