Jobs, crews, tallies, wages and invoicing for shearing teams working across farms
An offline-first field operations platform for shearing contractors, covering farm jobs, crew assignment, sheep tallies, per-head wages, VAT invoicing, payments and expenses.
- Product
- ShearFlow (a Lumko product)
- Status
- Lumko productA Lumko product, developed with shearing contractors as early users.
- Connectivity
- Works fully offline
The challenge
Shearing contractors run crews across many farms in a season, often far from mobile coverage. Tallies are counted per shearer and wages calculated per sheep. The farmer then has to be invoiced accurately. Doing this in notebooks and spreadsheets leads to disputes, delayed payments and little visibility of how the season is going.
What we did
We built a mobile app that works fully offline in the shearing shed, backed by a central platform. Contractors create jobs at client farms and assign crews. They record tallies per shearer as the work happens and sync when they reach coverage. Wages are calculated from the tallies, VAT invoices are generated for the farmer, and payments, proof of payment and expenses are tracked against each job.
The result
Contractors get one record of each job, from the tally in the shed to the invoice and payment, which reduces disputes and gives them a clear view of the season. It shows how we approach agricultural technology: start with the field, then build up to the data.
How the system fits together
Who uses it
- Shearing contractors
- Crew leaders
- Farm clients
The platform
- Farm jobs and crew assignment
- Per-shearer tallies (offline)
- Wage calculation
- VAT invoicing and payments
- Expenses
What it produces
- Crew wages per job
- Farmer invoices
- Season reporting
Built in the shed, not the office
The defining constraint is the environment: a shearing shed on a farm, often without signal, with work moving fast. Everything a crew leader needs works offline, and the app syncs when it can.
From tally to invoice
The tally is the single source of truth for both the shearers’ wages and the farmer’s invoice. Capturing it once, at the point of work, removes the re-counting and reconciliation that otherwise follows every job.