You might be asking yourself, "Why pay for farm software, like Microgreen Manager, when I can do the same in Excel for free?" We’re not here to stop you from using Excel, if that’s your prerogative. Give us a chance, though, to convince you why Microgreen Manager is the better option. If you're not convinced by the end of the article, I linked to a free Excel-based crop planner I built years ago.
Microgreen Manager is crop planning and order management software built specifically for microgreen farmers. All you have to do is enter your crop parameters and order information. Microgreen Manager will calculate how many trays to plant and when to perform each step in the production process. Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are spreadsheet applications capable of organizing, analyzing, and visualizing data. Excel and Sheets are adaptable for many uses, like recording microgreen data. We compare features from Microgreen Manager to its closest equivalent in Excel or Sheets.
| Function | Microgreen Manager | Microsoft Excel & Google Sheets |
|---|---|---|
| Coding vs. No Coding | Microgreen Manager is purpose-built for microgreen farms of all sizes. You don’t have to know how to code or program any formulas. | You need to know how to build formulas in Excel. You’ll use functions like VLOOKUP and AVERAGEIF to create the appropriate functionality. If you delete or modify a formula, it’s important to know how it was built and how to fix it. It will take time to learn the various functions and how they work, and then to build the workbook. |
| Team Access & Permissions | Invite your team and give them permissions based on their roles. There's no need to worry about employees or virtual assistants messing with your recurring orders or crop parameters. | You can invite team members to collaborate on the workbook, but with limited options. Spreadsheet softwares usually allow invitees to view only, comment, or create edits. Track changes, if enabled, allow you to follow any edits made by colleagues. |
| Recurring Orders | Create standing orders with various frequencies. You can create standing orders for any number of days or weeks and any day of the week. The software can handle unlimited recurring orders, all with different frequencies. | Put the customer name in the first column. Their order frequency goes in the second column. Their order contents go in the third column and beyond. Manually determine the next few delivery dates. Repeat for all your customers. |
| Calculating Tray Counts & Safety Margins | Microgreen Manager knows the average yield per tray for each of your crops. With information about all your orders and their delivery dates, you can instantly see how many trays to plant of each variety and when. If you added a safety margin for certain crops, the additional volume is automatically included in the tray calculations. | Use basic multiplication and SUM or SUMIF formulas to calculate the weight of each crop needed on each harvest day. Divide those numbers by the average yield per tray for each crop to determine the number of trays to plant. If you want a safety margin, multiply each crop’s tray count by an additional percentage. |
| Production Tasks & Task Timing | Microgreen Manager knows the duration of each step in each crop’s lifecycle, as well as the delivery date for all orders. With this information, the software can work backwards from the delivery dates to tell you when to perform each production step - soak, plant, under lights, and more. | Create another tab in Excel dedicated to outlining the duration of each step for each crop. For any future delivery date, use VLOOKUP to find the crop. Repeatedly subtract the duration of each step to find the completion date. This can be confusing and hard to keep track of. The VLOOKUP function is core to how I made this feature work in the Excel document linked at the end of this article. |
| Non-Production Tasks | Running a farm involves more than just growing microgreens. You have non-production tasks too, like filter replacements, mopping, taking out the trash, and performance reviews. You can tell Microgreen Manager about all your non-production tasks and give each a custom frequency. | You can create a list of non-production tasks for your farm. In the adjacent columns, you can manually enter the future dates for completing those tasks. You can format each dated cell to highlight green if it matches today's date. That’s how you can “easily” identify when to complete these non-production tasks. |
| The Dashboard & Tasks Summaries | The Dashboard summarizes your relevant work for the day and the week. There's no need to click between tabs, create lists, or wonder if you’re overdue for any work. Every production and non-production task is in one place, accessible at a glance. | To prevent overcrowding, you’ll want to keep recurring orders, one-off orders, non-production activities, and production tasks on separate tabs. To determine your tasks for the day and the week, grab a pen and paper. Rotate between your Excel tabs, look for items dated for today and this week, and then write them down. |
| Farm Reports | Farm reports automatically update with each planting - no data entry is required. Quickly see your most popular crops and how much seed you’re using for each. | If you manually record info about each tray you plant, you can use AVERAGEIF and SUMIF functions to analyze the data. You can generate the same information as our Farm Report, but only if you keep up with your data entry. |
If you're not convinced Microgreen Manager is better, I can offer you a custom Excel file for crop planning. I built it myself three years ago, long before Microgreen Manager existed. It’s free, and it includes instructions for how it works and how to get started. If you “break” one of the functions, though, don’t ask me for help. I can’t remember how to fix that old thing.
Stress Free Production Planner for Advanced Microgreen Growers (Excel-Based)
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