Hay bale records: how many are left in each row, with no internet
Short answer: keep one list of rows and one list of bale moves. Every time you stack bales, write a plus number. Every time you feed, write a minus number. Group the moves by row and each row shows what is left, with the farm total underneath. It works on a laptop with no internet. If you want it on a phone in the field with no signal, read where this is honest first.
On the farmOS forum a farmer wrapped hay bales and kept them “in numbered rows”, with straw in the barn, and asked: “I want to be able to track hay and straw bale usage.” They wanted two things: how many bales are left in each row, and which rows were fed on each day. The first answer said it was only partly possible, with “a spreadsheet to total inventory”. Two years later another user found the bale counts spread over many rows of records and hard to read as one number. The farmer came back that November still working out how to see bales per row and the total “at a glance”. (The thread, read 4 November 2026.)
Two numbers answer that question: bales left per row, and the total. You should not have to work either one out by hand.
How the lists fit together
| List | What one row is | Points at |
|---|---|---|
| Rows | One stack: row number, where it is, hay or straw, which cutting and year | |
| Bale moves | One change: date, how many bales (plus when stacked, minus when fed or sold), who it went to, a note | A row |
Group the bale moves by row and turn on the total for the bales column. Each row then shows its own line with the bales left, and the bottom line is everything on the farm. Group by date instead and you see which rows were fed on each day. Open a row and you see every move it ever had.
A log that lives on the laptop
Bionic Forms builds a small app from a spreadsheet or a sentence, such as “keep my rows of wrapped hay and straw, and every time I stack or feed bales from a row”. Our desktop app for Windows, macOS or Linux keeps a full, encrypted copy on the computer. With no connection at all you can:
- Log a feeding when you come in, as a minus number on the row you fed from.
- Attach a photo of the stack or a hay test (files on records).
- Print the counts as a page for the barn wall (how printing works).
- Search and sort: everything fed in January, every bale of second cutting, the rows that are nearly empty.
When the laptop finds a connection again, the changes go up by themselves, so a second computer in the house sees the same counts.
Getting old records in
If your counts are already in a spreadsheet, drop it on our home page. Each sheet comes in as its own list. Free covers unlimited apps and 10,000 entries per app, which is a lot of feedings.
Where this is honest
- No formulas. The count left is the total of the plus and minus numbers in the group. It is not worked out in a cell on the row itself. If you want a number on the row, a workflow can update it each time you save a move.
- No offline phone app yet. Offline is the desktop app only. On a phone, ours runs in the browser and needs a signal.
- No scales, tags or barcode readers. Bale counts and weights are what you type.
- Set it up while you have a connection. The AI that builds the app runs on our server. Using it afterwards does not need one.
- We are small and pre-launch. We say plainly which parts are not finished, and your data can always be exported again.
Build it now. The box already says what this page is about. Change it if you like.
About 25 seconds. No signup to see the result.
Already keep a spreadsheet? Drop it on the home page instead.
Or open the live demo first. No email.
Rather not do it yourself? Tell us what you track and we will build a working version and show you. No fee.
More: a tractor and attachment log and sheep flock records.