How costs are split across lots

Some costs belong to a single lot - a bag of starter feed fed to one broiler batch. Many do not. An electricity bill, a delivery charge, or a vet visit often covers several lots at once. Allocation is how PoultryDesk turns one shared expense into a fair per-lot share, so every lot's profit reflects its true costs.

There is one allocation engine and one set of methods. Every expense that is split goes through the same path, so the numbers are consistent and always add up to the original amount to the cent.

Allocation methods

When you allocate an expense you choose how it should be split:

• Direct - the whole expense belongs to one lot. Nothing is split.
• Equal split - divided evenly across the chosen lots.
• By bird count - split in proportion to how many birds each lot has. A lot with twice the birds carries twice the share.
• By bird-days - split by flock size over time. Good for labour, rent, and utilities across Lots that were present for different parts of a period.
• By feed used - split from the effective Actual and Estimated Feed kg in the chosen window. The default is the seven Organization days ending on the allocation date. Good for costs that scale with intake.
• By house area - split in proportion to the floor area each lot occupies. Good for rent, heating, and lighting.
• By revenue - split in proportion to each Lot's recorded revenue.
• By production - split in proportion to recorded production, such as eggs collected.
• Custom ratio - you set the ratio between lots yourself.
• Manual - you type each lot's exact amount.

Whatever method you pick, PoultryDesk uses fair rounding so the split always sums back to the original total - no stray cents left over.

For By feed used, PoultryDesk freezes the exact date window and per-Lot Feed kg on the new allocation. Later Feed capture, correction, or backfill can change a future allocation, but it never rewrites the prior split. If every selected Lot has zero effective Feed in the window, PoultryDesk rejects the allocation as No Feed basis instead of recording a false completed split.

Allocating an expense

1. Open Expenses to allocate. This worklist holds every expense that has not yet been split - the ones with no rule and no hint.
2. For each expense, choose the lots it covers and the method.
3. Submit. The split is recorded and each lot's financial summary updates within seconds.

Save a rule for next time

If you split the same kind of cost the same way every month, save your choice as an allocation rule - for example "always split vet bills by bird count" or "always split the electricity bill by house area". Next time a matching expense arrives, PoultryDesk applies the rule automatically, so it never lands in the worklist.

Changing an allocation

If you split an expense wrongly, you re-allocate it. PoultryDesk records the new split as a fresh allocation that supersedes the old one - the previous split stays in the history rather than being overwritten. Re-running an allocation always produces the same result from the same inputs, so the books stay auditable.

See also

• Recording sales and expenses
• Invoices and payments