Short course
Advanced Excel for farm management
A farm is managed with figures, and most farms in Burkina Faso keep none in a usable form. Costs are known from memory, margins are estimated by feel, and nobody can say for sure which enterprise keeps the farm alive and which one is ruining it. Producers work hard, but they are flying blind.
- Duration
- Short module, 5 sessions of 3 hours, 15 hours
- Format
- In person or online
- Credential
- Certificate of attendance
Tuition75,000 XOF
By the end of the programme, you will be able to
- Structure a clean, durable farm management workbook that someone else can understand
- Keep tracking sheets by plot, by batch of animals or by production enterprise
- Record and track inputs, feed, treatments and labour
- Calculate a full production cost, a gross margin and a break-even point for each enterprise
- Track stocks of inputs and products, with automatic alert thresholds
- Keep a simple cash book and anticipate cash shortfalls
- Build a farm dashboard that can be read on a single page
- Compare two seasons, two batches or two plots and explain the differences
- Use artificial intelligence to write, explain and correct Excel formulas
- Have your records cleaned, recoded and commented by an assistant, then check the result
- Automate the collection of field records through an online form linked to the workbook
- Prepare a costed file that can be presented to a bank, a project or a partner
Who it is for
Target audience
The module is for producers and farm managers: crop and livestock farmers, managers of poultry, pig or fish farms, managers of market gardening schemes, extension advisers, cooperative and producer union staff, agricultural project staff, agri-food entrepreneurs.
Prerequisites
Two requirements:
- Be able to use a computer and have opened an Excel workbook before, even without mastering it
- Have a laptop, or rent one from the centre for the duration of the module
No diploma is required and no prior knowledge of formulas is needed. Each participant is invited to bring the real figures of their farm, even if they are incomplete or kept in a notebook: the workbook built during the course is theirs, and they take it home.
Detailed program
5 sessions · 15 h of teaching
- The design mistakes that make a workbook unusable after three months
- The single database principle: one row per transaction, one column per piece of information
- Separating input sheets, reference lists and results sheets
- Building the farm's reference lists: enterprises, plots, batches, inputs, suppliers, customers
- Drop-down lists through data validation, so a name is never spelt two ways again
- Number, date, quantity and CFA franc amount formats
- Structured tables, range names and absolute references
- The plot sheet and the animal batch sheet: which information is essential
- Protecting sheets and formulas against accidental overwriting
- Exercise: create the workbook for your own farm, with its real reference lists
- The field operations log and the season calendar
- Tracking a batch of animals: headcount, mortality, weight, laying, feed conversion
- Tracking feed and inputs: receipts, issues, consumption by enterprise
- The health register: vaccinations, treatments, withdrawal periods, costs
- Tracking family and hired labour, and valuing it
- Conditional calculation functions to total by enterprise, by month and by season
- Lookup functions to bring in a price or characteristic automatically
- Date calculations: rearing period, age, expected harvest or slaughter date
- The usual technical indicators and interpreting them honestly
- Exercise: enter a complete season and produce its technical indicators
- Variable costs and fixed costs, the distinction that determines everything else
- Building a full production cost, including family labour and depreciation
- Cost price per kilo, litre, bag, unit and hectare
- Gross margin by enterprise and net margin for the farm
- The break-even point and the minimum acceptable selling price
- Comparing two enterprises, two seasons or two technical practices
- Price assumptions and simulations with two-variable data tables
- The scenario manager to test a rise in feed prices
- Charts showing cost structure and margin trends
- Exercise: calculate the real profitability of each enterprise on your farm
- The stock card with receipts, issues, balance and valuation
- Alert thresholds and conditional formatting that flags a critical stock
- The order to place: calculating needs and restocking lead times
- The cash book: receipts, payments, cash balance
- The season's cash flow forecast and spotting months under pressure
- Tracking supplier credit and credit sales
- Pivot tables to summarise without rewriting formulas
- Suitable charts and the readability rules to follow
- The one-page dashboard: the eight figures a farmer must see every month
- Exercise: build your farm dashboard and update it live
- What artificial intelligence can do for a farm manager, and what it cannot do
- Writing a precise request: role, task, context, expected format
- Having a complex formula written and explained line by line, then checking it yourself
- Having a formula that returns an error corrected, without spending the evening on it
- Having a hand-entered record cleaned and recoded: names, units, dates, duplicates
- Having a results table commented and getting an analysis text to rework
- Producing the text of a financing file from your own figures
- Generating a simple production or cash flow forecast and discussing its limits
- Systematic checking: why a figure produced by a machine must always be verified
- The data you never send to an external service
- Collecting field records through an online form and retrieving them automatically in the workbook
- Automating a monthly dashboard email, without programming
- Final exercise: finalise your workbook, produce your commented analysis and present your results to the group
- Presentation of attestations
Assessment and certification
The training attestation is issued to participants who have attended at least four of the five sessions and submitted their finalised management workbook. It states the module title, the 15-hour duration, the dates and the skills acquired, and carries a unique number with a verification code.
Participants also receive:
- The farm management workbook they built, with their own data
- A ready-to-use model workbook for poultry, pig, market gardening and cereal enterprises
- The complete course material in PDF, session by session
- A quick reference of Excel formulas useful in farm management
- A library of ready-to-use prompts for artificial intelligence assistants
- A model costed financing file
- A monthly farm management checklist
Upcoming sessions
Next dates being prepared
Leave your email: we will let you know as soon as registration opens.
Frequently asked questions
75,000 XOF per participant. Training for a team or an organisation is quoted on request.
5 sessions of 3 hours, 15 hours.
Yes: you can attend onsite or online, as you prefer.
Two requirements: be able to use a computer and have opened an Excel workbook before, even without mastering it ; have a laptop, or rent one from the centre for the duration of the module ; no diploma is required and no prior knowledge of formulas is needed. Each participant is invited to bring the real figures of their farm, even if they are incomplete or kept in a notebook: the workbook built during the course is theirs, and they take it home.
A certificate of attendance is issued at the end of the course.
Fill in the online enrolment request: no payment is taken on the site. The firm reviews your application, then contacts you to confirm your place and the payment terms. No session is scheduled yet: leave your email on this page to be told when registration opens.
Join the next cohort
Cohorts are deliberately small to guarantee genuine individual support. Reserve your place or ask us your questions.