I’ll add one more long-form thought to the conversation, because this HAS been good, despite the many false starts and miscommunications.
When I had my barn open - I absolutely tracked what each boarder used when they were here. Not after the fact initially, but as a calculation up front first in a spreadsheet and then I custom built a system as noted above when I was trying to manage the barn from afar and struggling to get good inventory numbers. Sadly, it did not cost me the same as an indoor arena. It took me about 3 weeks worth of programming effort and to run it as a SaaS app that my employee could access cost me ~$90 in costs. I built in invoice payments and also auto-billing based on things like training rides etc. Again, you don’t have to sit and track it, after you get off the horse, you pull up your phone, click the horse, click training ride, jot down some notes and save it.
I don’t have it active for sale for other people right now, so this is NOT an ad (although I’m thinking of OSSing it, so if anyone is interested I can help them get it up on their own cloud system), but I did write the system, and did have thoughts that maybe it would be useful to others. Had it cost hundreds of thousands, I probably would have chosen the indoor because that does influence boarder choice of a certain type of boarder (the sporthorse boarder) that enjoyed the level of care that I was accustomed to providing. And my salary in tech, even as a CEO at my level, is not an indoor in 3 weeks. Again, mores the pity. Man would that make life easier!
Anyway, if Horse A was supposed to get 25 lbs of hay per day and Horse B was supposed to get 15 lbs, that went into my spreadsheet. Same thing with grain, supplements, etc. etc. That fed my printable feed charts and I could print off my stall placards. I did this because I got tired of employees saying they couldn’t read my handwriting or the board getting out of date because someone texted me asking for something, and by the time it came time for dinner I didn’t have it updated on the board because I still had a life.
I also tracked meds, farrier work, veterinary work etc. even if I didn’t pay for it. That was mostly because when the vet would come for an owner invariably I would be asked when xyz was done, so I wanted to be sure I could pull it up quickly, but also the vet would ask when I did xyz and I’d always go “uhhhh…idk…check your records?” and that was embarrassing. Nice to be able to pull it up and see on horse B that I had done xyz on x date and here was the follow up care.
There are other things that I characterized and put into my system which was initially just spreadsheets - such as ease of handling, messiness, destructiveness, etc etc. I used those as multipliers. So I knew down to the penny what each horse cost me in both financial numbers but also in stress on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis, as well as what the income from each horse was as well as any lessons or other “extras” that I did offer such as yoga or special ride days were participated in.
I didn’t expose it to the boarders, as I had one set full board price, but that was something I absolutely tracked because as a good business owner in other businesses (not boarding as it appears to be too hard to do in boarding businesses from the feedback I’m getting), you want to know which customers are your best customers and optimize for those. It’s not always obvious, because it’s not JUST the customers that cost you the least. It’s the ones that buy your services at an optimum price, are loyal, and appreciative. Without that data, we’re usually subject to bias based on who we talked to last. Having data to track is just normal in my other businesses.
When I closed my barn because of the move, I built in the bedding tracking. I built that screen so that the helper can track by clicking the horse, and a big plus/minus button, sensitive enough to do with their gloves on, to say how many bags they added and correct their own errors. I also then backed that up with asking them to do a monthly inventory. I’ve already stated why I did that, but it was mostly because I struggled getting the staff to do as they needed to do from 600 miles away, so I employed methods from corporate to help me out. It worked and I no longer had the “We have no bedding left” emergencies or the “Why do we still have bedding left, I ordered it 3 months ago” suspicions.
So - this is why I said “don’t worry about tracking” to barn owners because I wanted to consider boarder reactions to the upfront customizability of the boarding and the ability to have some insight, but I also didn’t want to freak out barn owners with the need to track every little thing. I do, and that’s my privilege coming from a background like mine, but that doesn’t mean they need to follow suit.
When people say they want barns to run more like businesses - this IS how non-ag businesses are run. They know down to every sesame seed how many are on your bun. With service companies, they know to the minute how long your car is in the shop. It’s the way to make really good, data driven, decisions and optimize profits.
With that I’ll say - thanks for all the input folks - lots of interesting discussions 
