I am pretty curious about this perception - so the common perception that I’m hearing from barn owners is that giving people more options makes them complain more.
So - when boarders complain that barn owners are rigid and inflexible, and control freaks, that’s really what they are talking about, right? The opposite side of that perception?
We keep ours at home but when we talk to people who board it seems that the biggest complaint is getting nickled and dimed above the basic board rate.
I think if I was a barn owner my approach would be to go to a higher fix priced approach that covered everything whether you used it or not.
We did have a very specific manure fork and system for our fancy footing but thankfully not hands lol
Another part of the charge for every service- if you have a large amount of employees (and we all know there’s a lot of turnover in the horse world) how on earth do you keep track of everything. What is Billy doesn’t pick Dobbin’s feet on Tuesday but sees Brownie is low on hay and throws him another flake and then doesn’t record either? Even for the small amount of services that we used to charge individually for, I’d have to track down each manager every month get them to then get their teams to turn in all their paperwork for that month. Then get everything entered. Then turn it over to the accountant for actual billing. It was stupid cumbersome
I was thinking you were going to do a complete break down even envisioned there being a meter on the water hose to record water use to wash the pony off 
Oh - I didn’t do it on paper. Lord that would be a pain. No bookkeeper needed for this EXCEPT to look over and finalize the bills if chosen. The whole thing is automated.
They log into the app which tracks their time, get to their task list that has Dobbin’s hoof cleaning on it, and they literally click a button saying they completed the task. Sure, they may forget to click the button, but that means the owner does NOT get charged for it. I did also built in a task list to account for that so that essentially the screen went:
Task list - click done - log any notes - it’s in the system and automatically added to the cost profile of the account.
No paper.
One of the other drivers for this was getting people to actually track their time as I initially paid stall cleaners by the hour. I used to get little scraps of paper weeks later with start time and end times on it. I was like, oh h*ll no. Then I tried commercial systems which were all “too hard”. So I built a new system and based it on their ability to actually use it. Admittedly, I have a small staff, but I wanted it to be SIMPLE.
LOL No, but man would THAT be a high tech barn, wouldn’t it??
I was not going that far. In fact, I didn’t think I went very far at all but apparently it’s light years from current systems. 
actually billing for water use would be fairly simple
I suppose there are water meters, although I’m not sure I’d apply it to a specific horse. I am not a hardware person (software here), but I always thought it would be really neat to have those monitors on auto-waterers as well so that you’d be able to monitor consumption. I don’t know how well they work.
Can you imagine that high tech of a barn? I think that’d be fun to experiment with. I’m not sure if consumers would love that or not?
So then you would need to add the expense of providing every employee with a device to have the app (and then replacing when the break, get lost, etc). What do you do when there isn’t cell or wifi coverage on spots on the farm?
I’d put wifi repeaters and I’ve never had barn staff without a mobile phone. Seems pretty standard now. Heck, an iPad in a good cover mounted in the barn could be good backup if need be.
This reminds me of medical offices where I’ve worked–doctors get so frustrated (and are so inconsistent) even with very needed medical notes they have to record electronically because they are so busy. I can’t imagine someone being paid to work in a busy barn relishing having this additional headache.
lol- this tells me you have not had experience with a large ag operation
use car wash technology have a coin operated control. inset quarters (or tap credit card) for a specific time of use
Most of those medical systems stink from a UI perspective. They are actually used as case studies as a result when you learn UI design. That’s why they are hated. And sure, everyone has something about their jobs that they hate. If, however, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks we all put up with it.
Here’s an article I loved from the Nielsen Norman group about bad UI design causing issues - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/medical-usability/
I have actually. And now there’s even considerable tech in some of those now! The tractors give you automated feedback on where they are in the field by satellite. Agritech is a HUGE field and growing!
Before I went to college for what I did I had a summer internship at the USDA-ARS Pasture Research lab at Penn State. The amount of emerging tech back then (and this was 30 years ago) was amazing. Sure - loads was still manual, but things are evolving fast. I studied pasture grasses and we used big data modeling to determine which grasses and planting systems were likely to be successful based on predicted and historical weather patterns. Really interesting internship and my name is on a paper somewhere for it I loved my time at the Pasture Research Lab and would go intern again in a heartbeat if I could.
Large ag operations are often very sophisticated. Not all of them, of course, and many industries can be improved. It’s the med-smalls that do things more manually.
Horse barns are in the dark ages as far as tech use is concerned. Many don’t even keep good enough records to put together a balance sheet. The balance sheet I got when I bought my barn from the previous owner was…erm…improvised in a word document and not a real balance sheet.
Ah like the new beer taps that charge a card when you tap/swipe them in social clubs now too. When those came out my husband was completely fascinated. They were cool but I don’t drink beer so I was decidedly less fascinated.
I’m not sure I’d want to go that far, but maybe someday that will be the norm. I have seen some new things like keyed swipe card entry that says when boarders enter/leave. All really interesting to see.
This is NOT my app, so not an ad - but similar to what I built - https://bambooagile.eu/case-studies/stable-horse - I’m trying to thread a needle here so that I don’t get in trouble
This is actually why I mentioned taking a picture of a QR code - that would be even easier than a button click, but you’d lose the task list idea. Although I suppose that could be done afterward.
All problems can be solved. Sure - tech isn’t the answer for all of them, but 50 years ago it’d be hard to imagine you’d be having good discussions with barn owners and boarders across the internet. Or that you’d be able to see your grandkids in another state easily on a device that fits into your pocket. Sci fi writers did, but it’s all normal now. Now, if people don’t use venmo for payments, people are like WTH. Can you imagine telling people 30 years ago they could pay like that?
Having most of the technology (with the exception of the awesome handheld medical scanner things and whatever Beverly Crusher used to provide injections with, routine non-astronaut space travel and auto-generation of tea, earl gray, hot) on Star Trek come to life in my lifetime is pretty darned cool.
Looks similar to Stable Secretary. But at 2 developers with a one month build time and even then only one of the modules is fully built out? That is Serious Money.
Two developers at fully loaded prices, yes. That’s about $30k. But nowhere near the $800k I was quoted for an indoor.
And yes - Stable Secretary is another one - I couldn’t remember the name of it! It’s not terribly expensive. There’s also the one that begins with a C (having a senior moment here…it has a different sort of name that I always get wrong). I did find some of those harder to use, which is why I built my own.
I built mine with RoR in 3 weeks. That was not serious money. Encompasses tracking, invoicing, payments, vet & medical tracking, contract e-signatures and staff task lists and communications. To refine it might be another 3 weeks - it probably would need a touch up as I deal with some of the design quirks because I DID build it for me.
Those are all SaaS offerings that cost little to purchase monthly. They do not need to be custom built for your barn - not anymore. And they don’t cost like enterprise ERP systems to install and maintain. Have credit card in hand and usually you can get a decent system to help you track for < $100 per month. You are NOT getting an indoor for that…not even financed.
I hadn’t looked at Stable Secretary in awhile - thanks for reminding me @dags - it’s gotten a lot better than it was when I initially looked a few years ago.
And yes - this has a LOT of features and both an apple and android app. Mine was a web app, so - cheaper to develop.
They also will enter your records for you. I’m not sure what that service costs - but that’s a nice add on!
I just reupped it at the highest level for 3 horses which was cheap ($3.95) but unfortunately pretty manual comparatively. Maybe the mobile app is better. Definitely doesn’t have the simple tracking.
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