Plaashek · Farm software
Plaashek means farm gate — the point where the work starts and where everything you produce eventually leaves. Orchards, herds, vineyards, packhouses or something nobody has written software for yet: we come through the gate, see how it actually runs, and build what makes it work.
Installs from a link
One link, one tap, and it's on the home screen like any other app. No store account, no approvals, nothing to download and chase.
Offline first
Work where there is no signal at all. Everything saves to the phone first and uploads on its own once you're back in coverage.
Updates instantly
We fix something and every phone has it the next time it opens. Nobody is running last season's version.
One build, every device
Phone in the orchard, tablet in the packhouse, laptop in the office — same app, same numbers, no copies to reconcile.
The apps
Start where the pressure is. Every app runs on the same blocks, camps, lines and people, so the second one you add already knows your farm.
The season against its own history, the weather record and the risk ahead — read straight from what Boord captures, with your own crop estimate tracked against the picking.
A notebook for the orchard. Dictate in Afrikaans or English, add photos, a block and tags — saved on the phone with the location and weather, even with no signal. What needs doing becomes a to-do list.
Harvest and packhouse, pick to truck. Every crate weighed to its picker in the field, loads received at the packhouse, each treatment and packing step recorded, and pallets dispatched with their paperwork — one record from block to buyer.
Every animal by ear tag, and what happens to it: births, weighings, treatments, moves between camps, sales and deaths. Recorded at the crush with no signal, with where each animal is, its last weight and its withdrawal period worked out for you.
Chemical and fertiliser stock, what was drawn for which block, and what is left on the shelf — with expiry dates and safety sheets where you can find them.
Meter and level readings, pump hours and irrigation applied per block — so the water story is a record rather than an argument.
What was sprayed or fertigated — which block, which product, and when it's safe to pick again — booked automatically against Stoor's stock and Water's meter readings so nothing gets typed in twice, and ready-made evidence for a GlobalG.A.P. or SIZA audit.
Services, breakdowns, job cards and diesel per machine — so you know what a tractor actually costs you before it stands still in October.
Audit evidence pulled from the records you already keep. GlobalG.A.P., SIZA and buyer requirements assembled from Boord, Kudde and Stoor instead of dug up in a hurry.
A time clock at the packhouse door. Workers scan their Boord badge on the way in and out, and hours are paid with daily and weekly overtime worked out for you.
Insight
Every entry your team makes should come back as something you can make decisions with — not just another report waiting for someone to read it.
Forecast conditions read against your spray programme, harvest window and labour plan, so the call gets made on Thursday instead of explained on Monday.
What goes wrong on the same block every year, surfaced from your own notes and data — no spreadsheet archaeology required.
Block to pallet, herd to treatment. When the auditor or the buyer asks next month, the answer is already in the system.
How we work
Software that doesn't match how your people already work gets abandoned by week three. So we start with time on the farm, not a feature list.
We ride along, watch what gets written on which clipboard, and find where the numbers actually come apart.
Your camps, blocks, cultivars, teams, lines and spray programmes loaded in — so day one looks like your farm, not a demo.
On the phones they already carry, in Afrikaans or English, until it is second nature. Every app ships with a full manual, training material and a quick reference guide for the people who only need the one screen.
Season support on WhatsApp, and changes as the operation changes. You speak to the people who built it.
Custom builds
Feedlot rations, nursery stock counts, cold-store movements, contractor billing, intake for a crop nobody else supports — the records that never fit anyone's standard system. If it lives in a workbook only one person understands, and the farm stops when they're away, it should be an app.
Working together
Pick the one app that solves this season's biggest problem. Monthly licence per farm, setup and training included.
Priced per farm
Pick the solutions your operation needs — harvest, livestock, stores, water, workshop, labour, etc. — all on one set of data. Best value once more than one person is recording.
Bundled licence
Start with a discovery, then a fixed quote for the build. Support and changes on a retainer after that.
GET A QUOTE
Prices depend on hectares, herd size, packhouse throughput and how many people record. Send a message and we'll give you a number the same week.
“Every carton of litchis we export can be traced back to the block and the team that picked it. The digital apps took the paper out of the operation — the pickers get paid on accurate counts, and for the first time I have real data to work with.”
FAQ
An app you install from a link instead of an app store. You send someone a web address, they open it once and tap "add to home screen", and from then on it behaves like any other app: its own icon on the home screen, opens full screen with no browser bars, works with no signal, and keeps its data on the phone. Your people don't need a Play Store or Apple ID, they don't need to remember a password for an app account, and nobody has to sideload an APK that arrives on WhatsApp.
The practical difference shows up when something needs to change. We deploy a fix and every phone on the farm has it the next time it opens — no update to chase around, no seasonal worker three versions behind, and no app-store review sitting in a queue for a week while your harvest carries on. It also means one build serves the foreman's Android, the packhouse tablet and the office laptop, instead of three separate things to maintain.
Yes — that is the whole point of building it this way. The app itself and the data your team works with live on the phone, so it opens and runs the same whether there are four bars of signal or none. Captures are written to the phone first and held in a register: bin counts, treatments, photos, voice notes, everything. The person recording sees it saved immediately, because it is saved — the sync is a separate problem the app handles on its own.
When the phone finds signal again — at the shed, at the gate, in the yard or on the way to town — the data uploads in the background, in order, without anyone pressing a button. If the battery dies or the app is closed halfway through a block, nothing is lost; it picks up where it stopped. And because each device keeps its own data, two people recording in different parts of the farm never overwrite each other: the records merge when they both come back into coverage.
Almost never. Any reasonably recent Android phone or iPhone runs it, and that includes the entry-level handsets most farm staff actually carry. The apps are built light on purpose — small downloads, little storage, no heavy graphics — because the phone in the field is rarely the newest one on the farm. The interfaces are designed for those conditions too: big buttons that work through gloves, high contrast that stays readable in full sun, and screens that can be completed one-handed while you're doing something else.
If you are buying devices for the field anyway, we'll tell you what to look for — battery life over specification, a screen bright enough to matter, a rugged case rather than an expensive phone — and which models have survived dust, heat and a long day in the back of a bakkie on other farms. There's no hardware to buy from us; the advice is just part of getting it working.
You do. Every record your people capture belongs to the farm, not to us — and your data never leaves the farm: nothing is sold, shared with a third party, or used to train anything outside your own operation. Export to an Excel spreadsheet whenever you like, on your own schedule, and if you ever leave you take the full history with you in a format you can open without us. No exit fee, no data held hostage, no last-minute negotiation. We'd rather earn the next season than lock you in.
On the technical side we fit in with what you have. If there is already a server, an accounting package, a scale system or a packhouse line with its own software, we work alongside it and integrate where it makes sense. If there isn't much yet, we'll recommend what has actually worked on other farms — backups, connectivity, who holds which login — rather than sell you infrastructure you don't need.
For the existing apps, usually a week or two. Week one is the farm visit and setup: we load your blocks, camps, cultivars, teams, lines and spray programmes, connect whatever data you already keep, and check it against what is actually on the ground. Week two is training on the phones your people already carry, followed by a live run on real work — a day of harvest, an intake, a treatment round — with us on hand to fix what doesn't fit. After that you are recording for real, and we stay available on WhatsApp through the first season.
A custom build depends on scope. It starts with a fixed-price discovery of a week or two, which ends in a written scope and a firm quote — so you know the cost and the timeline before you commit to anything. Small solutions are often live within a month; a system that spans the packhouse and the office takes longer, and we'd rather say that up front than halfway through.
Who you are dealing with
Thirty-five years building infrastructure that has to work in difficult places — leading the USAID-funded Power Africa East Africa Energy Program and the Empower East and Central Africa Program, and before that utility reform at Umeme in Uganda and Eko Electricity Distribution in Nigeria.
Same problem, different sector: operations on paper, numbers nobody trusts, systems that fail on contact with real conditions. Sustainability is the point — solutions that keep working long after the consultant has left.
Behind him is a small team that builds, sets up and supports every app. The people who answer your WhatsApp are the people who wrote the code, and there is always someone available during the season.
A message is enough to start. We'll ask a few questions, and if we're not the right solution we'll say so.