Electronic Record-Keeping Book for 4-H
Educator Resources
Oh record books. If you are, or were a 4-H member..or parent, we're sure that you know what we mean. While a necessary part of the whole 4-H project experience, they often get set aside until after the project is done and it's time to turn them in...which can lead to some stress for everyone, right?
Most of us who have gone through the experience can remember going through old reciepts, piecing things together, and trying to make sure that everything is in the right spot with the right number so you don't have to white out incorrect entries, or worse, start all over.
About a year ago, we shared a resource with you that may help with at least some of that...and excel workbook for tracking information for 4-H livestock projects! Since school is out for many students now, and livestock projects are in full swing, we wanted to share this resource again.
This excel workbook contains multiple individual sheets that match up to different sections of your 4-H Livestock Project Recordbook including:
- Project Exhibits/Shows
- Information on Project Animals
- Feed Expenses
- Health and Veterinary Expenses
- Other Expenses
- Sale Animal Income
- Other Income
- And a Financial Summary
Information can be entered as you get it (or all at once at the end), and is easily corrected for mistakes. The sheets will keep running tallies for each of the different sections, which makes it easy to see how much you are spending and making. At the end, the totals from each of the sheets can be put into the financial summary to give an overall snapshot of the profit or loss of the project.
BONUS: If you're animals are not kept close to your house, you can print the sheets off and keep them in a folder or notebook so that you can fill them out as needed, and then just bring the sheets home to update! You can also put some notebook paper in the folder/notebook so that you can keep a daily log of the work that you did with your livestock project.
This is a great way to start learning how to keep track of income and expenses and look at the profit or loss; life skills!! The information can be easily transferred to the record book too.
Download the excel workbook. Please feel free to share with any 4-H members, parents, extension agents, or anyone else you think may benefit from this resource!
This excel workbook serves as a general template to help keep accurate records. Farm Credit of the Virginias and the Farm Credit Knowledge Center are not responsible for the accuracy or any decisions based on these spreadsheets. Please do not alter these in any way.