Understanding Groups and Tags for Profitability
Cattle360 lets you track profitability beyond just categories. Groups and Tags give you flexible ways to slice your financial data and answer questions like “How much did I spend on Pasture A?” or “What's the profitability of my fall calving program?”
Groups
Groups in the financial system are the same groups you use elsewhere in Cattle360 (e.g., animal groups). They come in two types:
- Static Groups — Manually managed lists (e.g., “Fall 2025 Calves”, “Registered Herd”).
- Smart Groups — Automatically populated based on rules you define (e.g., all active cows over 3 years old).
When you assign a transaction to a group, you're saying “this income or expense is related to this group of animals or this operational segment.”
When to Use Groups
- Tracking costs associated with a specific herd or set of animals.
- Comparing expenses across different segments of your operation.
- Rolling up income and expenses for a specific operational group.
Tags
Tags are lightweight, flexible labels created specifically for financial profitability tracking. Unlike groups, tags are not tied to animal records — they're purely financial labels.
When to Use Tags
- Cross-cutting cost tracking that doesn't fit neatly into one group (e.g., “Vet Expenses Q1”, “Drought Relief”, “Show Season”).
- Tagging transactions that span multiple groups.
- Creating temporary views for a specific period or event.
- When one transaction needs to appear in multiple profitability views.
Groups vs. Tags — Quick Comparison
| Feature | Groups | Tags |
|---|---|---|
| Tied to animal records | Yes | No |
| Types | Static, Smart | Simple label |
| Use case | Herd/operational segment tracking | Flexible cross-cutting views |
| Multiple per transaction | Yes | Yes |
Assigning Groups and Tags
Both groups and tags are assigned on the transaction form. You can assign multiple groups and multiple tags to a single transaction.
See Assigning Transactions to Groups and Tags for step-by-step instructions.
Viewing Profitability
Once you've assigned groups or tags to transactions, you can view the profitability report filtered by any group or tag. This shows income, expenses, and net profit/loss for just the transactions assigned to that group or tag.
See Viewing the Profitability Report for details.