Farm management software in Australia: what AgriWebb and Agworld leave to you

Which farm software covers what?

No single Australian farm product runs a whole agribusiness: each of the main ones is strong in one enterprise and thin elsewhere. That is fine. The job is to pick the right base products and fill the gaps deliberately.

Product	Built for	Strong at	Usually leaves to you
AgriWebb	Livestock and grazing	Mob and individual animal records, mapping, grazing, tasks	Crew labour, processing or direct sales, cross property finance views
Agworld	Cropping and agronomy	Crop plans, agronomist collaboration, central records	Livestock, payroll, sensor data from your own hardware
Figured	Farm finance	Budgeting and forecasting on top of Xero or MYOB	Operational records
eNVD (Integrity Systems)	Livestock consignments	Electronic NVDs, NLIS transfers, offline QR sharing	Anything beyond the consignment

A mixed operation with cattle, some cropping and a seasonal picking crew can easily end up with three subscriptions, a payroll system and a pile of spreadsheets. Custom software rarely replaces the subscriptions. It joins them, and it covers the records that none of them hold.

What livestock records do you need to integrate?

The Livestock Production Assurance NVD and the electronic eNVD are legal documents that travel with every animal and declare its food safety and treatment status. Integrity Systems says producers must be accredited under the LPA program to use them, and that eNVDs are free and capture all livestock movement information digitally. The eNVD system also handles NLIS transfers.

Sheep and goat electronic identification is the big change. Integrity Systems says mandatory eID for sheep and goats comes into full effect nationally on 1 January 2027. From then, every movement of a tagged animal has a digital record, and so does every mistake.

Where custom software helps:

• Single source of truth. Pull animal, mob and treatment records from your livestock system so a consignment is never declared from memory.
• Withholding period checks. Block or warn on a sale when a treatment’s withholding period hasn’t expired.
• Scanner integration. Read eID tags from panel readers and wands into your own records, then reconcile against NLIS transfers.
• Exceptions dashboard. Show animals with missing tags, unreconciled movements or overdue treatments.

How do you keep water licence and metering records?

In NSW, large water users must install a pattern approved meter and a Local Intelligence Device that sends hourly water use data to WaterNSW daily. The NSW water department groups users by pump size and entitlement:

Group	Test	What applies
Large by pump size	Surface water pumps 500 mm or larger	Must be compliant now
Large by entitlement, inland	Total entitlement 100 ML or more	Must be compliant now
Large by entitlement, coastal	Total entitlement 100 ML or more	Must be compliant by 1 December 2026
Smaller	More than 15 ML and less than 100 ML	Separate rules (check the department’s metering guidance tool)
Exempt	15 ML or less	Exempt from the metering rules

Your telemetry data already goes to WaterNSW’s Data Acquisition System. A custom dashboard adds what that doesn’t: usage against your allocation per licence, alerts before you run short, a record of every temporary trade, and a view that combines meter data with soil moisture and weather so you decide when to irrigate. Other states have their own regimes, so we confirm the rules for each property’s state during discovery.

What chemical and spray records does the law require?

In NSW, everyone who uses pesticides for commercial or occupational purposes, including farmers and market gardeners, must make a record within 48 hours of each use and keep it for 3 years. The NSW EPA notes that licensed pesticide users must record extra information under the Pesticides Regulation 2017, and that if a label or APVMA permit requires a record, you must make it.

A paper spray diary fails in three ways: it is filled in late, it gets lost, and nobody can search it when the buyer’s auditor or the EPA asks. A field app fixes all three if it:

1. Starts the record when the operator selects the product, with label rate and withholding period loaded.
2. Captures paddock or block from GPS and time from the device.
3. Records weather conditions at the time of spraying, either entered or pulled from a nearby station.
4. Locks the record after submission, with any later correction logged as an amendment.
5. Exports the records your buyers and quality assurance schemes ask for.

How should software handle seasonal workers and piece rates?

Under the Horticulture Award 2020, a pieceworker must be paid at least their hourly award rate, including the 25% casual loading for casuals, multiplied by the hours they worked that day. The Fair Work Ombudsman says that since 28 April 2022 employers must give each pieceworker a signed piecework record before the work starts, listing the start date and time, the task, the piece rate, the hourly rate for their classification and a set statement about the minimum. A new record is needed before any piece rate change.

That makes hours as important as bins. Picking apps that count only units fail the floor test. A sound labour module:

• records clock on and clock off per worker per day, plus units picked
• calculates the hourly floor for each worker each day and tops up pay where piece earnings fall short
• issues and stores piecework records, including any revisions
• gives a worker a copy of their hours and piece rates on request

For workers under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, approved employers sign an Approved Employer Deed and follow its Guidelines, with monitoring that includes regular reporting and analysis of pay data. The PALM FAQ also says employers must appoint a welfare and wellbeing support person who meets all workers in person at least fortnightly. Software can hold those meeting records, accommodation details and approved wage deductions in one place. If you also use labour hire providers, see our labour hire software page.

How do you build apps that work with no signal?

Design the app to work fully offline and treat sync as a background task, not a feature. On many properties the paddock has no coverage at all.

What that means technically:

• records stored locally on the phone or tablet, encrypted
• every record stamped with device time, GPS and user
• a sync queue that retries until the record reaches the server
• clear rules for conflicts, such as two people updating the same mob count
• sensors on LoRaWAN or similar low power networks reporting to a gateway at the shed, rather than relying on mobile data

Our web and mobile apps service covers the build side.

Where does AI add value with satellite, drone and sensor data?

AI is useful for spotting where to look, not for deciding what to do. Reasonable uses:

• Vegetation indices from satellite imagery to flag paddocks with falling feed or crop stress.
• Drone imagery to count stock, trees or plants.
• Forecasts of water use or yield from historical sensor and weather data.
• A plain language assistant that answers questions over your own records, such as “which mobs were drenched last quarter?”

Each output should lead to a person checking the paddock or the record. The data engineering underneath, joining imagery, sensors and farm records into one store, is usually the larger job. Our data engineering service explains how we approach it.

What do agtech builds cost?

These are indicative AUD planning ranges, ex GST, not quotes. Expeed publishes $40,000 to $150,000 as a typical range for mid complexity custom software in Australia.

Build	Includes	Indicative range
Offline field app for spray and stock records	Offline capture, GPS, product library, withholding checks, sync, exports	$40,000 to $110,000
Sensor and water dashboard	Meter and sensor ingestion, allocation tracking, alerts, weather join	$30,000 to $90,000
Crew labour and piece rate module	Clock on, units, hourly floor top up, piecework records, payroll export	$30,000 to $80,000

Cost rises with the number of hardware types, the number of systems you integrate with and how many properties and enterprises the data model has to cover.

How AWLabs approaches farm software

AWLabs has not yet delivered a project for a farm or agribusiness, so we won’t claim agricultural experience. We bring offline app, integration and data engineering skills, and we work remotely from Sydney with clients anywhere in Australia. Each engagement starts with a Development Consult, then a paid Discovery Audit that maps your current products, records and obligations. You receive a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build, with updates every Tuesday and Friday, Sydney business hours.

This page is general information, not legal or employment advice.