Formula changes overwrite history
A price-driven recipe change re-costs batches that were made from the old formula, and the audit trail goes with it.
Feed Mill ERP Software in Bangladesh
Poultry, cattle, fish and shrimp feed run on recipes that change with ingredient prices. CloudMill keeps every formula version costed, every batch traceable, and the cost per bag honest — including the packaging and power most mills leave out.
The problem
Your cost per bag is probably lower than the truth
Ask a feed mill what a bag of broiler starter costs and you will usually get the formula cost — ingredients divided by output. It is a fast number and it is wrong, generally by a hundred and fifty taka or more per fifty-kilogram bag. Missing from it are the bag, the thread and the label; the grinding, mixing and pelleting power; the shift labour; and the two-thirds of a percent that disappears as process loss between the mixer and the bagging line.
On its own, a per-bag understatement of that size is survivable. What makes it dangerous is that it is invisible and consistent. Every quotation is built on it, every dealer discount is approved against it, and every decision about which product to push assumes a margin that is not there. Mills discover the gap when the year-end accounts refuse to agree with the management figures, by which point a full season has been priced on it.
The second problem is the recipe itself. A nutritionist changes maize down and de-oiled rice bran up when maize moves, which is correct — but if the change overwrites the old formula, every batch already produced silently re-costs itself against a recipe it was never made from. Traceability breaks in the same moment: a complaint about a batch three weeks old can no longer be tied to what was actually in it.
CloudMill handles both. Formulas are versioned and dated, so historic batches keep their original recipe and their original cost. Batches are costed with everything included — ingredients, packaging, utilities, labour and measured loss. What you see on a job card close is what the accounts will say at month end.
Premix quantities too small to notice
Micro-ingredients at a fraction of a percent but a very high rate — the easiest costing line to get wrong and the most expensive one to ignore.
Dealer credit with no hard stop
Overdue dealers keep receiving stock because the limit is a policy in a file rather than a rule at invoice time.
How it works
From raw material intake to a costed bag on the dealer’s truck
Each step is a screen in CloudMill, and each one posts to stock and the ledger as it happens rather than at month end.
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01
Raw material intake and QC
Maize, soybean meal, rice bran, oil and additives received against a purchase order with weighbridge capture. Moisture, protein and aflatoxin results are recorded against the specific lot, not the supplier in general.
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02
Ingredient stock by lot
Live balances per store with lot-level traceability and expiry tracking for vitamins, premixes and medicated additives.
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03
Formula management
Recipes held as approved, dated versions with nutrient specifications and a full substitution history. Changing a formula creates a new version; it never rewrites the past.
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04
Batch planning and job cards
Release a batch order to the floor for a specific formula version and quantity. Ingredients are reserved against it so the same maize is not promised to two batches.
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05
Production and actual consumption
Grinding, mixing, pelleting and cooling recorded shift-wise with actual consumption against planned. Variance is visible per batch rather than absorbed into a monthly figure.
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06
Full batch costing
Ingredients, packaging, utilities, labour and measured process loss all land on the batch. Cost per kilogram and cost per bag are available the moment the batch closes.
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07
Bagging, QC release and finished stock
Output bagged into your SKUs with a batch number printed on the bag, held for QC release, then posted to finished goods stock.
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08
Dealer sales and credit control
Territory and volume price tiers, hard credit limits checked before the invoice prints, delivery routing, and returns handled against the original batch.
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09
Collections and accounting
Receivable ageing visible to the field team, collections logged from a phone, and every movement already posted to a double-entry ledger.
Worked example
What a bag of broiler starter really costs
Illustrative figures for one five-tonne batch. Substitute your own rates — the structure is the point, and the last two rows are the reason this page exists.
| Line | Figure |
|---|---|
| Batch size (planned) | 5,000 kg |
| Maize 55% — 2,750 kg @ ৳34 / kg | ৳93,500 |
| Soybean meal 28% — 1,400 kg @ ৳62 / kg | ৳86,800 |
| De-oiled rice bran 8% — 400 kg @ ৳28 / kg | ৳11,200 |
| Protein concentrate 5% — 250 kg @ ৳115 / kg | ৳28,750 |
| Oil 2% — 100 kg @ ৳140 / kg | ৳14,000 |
| Premix, minerals, additives 2% — 100 kg @ ৳180 / kg | ৳18,000 |
| Ingredient cost | ৳2,52,250 |
| Process loss @ 0.6% | 30 kg |
| Bagged output | 4,970 kg (99 bags of 50 kg) |
| Bag, thread and label @ ৳38 / bag | ৳3,762 |
| Power, labour, grinding and pelleting | ৳11,500 |
| Total batch cost | ৳2,67,512 |
| True cost per kg | ৳53.83 |
| True cost per 50 kg bag | ৳2,691 |
| Formula-only cost per bag (the common shortcut) | ৳2,522 |
| Understatement per bag | ৳169 |
At 10,000 bags a month, that ৳169 is ৳16.9 lakh of margin you believed you had and did not. It is not a rounding error — it is packaging, power, labour and shrinkage, all of which are real and all of which someone paid for.
What you get
Built for formula-driven manufacturing
Versioned formulas
Approved, dated recipe versions with nutrient specs and substitution history. Historic batches keep their original recipe and cost.
True batch costing
Ingredients, packaging, utilities, labour and measured loss all costed onto the batch, giving cost per kilogram and per bag at close.
QC at intake and output
Moisture, protein and aflatoxin results tied to the specific lot and carried through to the finished batch certificate.
Premix and micro-dosing
Micro-ingredients tracked at the accuracy they need, with expiry dates and lot traceability on every vitamin and additive.
Batch traceability
Trace any bag back to its batch, formula version and raw material lots in one click — and forward to every dealer who received it.
Multi-store inventory
Separate raw, work-in-progress, finished and packaging stores across every site, with controlled transfers.
Hard dealer credit limits
Invoices stop at the limit or the overdue bucket — before the truck is loaded, not after.
Distribution and returns
Territory pricing, delivery routing, damaged-goods returns and dealer claims settled against the ledger.
Field sales on mobile
Orders, collections, stock checks and complaint logging from the dealer’s counter.
Reports
The reports a feed mill runs on
All exportable to Excel and PDF, and schedulable by email to the people who need them.
| Report | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Cost per bag by product | What does each SKU actually cost me today, fully loaded? |
| Batch variance (plan vs actual) | Where did this batch consume more than the formula said, and why? |
| Formula cost sensitivity | If maize moves five taka, what happens to every product I sell? |
| Ingredient consumption | What did I actually use this month against what I bought? |
| QC results by lot | Which supplier’s material is consistently in spec, and which is not? |
| Batch traceability | Which dealers received bags from this batch, if I have to act on a complaint? |
| Dealer receivable ageing | Who is past their limit, and who should not get the next delivery? |
| Territory sales performance | Which regions and which reps are actually growing? |
| Premix and additive expiry | What is about to expire and needs using or writing off? |
| Mushak 6.3 register | Every VAT invoice this period, ready to reconcile with the return. |
Compliance in Bangladesh
Feed-specific compliance in Bangladesh
Feed Act record-keeping
The Fish Feed and Animal Feed Act, 2010 and the rules under it place record, labelling and quality obligations on feed producers. CloudMill keeps batch, ingredient and QC records in a form you can produce on inspection. Confirm your specific obligations with the Department of Livestock Services or Department of Fisheries.
Label and batch marking
Batch numbers, production and expiry dates carried from the batch record to the bag, so what is printed matches what is recorded.
QC evidence
Moisture, protein and aflatoxin results retained per lot and per finished batch, retrievable when a customer or regulator asks.
Mushak 6.3 invoicing
VAT invoices issued in the NBR format from your sales entry, with a register available for return reconciliation.
Input-output coefficient
Measured consumption and yield give you an evidenced basis for the Mushak 4.3 declaration instead of a one-time estimate.
Payroll and labour
Shift rosters, overtime, provident fund and gratuity handled per your policy, feeding straight into batch labour cost.
FAQs
Questions we get asked about this
CloudMill manages, versions and costs your formulas, and shows the cost impact of an ingredient price move across every product immediately. Mills that run a dedicated least-cost optimiser typically keep it for the optimisation step and use CloudMill as the system of record for the approved formula, its cost and its production history.
Nothing. A formula change creates a new dated version. Batches produced under the previous version keep that version and its original costing permanently, which is what makes both your cost history and your traceability defensible.
Yes, and most of our feed customers do. Each product line has its own formulas, QC parameters, packaging and price tiers, while sharing one ingredient inventory and one ledger. Floating and sinking aqua feed lines with extruder-specific parameters are supported the same way.
As inventory items with lot numbers and expiry dates, dosed at the accuracy the formula requires. They are costed at their actual rate rather than averaged into a general additives figure, which is where most per-bag costing errors originate.
Yes. Credit limits and overdue buckets are enforced at invoice time, so the check happens before the delivery order is raised rather than after the stock has left. Overrides require approval and are logged.
One lookup. From a bag’s batch number you can see the formula version, every raw material lot that went into it with its QC results, the shift that produced it, and every dealer and delivery that received bags from it.
Most single-site feed mills go live in five to ten working days: configuration and formula import first, opening stock and party balances next, then training on your own data. Multi-site groups typically take three to five weeks.
Yes. Gate, weighbridge and production terminals run offline-first, queue locally and sync when connectivity returns, with any conflict flagged for a supervisor.
Related
Other mills we configure for
Auto rice mill software
Paddy-to-payment costing with outturn analysis and by-product credit.
Flour mill ERP
Extraction rate monitoring and multi-SKU packing for atta, maida and suji.
All industries
Aqua and shrimp feed, edible oil, dal, spice and cold storage configurations.
Explore the full feature set or browse all industries.
See your own formula costed properly
Send us one real formula and your current ingredient rates. We will load it into a trial account and show you the fully loaded cost per bag alongside the number you are using today.