How to use Veldtrack

Learn the
whole app
in one read

A step-by-step guide to setting up your farm, mapping your camps, tracking your livestock, and using every feature — written the way a neighbour would explain it.

Open the App → Start reading ↓
01
Before you begin
Getting set up
1

Create your account

Open the app and tap Register. Pick a username and a password (at least 6 characters). No email, no subscription — just a username and password.

Your data lives in the cloud, so you can log in from your phone, tablet, or PC and always see the same farm. Up to 10 accounts can share one farm — useful for workers or family members.

Tip: Write your username and password down somewhere safe. There is no "forgot password" link — the farm owner or admin can reset it for you.
2

Install to your home screen (optional but recommended)

Veldtrack is a Progressive Web App — it works like a native app on your phone without going through an app store.

Android: When the app first loads you'll see an "Install Veldtrack" banner at the bottom. Tap Install. If you miss it, tap the three-dot menu in Chrome → "Add to Home Screen".

iPhone/iPad: Tap the share icon ↑ at the bottom of Safari, then tap "Add to Home Screen". This removes the browser bar and makes it feel native.

Why bother? The installed app works faster, looks cleaner, and caches map tiles and your data so you can use it in the veld with no signal.
3

Allow location access

When the app asks for your location, tap Allow. This puts a live blue dot on the map showing exactly where you are, and it helps the AI assistant give you spatially accurate answers — things like "the cattle group is about 800m north-east of you."

Location is only used inside the app. Nothing is sent to any third party.

4

Understand the layout

The screen is split in two: the map on one side, the sidebar on the other. On mobile the map sits on top and the sidebar below — drag the grey bar between them to resize.

The sidebar has seven tabs across the top. Work through them left to right as you set up your farm for the first time: Camps → Herds → Animals → Infrastructure → Planning → Ops → AI.

⬠ Camps 🐄 Herds 🐾 Animals 🌾 Infra 📅 Planning 📊 Ops ✨ AI
02
Camps tab
Drawing your camps on the map

This is the first thing to do. Every other feature — herds, animals, AI reports, stocking rates — works better once your camps are drawn.

1

Find your farm on the map

The map starts at a broad view. Use the location search bar at the top-right of the map to type your nearest town or farm name. The map will fly there. Then zoom in using pinch-to-zoom (mobile) or scroll wheel (desktop) until you can see your fence lines on the satellite image.

Tap the crosshair button ⊕ in the map toolbar to jump straight to your GPS location if you're already on the farm.

2

Trace a camp

In the Camps tab, tap Trace (or tap the camp polygon icon in the map toolbar). The toolbar at the top of the map will show Undo / Cancel / Finish controls.

Desktop: Click each corner of your paddock fence line on the map. Work around the boundary and click Finish when you're back where you started.

Mobile: Tap each corner. Hold your finger for a moment — a green dot appears showing the snap position. Lift to place the vertex.

Border snapping: When you draw a fence that runs next to an existing camp, your vertices automatically snap to the shared fence line. This means adjacent camps share the exact same border — no gaps, no overlaps. Make sure snapping is on (the magnet icon in the map toolbar should be green).
Mobile note: Drawing camps is easiest on a tablet or laptop. On a phone, you can still do it, but a slightly larger screen makes placing vertices accurately much easier.
3

Fill in the camp details

After you finish drawing, a form appears in the sidebar. Fill in:

  • Camp name — use whatever you call it on the farm (Noord Kamp, Weiding 3, Skaapkraal, etc.)
  • Camp type — Grazing, Wild, Crops, or Kraal
  • Feed status — Full / Good / Low / Empty
  • Water source — borehole, dam, river, etc.

The area in hectares is calculated automatically from what you drew. Tap Create Camp to save it.

4

Edit or delete a camp

Tap on any camp polygon on the map to open a popup with its details. From there you can edit the name, type, or feed status, or delete the camp.

In the sidebar Camps list, each row has an edit (pencil) icon and a delete icon. Deleting a camp does not delete the herds or animals assigned to it — they move to "Open Range."

5

Draw roads (optional)

Tap Trace road in the Camps tab or the road icon in the map toolbar. Click or tap along the road centre-line and tap Finish. Give the road a name. Roads appear as lines on the map and help the AI understand distances between locations.

Use the Fork button to branch off from an existing road node — useful for T-junctions and farm track networks.

Stocking rate colour coding: Once you have herds in camps, each camp label on the map goes green (under 7 days), amber (7–14 days), or red (over 14 days). Red means it's time to rotate.
03
Herds tab
Setting up and moving herds
1

Create a herd

In the Herds tab, tap New Herd and give it a name — "Beeste 1", "Ooie", "Lammers", whatever you use on the farm. Tap Create.

A herd is a group of animals that move around together. You can have as many herds as you like. Animals are assigned to herds, not directly to camps.

2

Place a herd on the map

There are two ways:

From the sidebar: In the Herds tab, find your herd and tap Drop on map. The cursor changes — tap anywhere on the map (ideally inside a camp) to place the herd marker.

From the toolbar: Tap the cow icon 🐄 in the map toolbar to enter herd placement mode, then tap the map.

The app automatically detects which camp the herd landed in and starts the days-in-camp counter.

Multiple herds, one camp: You can place more than one herd in the same camp. Their markers stack vertically so you can see them separately.
3

Move a herd to a new camp

By dragging: On the map, long-press the herd marker and drag it into the new camp. The days-in-camp counter resets automatically.

From the sidebar: In the Herds tab, find the herd and tap the Move to dropdown. Select the destination camp and confirm. This works even when you're not looking at the map.

Every time a herd moves, an entry is added to the Activity Log and the days-in-camp counter resets.

4

Read the herd card

Each herd in the sidebar shows: which camp it's in, how many days it's been there, and the total head count. Tap on a herd to expand the full detail view including a breakdown by animal type and breed.

Tap Zoom to herd to jump the map to that herd's location.

Tap Count animals to open the counting tool — enter what you actually counted in the field, and the app will flag any discrepancy as missing.

04
Animals tab
Recording and managing your livestock
1

Add animals to a herd

Open the Animals tab and expand the Add Animals form. Fill in:

  • Herd — which herd they belong to
  • Type — Cattle, Sheep, Goats, Horses, Pigs, Game, Other
  • Breed — Bonsmara, Merino, Boer Goat, etc. (optional)
  • Batch or Individual — Batch for a group with a count, Individual for a single animal with a tag number
  • Origin — Born (🥚), Bought (🛒), or Other. For Bought: enter the seller and price paid.
  • Date — born or bought date
Record prices: Always fill in purchase prices when you buy. The weekly AI report will calculate your total spend and per-head costs automatically.
2

Record what happens to animals

Tap the three-dot menu on any animal record to see your options:

💰

Sell

Enter the sale price per head. The total is calculated and logged. The animals are removed from the ledger.

✝

Died

Records the death with the date. You can add a note about the cause. The animal is removed from the count.

❓

Missing

Flags the animal as missing. Tracked in the Missing Log and reported each week. Escalates to "Lost" over time.

↔

Transfer

Move the animal to a different herd. The receiving herd gets the addition logged in its history.

🔄

Reclassify

Change the type, age/stage, or breed — useful when lambs become ewes, or calves become heifers.

3

Do a field count

After walking a camp and counting animals, open the herd in the Animals tab and tap Count animals. Enter what you physically counted per type and breed. The app compares this to what the ledger says should be there.

If the count is short, the missing animals are automatically flagged and added to the Missing Log with today's date. You can then track their status from there.

Missing → Found: When a missing animal turns up, find it in the Missing Log (in the Ops tab) and tap Found. The app logs when it was found and removes it from the missing count.
05
Infrastructure tab
Pinning your bakke, water points, and gates
1

Place a bak

In the Infrastructure tab, tap Bak then tap on the map where the bak is. A 🌾 icon appears. Tap the icon to name the bak and add notes (capacity, last filled, lick type, etc.).

A bak holds feed and lick, not water. Use the Water Point pin for water sources.

Important: The AI uses the difference between "bak" and "water point" to report camps that have animals but no feeding station, or no water. Make sure you're using the right pin type.
2

Place a water point

Tap Water Point and tap the map. A 🚰 icon is placed. Name it and add notes — dam, borehole, reservoir, drinking trough. The AI will flag camps with animals but no water point nearby.

3

Place a gate

Tap Gate and tap near a fence line on the map. The gate 🔓 icon snaps to the nearest camp boundary and rotates to match the fence bearing — so it always sits perpendicular to the fence. Drag it along the fence to reposition it.

4

Link feed bags to a bak

Tap on a bak icon on the map to open its popup. From there you can Link feed bag — specify the feed type (salt lick, lucerne, molasses, etc.), quantity, and date. The linked bag shows in the popup so you can track what's in each bak at a glance.

06
Planning tab
Tasks, weather, and farm notes
1

Add a task

Open the Planning tab. Fill in a task title, category (Livestock, Pasture, Infrastructure, Admin), priority (Normal / High / Critical), and a due date. Tap Add to board.

Tasks appear in the calendar view with dots on their due dates, and in the task board below. The AI weekly report lists all tasks due in the coming week — so your report doubles as a reminder list.

2

Log rainfall

Expand the Live Weather card in the Planning tab. At the bottom, enter the millimetres you read off your rain gauge and any field notes (veldt condition, soil moisture, grazing pressure). Tap the + button to log it.

Logged rainfall builds a record you can look back on. The live weather above it is from Open-Meteo based on your GPS location — useful but no substitute for what your own gauge reads.

3

Use Farm Notes as a notebook

The Farm Notes section at the bottom of the Planning tab is a free-form text area — a digital notepad for the farm. Vet observations, grazing rotation plans, phone numbers, anything. It auto-saves as you type and syncs to the cloud.

The AI assistant reads your farm notes as context, so anything you write there informs its answers.

07
Ops tab
Reports, backups, and activity log
1

Weekly farm report

Every Saturday at 16:00 SAST, Veldtrack automatically generates a comprehensive weekly report using AI. It covers eight sections: week summary, livestock gains, livestock losses, herd status, camp and feed status, missing animals, scheduled tasks, and key statistics.

Tap Generate now in the Weekly Farm Report card to create a report at any time — useful before a vet visit, an auction, or a land bank inspection.

Report history: Every report you generate is saved. Open the card and you'll see a list of all past reports — tap any one to expand and read it, or export it as a PDF. Reports are kept until you delete them manually. The latest report is always at the top.
2

Farm overview and trends

The Farm Overview card at the top of Ops shows your live stats: total head, camps in use, total hectares, stocking rate, missing animals. The Livestock Trends export builds a PDF chart showing births, purchases, sales, deaths, and missing animals month by month.

3

Activity log

Every significant action in the app — moving a herd, adding animals, recording a death, creating a camp — is automatically logged with a timestamp. Expand the Activity Log card to read the last 200 entries. The log feeds directly into the weekly report so the AI knows what happened this week.

4

Backups — 4 layers of protection

Your data is protected four ways, automatically:

🔋

Emergency local

Written to your device's localStorage on every save. If the cloud fails, this is loaded automatically.

⏰

Daily auto-backup

Every night at 22:00 SAST, the full farm is backed up to the cloud and to localStorage. Kept for 7 days.

💾

Manual backup

Tap "Back up now" in Settings any time. Works even offline — syncs when connection returns.

📄

JSON download

Download a complete copy of your farm as a JSON file. Keep it on a USB drive or email it to yourself.

To restore from a backup, open Settings → Backups, find the date you want, and tap Restore. Type RESTORE to confirm — this is irreversible.

5

Export your data

The Export Data card in Ops lets you download your livestock ledger as CSV, Excel, or a formatted PDF report. Great for sending to your accountant, vet, or lender. The PDF trends report adds monthly charts for visual herd tracking over time.

08
AI tab
Asking the AI about your farm
1

No setup needed

Veldtrack uses Puter.js to access AI models (Gemini, GPT-4o, Claude) for free — no API key required. The first time you use it on a device, Puter may ask you to sign in with a free Puter account. After that, it just works.

The AI receives your full farm as context every time you ask a question: every camp with its area, stocking rate and feed status; every herd with its location and days-in-camp; every bak and water point; your GPS location relative to each; and the last 20 activity log entries.

2

What to ask

The AI is set up as a factual record-keeping assistant. It reports facts and answers questions — it won't give unsolicited advice. Ask it things like:

"Which camp needs rotation most urgently?" "How many calves were born this month?" "What's my current stocking rate?" "Are there any camps with animals but no water?" "I see cattle about 500m to my east — which herd is that?"

The spatial context means it can answer location-based questions accurately — it knows where you are and where each herd and bak is.

3

Choose a model

The model selector at the top of the AI tab defaults to Gemini 2.5 Flash — fast and free. If you want more thorough answers, switch to Gemini 2.5 Pro or GPT-4o. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is available too. For the weekly report, whichever model is selected gets used.

If AI fails: Check that you're connected to the internet and signed in to Puter. If you have an Anthropic or OpenAI API key, you can enter it in the Custom API section at the bottom of the AI tab instead.
09
Settings gear icon
Customising the app
1

Language

Tap the gear icon in the top-right corner of the app to open Settings. Under Language, choose English (South Africa), Afrikaans, or Sesotho. The entire interface switches immediately, including tab labels, buttons, and notes. The choice is saved — it applies every time you open the app on that device, including on the home page and tutorial.

2

Field Access PIN

If you have farm workers who need to see the map and count animals but shouldn't be editing records, set up a Field Access PIN. Enter a 4–8 digit PIN in Settings.

Workers can then log in on the login screen using their username + the PIN, which opens Field View — a read-only version of the map with animal counting enabled. They can count, they cannot add, delete, or change anything.

3

Units

Switch area between Hectares, Morgen, and Acres. Switch distances between Kilometres and Miles. All displayed figures update throughout the app.

4

Offline map cache

The app automatically caches map tiles for your camp area when it loads. This means you can open the app and see your map, your camps, and your herd positions even with no signal. Tap Cache map tiles in Settings to manually trigger a fresh cache, or Clear tile cache to free up storage space.

5

Clear farm data

If you want to start fresh, tap Clear my farm data at the bottom of Settings. This cannot be undone — download a JSON backup first. Your account remains; only the farm data is wiped.

10
Good to know
Tips and common questions
This usually means the map tiles haven't loaded yet. Check your internet connection, then try: zoom in and out slightly to force a tile refresh. If you're offline and have cached tiles, make sure you installed the app to your home screen — the tile cache only works fully in the installed PWA. If tiles still don't load, try the Settings → Offline Map Cache → Cache map tiles button on a connection first.
Make sure the magnet icon in the map toolbar is highlighted (active). If it's grey, tap it to turn snapping on. Also make sure you're clicking close enough to an existing fence vertex — the snap radius is about 30 pixels on screen, so zoom in for precise work.
Install Veldtrack to your home screen instead of using it through a browser tab — it runs noticeably faster. Also, if you have hundreds of camps or thousands of animal records, rendering takes longer. The Simple View (accessible from Settings) is a stripped-down version with fewer panels that's faster on older hardware.
The counter only resets when you move the herd using the Veldtrack tools — drag on map or "Move to" in the sidebar. If you moved the marker manually and it landed in the same camp, it won't reset. Make sure the herd marker lands visually inside the new camp polygon. Dragging it to the boundary might not register.
The report generates automatically at 16:00 SAST on Saturday — but only if the app is open in a browser tab or running in the foreground at that time. If the phone was locked or the tab was closed, it won't trigger. Tap "Generate now" in the Ops tab to create it manually at any time. The AI tab must have a working AI connection (Puter.js signed in, or a custom API key).
Yes, partially. Install the app to your home screen first. Once installed, the app shell, your farm data (loaded from the last sync), and cached map tiles around your camps all work offline. You can view the map, read your herd and animal records, and create manual backups (these sync when you reconnect). You cannot sync to the cloud or use AI features without a connection.
Set a Field Access PIN in Settings. Workers enter their username and the PIN on the login screen, which opens Field View — read-only access with counting tools. Alternatively, ask your admin to create a separate account for the worker. Multiple accounts can all access the same farm data.
Some actions show an Undo toast for a few seconds after you do them — tap Undo immediately if you spot it. For anything already saved, restore from a backup: Settings → Backups → find the most recent backup before the mistake → Restore → type RESTORE. Important: restore overwrites everything current, so download a fresh JSON first if you want to keep any changes made after the backup.
Simple View (simple.html) is a streamlined 5-tab version of Veldtrack: Map, Camps, Herds, Animals, and a settings panel. No weather, no AI, no exports — just the core tracking features. It's faster on older phones and easier for workers who only need to check and count animals. Switch to it from Settings → Display mode → Simple. Both versions share the same data.