Every company works in its own way. A coffee farm prunes and stumps, a vineyard thins leaves, a cooperative scouts for pests. Under Processes and stages, your company names the work it does, with the fields it wants to fill in, and records it like any other field work.
What you can define
Processes and stages has one tab per kind of definition:
- Field work: work on plots that the built-in kinds do not cover, such as pruning, mowing or scouting. People choose it under Type of work when they record field work.
- Processes: steps that turn lots into other lots, such as a 72-hour fermentation.
- Stage lists: the stages your lots go through, in order.
- Fact layouts: facts you record about a lot, a site or the company.
Each one has a Name in your words and a Code used in imports and integrations. The code never changes and is never reused.
Fields, summary and confidential values
Each definition lists its Fields: what people fill in after the common fields (plot, days, area, crop and notes). A field has a label, a Kind of value (short or long text, number, yes or no, a choice from a list, a day, a day and time, or a member of the company) and limits such as the lowest and highest value. The Preview shows the fields as people will fill them in.
- Summary fields: up to three fields shown in the one-line summary of a record, in the lot's Story and in reports. For pruning, for example, Plants pruned and Tool.
- Confidential (kept encrypted): a value only your company's people see in the console. It is never shown in reports, dashboards or queries, and the assistant does not read it.
How the form is laid out and behaves
Each definition also says how its form looks and behaves when people fill it in:
- Sections: fields are grouped under titles, for example Vaccine, Animals and Evidence. Each field takes the full width of the row, half, a third or a quarter. Its help shows under it or behind an info icon.
- Shown when: a field appears only when an earlier answer calls for it. A vaccination asks Other disease only when Disease is Other. A field that is not shown is not asked, and a value typed in it before is not kept.
- Required when: a field becomes required only in that case: when Disease is Other, Other disease must be filled in.
- Several conditions and the record's context: a rule can combine conditions: all of these, any of these or none of these, in groups up to three levels deep. Besides earlier answers it can read what the platform already knows about the record: the Crop, the Days since planting, the Kind of site and its Country, and for a lot the Product and its Stage. A spraying record can ask Pre-harvest interval whenever a herbicide, insecticide or fungicide goes on maize or soybean, and Re-entry interval only for a restricted-use product. The record keeps the context it was checked with, so a plot that changes crop later does not change old records.
- Defaults, masks and patterns: a value filled in when a new record opens (today's date, 0 days), and a format such as AA 999999 for a transit document number.
- Calculated, read-only and locked fields: a calculated value (net weight from gross weight and tare) is worked out from the other fields and cannot be typed. A locked field is typed once and cannot be changed when the record is edited.
A version without its own layout gets an automatic one. See Arrange the form.
Versions, publishing and archiving
A new definition is a draft: Save draft keeps it, and nobody can record it yet. Publish makes a version that new records follow. When you change a published definition and publish again, records already made keep the version they were made with, and new records follow the new one. Archive stops new records; records already made keep it. A definition is never deleted.
Changes that only move fields, sections, widths or help make a minor version, for example 1.1 after 1.0. Adding a Shown when or Required when condition, a mask, a pattern, a calculation or a lock makes a new major version, for example 2.0, because it changes what people may record.
Definitions of your organization show Defined by the organization: every company of the organization can use them as they are.
A second approver
Some definitions ask for a second person before they change. When Changes need a second approver is on, publishing a new version, archiving the definition, changing who records it, locking or unlocking it (in the organization library) and turning that setting off all wait for another owner or administrator. You press Send for approval instead of Publish, and nothing changes until someone approves it.
It is on by default for every definition of the organization library, and for definitions whose records go on the ledger one by one: facts, process types and stage lists. It is off for field work types, which are anchored once a day. Whoever manages processes and stages sets it in the designer's Approvals tab, with a second factor (organization owners and administrators for the library). Turning it on applies at once. Turning it off is a change like any other, so it waits for a second approver too. Before the first version nothing waits: publishing it the first time applies at once.
While a change waits, the definition shows Waiting for a second approver: who asked, when, and what changes. For a new version you see the same "What changes" words as when you adopt one. Another owner or administrator presses Approve or Reject, with their second factor. The person who asked can Withdraw it. The change appears in Needs you for the people who can approve it, and they get an e-mail, even if they turned other e-mails off. Saving a new draft replaces a request to publish, so send it again.
When nobody else could approve, because the person who asked is the only owner or administrator, they approve their own change with Approve as the only owner or administrator. It is recorded as such, and anyone who later becomes an owner or administrator is told. For 7 days after joining, a member does not approve what the person who invited them asked for.
A change of the organization library is approved by another owner or administrator of the organization. A change of a company's own definition is approved by another owner or administrator of the company, and the organization's owners and administrators count too. The assistant tells you what waits and gives you the link. It never asks for, approves, rejects or withdraws a change.
A second toggle, Records need a second approver, is off by default. It applies to facts and to field work whose records go on the ledger one by one, not to anchored field work, stage lists or process types. When it is on, each confirmed record waits in Proposals for another member before it goes on the ledger, and the record shows Waiting for a second approver. The person who recorded it never approves it, unless they are the company's only owner or administrator. If the approver rejects it, the record stays off the ledger and shows Rejected by the second approver; correct it and save it to send it for approval again. For a definition of the organization library, the setting applies in every company, and there another member of that company approves.
On the ledger
Once your company turns on Ledger records, the records it confirms go on the ledger, so anyone you share them with can check they are unchanged:
- Field work, the built-in kinds and your own types, goes in one anchor a day: after the day is over everywhere, one fingerprint covers all of the day's field records. A record reads Waiting for tonight's anchor until then, and Anchored on the ledger with the day after.
- Facts are recorded one by one when a person confirms them: Recorded on the ledger through your company's A-REX account, approved by a member.
- Field work on a farm of a producer or of a person always goes in the day's anchor, never one by one, so nobody can follow a farm's work on the ledger.
- Values stay off the ledger: only a fingerprint of each record is there. Personal data is never part of it.
Turn them on in Processes and stages, tab Ledger records: one proposal adds the module and registers your published definitions, and nothing changes until an owner approves it. Records made before follow once it is approved. The same tab shows the last anchors and how many records wait, and Anchor now sends the day's field records at once.
A record already on the ledger is never changed there: void it and record it again. A field record that was anchored can still be edited; the next anchor covers the new version. When a record reads Declared for 3 Oct · recorded 14 Oct, it went on the ledger long after the day it describes, and A-REX may flag that.
Check against the ledger, in a record's Technical details, computes its fingerprint again from its
values and compares it with the ledger: "Matches the ledger record of 14 Oct 2026". A match shows the record
existed unchanged on that day; it does not show that the work happened that way. Your exit kit holds every
record with verify-facts.mjs, which checks them without A-REX.
What others see
Buyers, auditors and other systems do not know your names. Under What it means for others, choose the standard meaning of each definition, for example Kind of field work: Pruning and training. They read that meaning; your company's name stays on your records, marked as declared by your company. A-REX shows what your company recorded, never whether the work was done well.
In dashboards, reports and queries
- Dashboards: Field work recorded can be broken down by Work type, with each of your types by its name.
- Reports: the field register lists each record by its type's name and summary fields.
- Reports: Reports has a dataset per published type of field work, named
field_work.and its code, for examplefield_work.poda, with its fields except the confidential ones.