8 October 2026 · 8 min · FactoraERP IoT

What belongs on a cold-room log before a buyer asks

A buyer does not reject a consignment because you lacked a dashboard. They reject it, or they ask a question you cannot answer, because the night the room climbed has no record. The useful log is dull. That is why it works.

The columns that survive the meeting

Write them down before you buy software, so the software has somewhere to put them.

• Time, in East Africa Time. A stamp in another zone, or a stamp with no zone, starts an argument before the temperature does.
• The point, in the name the shift uses. “Probe 14” is not a place. “Cold room B, probe by the door” is.
• The reading, and the band that applied. 5.4°C is an excursion only if the band was 0–4. Dispatch at 5.1°C may be fine on 2–8. The band has to sit on the row, because bands change and memories do not.
• The result, in words. Colour is not enough. “In band”, “excursion”, “back in band”.
• Who acknowledged, and when. A siren with no name is a noise. The morning manager needs a person, not a tick.
• Which lot was in the room. This is the column buyers point at. It is also the column many systems leave for you to type later, which is how it goes wrong.

Why the WhatsApp photo fails

A photograph of a gauge has a number and, if you are lucky, a time on the phone that took it. It does not have the band, the next reading, or the name of the person who closed the door. By the time someone asks, the photo is in a group with the canteen order. You can still find it. You cannot defend a season of nights with it.

A paper log is better than the photo and worse than a list that will not let the acknowledgement be anonymous. Paper also stops when the person who carries the book is off. The night you care about is often that night.

What FactoraERP IoT will and will not claim

The floor shows the room. Alerts store the person’s name. Temperature records stay on the batch, and the plant can produce a PDF compliance report. The audit log is append-only for 365 days and exports as CSV. Cold rooms and packhouses are an example workflow, not a customer. None of that is a KEPHIS, KEBS or ISO certificate.

We printed a sample night so you can see the columns, including the lot. That table is a sample layout, not a file pulled from the demo plant. Use it as a ruler against your buyer’s spreadsheet. If their sheet asks for longer than 365 days, do not promise it from this website.

A short test you can run this week

Pick the last excursion you remember. Ask, without opening a new spreadsheet:

1. What was the band that night?
2. What was the first reading outside it, and the first one back inside?
3. Who was told, and who did something?
4. Which lot was in the room?
5. Would you send that page to the buyer as it stands?

If the answers are in three places, the tool you need is the one that refuses to split them. If the answers are nowhere, start with one room and one band. The rest of the plant can wait.

Related: cold rooms, horticulture export, and the offline requirement for the night the power fails in the middle of the excursion.