Grain bin inventory: what's in every bin, and what's unsold

List your bins and what's in them. This adds up each crop across the yard and, with what you still owe on contracts, shows how much is unsold. In tonnes or bushels.

By Ruslan Glick, Winnipeg · Updated 11 October 2026

Have a grain settlement on paper? Send me a photo and I’ll check it against your contract, free, within a day.

Each crop, and what's unsold

Put in what you still owe on each crop's contracts: the contract quantity minus what's delivered. Leave it at 0 if nothing is contracted.

What to record for every bin

A bin inventory is one line per bin. Keep it the same way every year and it stays easy to read:

Name and yard

What you call it, and where it stands. "Bin 4, home yard" is enough, as long as everyone on the farm uses the same name.

Crop

One crop per bin. If a bin is split or blended, note it.

How much is in it

In tonnes or bushels, the same unit as your contracts.

What it holds

So you know how much room is left at harvest. The bin capacity calculator works it out from the diameter and height.

Grade, moisture and protein

What you know about the grain in it. This is what a buyer asks about, and it tells you which bin to haul for which contract.

Last counted

When you last measured it, and what you found.

The book says one thing, the bin another

On paper, a bin holds what went in minus every load that came out. In practice, the two drift apart: yield monitor and cart scale estimates, grain that dries down, a load written against the wrong bin. That is why it pays to measure the bins every so often and write down the gap between what the count found and what the book said, not just the new figure. A gap that keeps growing on one crop is worth finding before you sign a contract you can't fill.

It matters at the bank too. Operating loans are often secured against grain in storage, and the crop insurance production reports due in the fall (Nov 15 in Saskatchewan and Alberta, Nov 30 in Manitoba) ask what came off.

Unsold is what's in the bins minus what's still owed

For each crop, add every bin, then take off what you still have to deliver on that crop's contracts. What's left is unsold: the grain you can still market. If the number goes negative, you've contracted more than the bins hold, and the difference has to come from grain not yet in the bins or the contract will come up short.

In the example above, 760 tonnes of canola sit in three bins and 420 tonnes are still owed on contracts, so 340 tonnes of canola are unsold.

In a spreadsheet, or in GrainPosition

A spreadsheet works if you keep it up to date as grain moves. The free grain contract and inventory spreadsheet has a bin inventory sheet, with a column for the yard, next to the contracts, and works out how much of each crop is sold. It downloads straight away, with no email.

In GrainPosition, each yard is a map you arrange by dragging the bins to where they stand, and every bin or grain bag is filled to how full it is, in its crop's colour, with its grade, moisture and protein. Grain going in is recorded against the bin, and a load hauled out of a bin comes off it. When you count a bin, the gap against the book is kept, and the dashboard tells you when a crop's bins come up short. Every change is in the bin's history. Someone hauling for you can log loads and bins from their own phone without seeing prices, and the bank report lists every bin. The app also imports the spreadsheet.

Questions