How to use Jobs and Reminders in My Block Hand

📋 Before you start

Jobs vs reminders — the useful distinction.

They look similar and people reasonably ask why there are two. The split is:

• A job is work you do. Drench the ewes, fix the water trough, shear. It has a due date, it can be attached to animals or a paddock, it can carry treatment details, and you mark it complete.
• A reminder is something to watch for. A due date to keep an eye on — a breeding date approaching, a crop ready, a rego expiring. Nothing to tick off as done work.

1️⃣ Creating a job

Three flavours, depending on what it's about.

Use + Job from the Jobs card, from the quick-capture row, or — better where it applies — from an animal's record or a paddock, which attaches it automatically. The form starts by asking which kind:

• + Animal Job — reveals the animal targeting options.
• + Paddock Job — reveals the paddock picker.
• + Other Job — general farm work.

Then a due date and optional due time, and a title.

Who it applies to

For an animal job you choose Single animal, Entire herd, or Select animals — the last giving you a tick list you can filter by herd, with select-all and clear. That's the one to use for "the six that need it" rather than treating the whole mob.

2️⃣ Treatment jobs and withholding

The part that earns its keep.

A job can carry treatment details: the product used, the treatment type, the date and optional time given, and withholding periods for meat, milk, eggs and wool plus a custom one with your own label.

Complete the job and the treatment is recorded against those animals with the withholding tracked from it.

Set your products up once in Products & Chemicals with their label withholding periods, and selecting a product fills those dates in for you. Withholding then surfaces where it matters — a warning when you try to move stock into an affected paddock, or record production from an animal still inside the window.

3️⃣ Repeating work

Set it once for the things that come round.

Jobs and treatments both take a repeat every N days / weeks / months / years, with the next due date worked out for you. That covers the rhythm of a block — six-weekly drenching, annual vaccinations, quarterly servicing — without you rebuilding the job each time.

Mark a job complete with its completion date and time, and the next one appears on schedule.

4️⃣ Reminders

Lighter, for dates you just want to see coming.

+ Reminder takes a type — Breeding due date, Pasture / crop or General farm reminder — a date and optional time, a title, and optionally an animal, herd or paddock to attach it to. Tick it as completed or no longer needed when it's served its purpose.

Plenty of reminders create themselves: breeding milestones from the Animals timeline, candling and hatch days from an incubation batch, the drench follow-up about twelve days after a drench, and pet treatment and registration dates.

5️⃣ Where things surface

You shouldn't have to go looking.

• Today's Brief — the action centre, plus a this week on your block card covering the next seven days.
• The farm calendar — everything dated, in month or week view.
• Notifications — if you've allowed them, due work reaches your phone. The native iOS and Android apps do this properly; that's the main practical reason to install the app rather than only using the browser.

Items are grouped by urgency — overdue, today, due soon and upcoming — so the list sorts itself into what actually needs you.

✅ What the app does vs what you do

The honest split.

My Block Hand handles: dated jobs and reminders attached to animals, herds and paddocks; treatment recording with meat, milk, egg, wool and custom withholding calculated to the hour; repeat scheduling and next-due dates; automatic reminders from breeding, incubation, drenching and pet care; urgency grouping; and notifications.

You still have to: mark work done — an uncompleted job is just a wish; check your own product labels; and decide what actually needs doing. The app carries the dates, not the judgement.