Chapter 3 Agriculture as a Career 113 Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. experiences that should be collected related to your SAE include the amount of time you spend with your project and any skills or competencies you have worked on or accomplished. Detailed records will help your record book become the “story” of your SAE. Someone who picks up your record book to evaluate your project should be able to know exactly what you did with your project, how you did it, and why you made the management choices you made. A good rule of thumb is to record more information than you think you will need. Even those SAEs which have many financial entries require experience entries to tell the whole picture. For example, if you had a paid placement SAE with the local veterinarian, you would enter paychecks into your record book, but those entries do not tell much about the things you learned on the job or the skills you gained while you were working. Journaling allows you to outline the specific tasks and skills that were used during each pay cycle. Can you remember exactly what you did today? How about what you did exactly one week ago? How about one month ago? Our memories can fade over time. Failure to record information immediately can lead to holes in your SAE story. Timely recording of experiences is important to recordkeeping success. Try to record the information the same day of the experience. Recording Finances Depending on the type of SAE you have, you may need to record many financial transactions or none at all. Placement SAEs will require you to record any income arising from your work experience. Entrepreneurship SAEs typically have the largest number of financial entries because they have both income and expenses. Recording finances in an SAE is a great way to gain practical experience with agribusiness principles. By recording finances for your SAE, you will become familiar with analyzing profit and loss, managing inventory, and determining net worth. These concepts are explained in detail in Lesson 8.1. Methods for Recordkeeping SAE records can be kept in several different ways. Some agricultural science programs choose to have their students keep paper records, while the majority of SAE recordkeeping has moved to computer-based systems. There are several commercially available recordkeeping systems available to help you keep track of your SAE. Your agricultural science teacher can give you guidance on which program you will be using to keep your SAE records. The most prominent electronic recordkeeping solution for SAEs is the Agricultural Experience Tracker, or AET. This web-based program allows you to access your FFA records from anywhere with an Internet connection.