How do you connect harvest plans, contracts and remaining volume on a map?

Give each contract the sale area or harvest unit it covers, as a shape on the map. Give each scale ticket or load record the contract it belongs to. Then remaining volume for each area is the appraised or cruised volume less the scaled removals to date. The map is the easy part. The harder part is that this subtracts a measurement from an estimate, so the result needs showing as an estimate, with the history of how past estimates compared with what the scale found.

What the usual answer says

Nothing that ranks for this question answers it: the top results are farm software help pages, video game forums and contract definitions. The common vendor pitch elsewhere promises real-time visibility, with harvest plans, contracts and standing volume on one map and progress updated as loads come in. That is achievable once the keys exist. It presents remaining volume as a measured quantity, and it is not one.

Two kinds of number

On scale sales, the removal side is measured load by load. The starting side is estimated, from a cruise, an appraisal or a LiDAR model. The gap between the two is large enough to matter. In a 2024 study in Forest Science, Aaron Sparks and colleagues followed three LiDAR inventories of a single stand through to the mill, and found they accounted for 71% to 99% of the merchantable volume scaled there. A 2025 study by the same group, comparing inventories of several stands with logs scaled at the mill, found cruise volume estimates between −16% and 6% of scaled volume. Remaining volume inherits the whole estimate error, and it grows as a share of what is left as the sale proceeds.

On some sales, the measurement never reaches the owner. A 2016 study of public timber sale programmes, led by Charles Blinn, compared payment by scale with lump-sum sales on appraised volume. Under scale payment, it says, "the seller tracks harvested volume using scale tickets which require administrative time to process." Under lump sum, some managers "do not always receive accurate information on how much was ultimately removed from the lot." Participants also listed a benefit of scale sales that matters for any map of remaining volume: "Timber cruisers receive feedback on accuracy".

How to connect them

Start with keys. Each contract carries the identifier of the sale area or units it covers, and each area on the map carries the same identifier. Each ticket carries the contract number. Where tickets arrive without one, keep them in a visible queue rather than guessing an area.

Then summarise per area by a written rule: which products count, which units, which dates. Show appraised volume, removals to date and remaining volume side by side. Beside remaining volume, show one more figure: the ratio of scaled to appraised volume on closed sales of a similar type. Where that ratio is below one, the map's subtraction overstates what is left, and more so as the sale nears its end. One closed sale says little. The ratio needs enough similar sales to average out, and a small programme may not have them for years.

Close every sale with a reconciliation: appraised, scaled, the difference and its likely cause. Those records build the ratio, and they are the feedback the study's participants valued.

Harvest plans join the same way. A planned unit carries the identifier it will keep when a contract is let on it, so plan, contract and tickets share one key from the start. Keep a record of which old unit identifiers became which new ones, or the plan's volume and the contract's volume will never line up.

On the map itself, shade each sale area by the share of appraised volume removed, and show remaining volume as a range rather than a single figure, using the history of closed sales.

What AI adds

The keys are often the missing piece, because contracts and tickets arrive as paper or PDFs. AI can read them into records and match tickets to contracts, and title 68 looks at how well it reads handwritten tickets. What AI cannot do is make an appraisal more accurate after the fact. It can make the cruise-to-scale history complete enough to use.

Quarri's own map features are in design, not delivered. This piece describes the approach in general.

When it doesn't apply

Sales paid entirely by scale, where the buyer's obligation ends when the wood is cut, may not need a remaining-volume figure at all. Very small programmes with a few sales a year can keep the reconciliation in a table. Scale sales also settle the money on the measurement, and lump-sum sales pass the volume risk to the buyer, so for many owners remaining volume is a planning figure more than a financial one. And the 2016 study covered public programmes in one region.

Quarri for forest management is built around how a forest operation runs, from the cruise to the settled account.

Quarri is an AI-native data platform for the timber supply chain. It connects buying, production, sales and inventory for forest management, sawmill, wood products and pulp, paper and packaging operators.