An animal's finances and ROI

Every animal has a Finance tab showing the money tied to it: what it cost, what it has earned, what has been spent on it, and how it is doing. It is written in plain language, so you do not need accounting terms to read it.

Open it

On an animal's profile, choose Finance. The page lives at /animal/{handle}/finance. From here you can also Add money connected to this animal, or open Advanced entry for a detailed transaction.

The headline numbers

A row of figures summarizes the animal, each with a one-line explanation on the tab:

• Income: sales, breeding fees, or other income linked to this animal.
• Expenses: feed, vet bills, transport, or other expenses linked to this animal.
• Purchase price or Starting value: the original value you recorded. It is labeled Purchase price for a purchased animal and Starting value for one bred or born in your program. It appears once you have recorded a value.
• Remaining starting value: the part of that purchase price or starting value that has not yet been applied to a sale or write-off. As an animal is partly sold or written down, this shrinks.
• Profit so far: income minus expenses linked to this animal, shown in red when negative and green when positive. Note that this profit compares income to expenses; it does not subtract the animal's cost basis, which is what the purchase price and remaining value figures are for.

These numbers only reflect entries you connected to this animal, so connecting income and expenses as you record them is what makes the tab accurate. See Recording money in and out. To weigh this return against what the animal is worth on the market today (rather than what you have into it), a Crestimate gives a data-driven market value; see What is a Crestimate?.

The Management value panel

The Management value panel on the Finance tab is where you set and check what this one animal is worth for management. It is clearly a planning view: a line reads "Management value for planning and decisions. This does not change accounting records or tax basis," and a closing note repeats that estimated market values do not change your accounting records, inventory lots, depreciation schedules, or tax basis.

• Used for management: the single value Creatures is using for this animal right now. Source tells you where it came from:
• • Management value: a value you set yourself, which always wins.
  • Crestimate: Creatures is using the latest eligible Crestimate because you have not set a value yourself.
  • Cost basis: no value of your own and no usable Crestimate, so it falls back to what you paid or recorded.
  • Not set: none of the above is available yet, so there is nothing to show until you add one.

A Valuation date shows alongside (the date you chose for a value you set, or the date a Crestimate was generated), and when the source is a Crestimate, the panel also shows its Confidence.

• Set or edit the value: if you can edit this animal's records, a Set management value button (or Edit management value once one exists) opens a small form for the amount, a valuation date, and optional notes. Saving makes that your management value. See the inline editing section below.
• Crestimate second opinion: when a usable Crestimate exists and it is not already your management value, the panel shows it as a "Crestimate second opinion" so you have a market figure to compare against. If no Crestimate has been generated yet, it says so, and if the latest one has too little comparable data to apply automatically, it tells you that and invites you to review it or set a management value. For what a Crestimate is, see What is a Crestimate?.
• The 20% drift nudge: if the value you set drifts more than 20% away from the latest Crestimate, the panel flags it ("Crestimate is now $X, more than 20% away from the manual value") and offers a one-click Use Crestimate action to adopt the Crestimate figure, or Dismiss to keep your number. This is only a prompt; nothing changes unless you choose to.
• Show this on your active listing: when the animal has an active marketplace listing you can change, a Show this on your active listing button publishes the Crestimate onto that listing so buyers can see it. It only affects what shows on the listing, not your books. For what a Crestimate is and how it appears on a listing, see What is a Crestimate?.

Setting or changing the management value here never touches your accounting records, inventory, depreciation, or tax basis; it only changes the planning figure Creatures shows for this animal.

Setting and clearing the value inline

The Management value panel lets you edit right on the Finance tab, without leaving the page:

• Set a management value: choose Set management value (or Edit management value), enter the amount (your best current estimate in USD), a Valuation date (when that value was accurate, defaulting to today), and optional Notes, then Save value. Your figure becomes the management value and the source changes to Management value.
• Clear it back to Crestimate or cost basis: once you have set a value, a Use Crestimate or cost basis action removes it, so the source falls back to the latest eligible Crestimate, or to cost basis if there is no usable Crestimate.

This inline editing is only for the management value. To set or correct what you actually paid for the animal (its cost basis), see the cost-basis section below and Animal cost basis and starting values.

Setting a value before you have started Finance

You do not need to set up Finance first. If you own an animal but have no Finance book yet, the animal's profile shows a Your management value card next to its Crestimate, reading "Add a private value for planning alongside your Crestimate." Selecting Add a value opens the same value form in a sheet titled "Set [animal name]'s management value," with the amount, valuation date, and notes fields already open.

Because there is no book to save into yet, saving also starts Finance for you, and the form says so before you commit:

• A consent note above the buttons reads: "Saving will create your private Finance workspace using your current Creatures wallet and credit balances. This management value stays separate from book value, depreciation, and tax records."
• The submit button reads Save value and start Finance instead of Save value.

Choosing it does three things in one step: it creates your default book (the same private book described in Setting up your books, named after you and open to every category), it records the Creatures wallet and credit balances you hold right now as that book's opening balances so your platform money is reflected from day one, and it saves your figure as this animal's management value. Nothing about the book or the value is public, and the value stays a planning figure: your books gain no entry for it, and book value, depreciation, and tax basis are untouched. From then on the animal's Finance tab works as described above.

The animal's setup

The tab also shows how the animal is classified: how you got it (purchased or raised), its main use (breeding, service, dairy, and so on), when you started tracking it, and when it was placed in service. These come from the cost-basis fields described in Animal cost basis and starting values. If nothing is recorded yet, the tab says so and offers a link to add it.

Breeding profitability

For a breeding animal with linked offspring, a Breeding profitability panel compares what the animal and its offspring earned against what they cost. It is a management view built from the pedigree links and your posted entries, and it shows:

• Linked offspring and Source transactions: how many offspring and how many entries feed the calculation.
• Parent revenue and Offspring revenue: income attributed to the parent and to its offspring.
• Parent direct costs and Offspring direct costs: expenses connected to each.
• Net from breeding: parent plus offspring revenue, minus parent plus offspring direct costs. Starting value is excluded unless it has been posted as an expense, depreciation, or cost of goods sold, so this is a cash-in-versus-cash-out view of the breeding line.
• Return on direct costs: net from breeding as a percentage of those direct costs.
• Purchase price and Cost recovered: the parent's cost basis, and how much of it the breeding has recovered. If no purchase price is recorded, this reads "No purchase price recorded."

A per-offspring table lists each offspring with its revenue, costs, and net, so you can see which offspring drove the result. Offspring revenue is attributed through the pedigree, which means linking parents to offspring and connecting their income and costs is what powers this panel; if there is not enough data yet, the panel says so.

Genetic line profitability

When an animal has descendants across several generations, a Genetic line profitability panel widens the view to the whole line: total descendants, generations, descendant gross sales and direct costs, the net line margin, how many line sales went through the marketplace, and your line compared against the breed median sale price from the marketplace. It answers "is this bloodline earning above or below the market," and where there is not enough marketplace data, it says so rather than guessing.

Keeping it accurate

The more you connect income and expenses to specific animals when you record them, the more useful these per-animal numbers, and your overall Estimated value, become.

Related information

• Animal cost basis and starting values
• Recording money in and out
• Understanding your finance dashboard

Updated on: 22/07/2026