LiVT User Manual
LiVT (Log in Vermont) is a logging business profitability calculator developed by the Vermont Forest Business School, a program of Northeast Forests LLC. It helps logging business owners calculate their true cost of production, measure profitability by job or time period, and understand their return on investment.
LiVT works entirely on your phone or computer with no internet connection required after your first visit. Your data is saved automatically to your device and persists between sessions.
How LiVT Works
LiVT walks you through four steps to calculate the profitability of your logging operation. You fill in your numbers once and then run as many scenarios as you want — different jobs, different time frames, different production levels.
The four steps build on each other:
1 Overhead captures your annual fixed costs — the money that goes out the door whether you produce or not.
2 Business Specs takes your overhead and combines it with equipment values, loans, payroll, and fuel to calculate what it costs you to operate each week.
3 Products lists what you produce and what you net per load of each product.
4 Results is where you enter your actual or projected production for a given time frame and see your profit or loss and return on investment.
You can move between steps at any time using the navigation bar at the top. Your data is saved automatically as you type.
Installing on Your Phone
LiVT is designed to be used as a mobile app. To install it on your phone’s home screen:
iPhone / iPad (Safari)
Open www.loginvt.com in Safari. Tap the Share button (the square with the arrow pointing up), then scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen. Tap Add. LiVT will appear on your home screen with its own icon and launch like a native app.
Android (Chrome)
Open www.loginvt.com in Chrome. Tap the three-dot menu in the upper right, then tap Add to Home screen or Install app. Tap Add. LiVT will appear in your app drawer and on your home screen.
Once installed, LiVT works without an internet connection. You can use it on a landing in the middle of the woods with no cell service.
Step 1 Overhead
Overhead is the annual cost of keeping your business running independent of production. Your income tax return is a good source for most of these numbers. Enter annual dollar amounts for each category:
Insurance — Liability and equipment insurance. Do not include worker’s compensation here; that belongs in Payroll on the next step.
Repairs & Maintenance — What you spend annually to keep equipment running. If you don’t track this, 7% of gross revenue is a reasonable estimate.
Office Expenses — Administrative costs: bookkeeping, phone, internet, office supplies, professional services, and similar.
Vehicle Expenses — Cost of pickup trucks and personal vehicles used for the business. Annual miles multiplied by the IRS standard mileage rate is one approach. Do not include log trucks or equipment here.
Work Supplies — Chains, bar oil, safety gear, rigging, and other consumable supplies you keep on hand.
Other Overhead — Anything else that doesn’t fit above: land rent, association dues, permits, miscellaneous costs.
The total at the bottom updates as you type and carries forward automatically to Step 2.
Step 2 Business Specs
This step captures the main cost drivers of your operation: equipment, labor, and fuel. LiVT uses these numbers plus your overhead to calculate what it costs you to run each week.
Equipment
Equipment Value — Start — The fair market value (FMV) of all your production equipment on January 1. This is what you could sell it all for, not what you paid for it and not its book value. Include skidders, harvesters, forwarders, loaders, log trucks, trailers — everything that produces revenue.
Equipment Value — End — The fair market value of that same equipment at year’s end. The difference between Start and End is your annual depreciation — the real-world value your equipment lost during the year.
Core Equipment Value — What your core equipment package would be worth at a future sale date. This is used as a reference point and does not enter the weekly cost calculations.
Operations
Weeks of Production — How many weeks in the year you actually produce. This is not 52 — account for mud season, holidays, weather shutdowns, equipment downtime, and any other non-producing time. A typical Vermont logging operation might run 36 to 44 weeks.
Annual Overhead — This is pulled automatically from Step 1. You cannot edit it here; go back to the Overhead tab to change it.
Annual Equipment Payments — Total loan and lease payments for all equipment during the year. This is your cash outflow for financing, not the value of the equipment itself.
Annual Payroll — Total annual payroll including worker’s compensation insurance. Include yourself if you draw a salary. If you pay yourself from profit rather than payroll, do not include an owner’s salary here — but understand that your profit number at the end will need to cover your personal draw.
Fuel
Fuel — Gallons per Week — Average gallons of diesel and gasoline your operation burns in a production week. Include all equipment and trucks.
Fuel — Price per Gallon — Current or average price per gallon. You can update this anytime fuel prices change to see the impact on your costs.
Weekly Cost Breakdown
At the bottom of Step 2, LiVT calculates your total weekly operating cost. This is the core number that drives everything in Step 4. Here’s what each line means:
Depreciation — Annual depreciation (Equipment Start minus Equipment End) divided by your weeks of production. This is the real weekly cost of equipment wear.
Equipment Payments — Annual equipment payments divided by weeks of production. This is the weekly cash outflow for loans and leases.
Overhead — Annual overhead from Step 1 divided by weeks of production.
Payroll — Annual payroll divided by weeks of production.
Fuel — Gallons per week multiplied by price per gallon. Unlike the others, this is already a weekly number.
Total Weekly Costs — The sum of equipment cost (depreciation or payments), overhead, payroll, and fuel. This is what it costs you to operate for one production week.
Step 3 Products
Enter up to eight products that your operation produces. For each product, enter two things:
Product name — A description of the product: hardwood sawlogs, softwood sawlogs, pulpwood, firewood, biomass chips, veneer, pallet logs, or whatever you haul.
Net $/load — The average net revenue you receive per load of this product. This is your gross stumpage or delivered price minus stumpage paid to the landowner and minus trucking cost. In other words, the money that actually stays with your business per load.
Products with no name entered are ignored. You don’t need to fill all eight slots.
Step 4 Results
This is where LiVT puts your costs and production together to show you whether you’re making or losing money, and what kind of return you’re getting on your equipment investment.
Time Frame & Effort
Business Name and Job Name — Labels for your report. These don’t affect calculations.
Time Frame — Choose one of three options:
Week — Analyze a single production week. How much do you need to produce this week to cover your costs?
Whole Job — Analyze an entire logging job. Enter how many weeks the job will take. Your costs scale accordingly.
Year — Analyze your full production year. Uses your Weeks of Production from Step 2.
Effort — A percentage slider from 0% to 100%. This adjusts your operating costs to reflect partial-effort periods. If you ran at 75% of normal capacity (bad weather, short weeks, equipment trouble), set this to 75% and your costs scale down proportionally. At 100%, you’re using the full weekly cost figure. At 50%, LiVT assumes half the operating cost per week.
Production
For each product you entered in Step 3, enter the number of loads produced during your selected time frame. LiVT multiplies loads by your net-per-load price and shows the revenue for each product on the right.
Adjustments
Additional Job Costs — Costs specific to this job or period that aren’t part of your normal weekly operating costs: moving equipment in and out, road construction, landing improvements, bridge work, or similar one-time expenses.
Additional Revenue — Revenue beyond product sales: Acceptable Management Practices (AMP) cost-share payments, EQIP payments, carbon credits, maple lease income, or other income tied to the job.
Financial Results
The results panel shows:
Total loads — Sum of all loads across all products.
Product revenue — Sum of (loads × net per load) for each product.
Total Revenue — Product revenue plus any additional revenue.
Operating costs — Your weekly cost multiplied by the number of weeks, adjusted by the effort percentage.
Total Costs — Operating costs plus any additional job costs.
Investment — Your Equipment Value — Start from Step 2. This represents the capital tied up in your operation.
The two summary boxes at the bottom show Profit (or Loss) and ROI (Return on Investment) side by side.
How the Calculations Work
LiVT’s math is straightforward. Here are the formulas:
Weekly Depreciation = Annual Depreciation ÷ Weeks of Production
Weekly Payments = Annual Equipment Payments ÷ Weeks of Production
Weekly Equipment Cost = MAX(Weekly Depreciation, Weekly Payments)
Weekly Overhead = Annual Overhead ÷ Weeks of Production
Weekly Payroll = Annual Payroll ÷ Weeks of Production
Weekly Fuel = Gallons per Week × Price per Gallon
Total Weekly Cost = Weekly Equipment Cost + Weekly Overhead + Weekly Payroll + Weekly Fuel
Period Costs = Total Weekly Cost × Period Weeks × (Effort ÷ 100)
Total Costs = Period Costs + Additional Job Costs
Total Revenue = Product Revenue + Additional Revenue
Profit = Total Revenue − Total Costs
ROI = Profit ÷ Investment
Understanding ROI
Return on Investment is at least as important as the profit number itself. Two businesses can each make $50,000 in profit, but if one has $200,000 in equipment and the other has $800,000, they are not equally profitable. The first business is earning a 25% return on its investment; the second is earning 6.25%.
ROI answers the question: Is this business a good use of the capital tied up in it?
A logging business with a low ROI might make its owner a living, but the money invested in equipment could potentially earn more deployed elsewhere. A high ROI means the business is generating strong returns relative to the capital required to run it.
LiVT calculates ROI as profit divided by your starting equipment value (your Investment). This is a throughput accounting approach — it measures how effectively your operation converts its invested capital into profit.
Your Data
All data in LiVT is stored locally on your device using your browser’s localStorage. Nothing is transmitted to any server. No account or login is required.
This means your data is private and available offline, but it also means it lives only on the device where you entered it. If you clear your browser data, switch devices, or use a different browser, your numbers won’t follow you.
To start fresh, tap Reset All at the bottom of any page. This permanently deletes all saved data from the device and cannot be undone.
To save a copy of your results, use the Print / Save Report button on the Results step. This opens your browser’s print dialog, where you can print to paper or save as a PDF.
Tips for Best Results
Use real numbers, not round numbers. The value of LiVT comes from seeing your actual cost structure. Guessing “$50,000 for payroll” when it’s really $63,400 hides real costs. Pull from your tax return, settlement sheets, and bank statements.
Update fuel prices regularly. Fuel is the most volatile input. When diesel jumps 40 cents, go into Step 2 and update it. You’ll see the impact immediately.
Run multiple scenarios. Change the time frame, adjust the effort slider, try different production levels. LiVT is fast enough to answer “what if” questions in real time. What if I get one more load per week? What if I lose two weeks to mud season? What if I add a product?
Compare jobs. Run the same cost structure against different jobs by changing your production numbers and additional costs on the Results tab. Some jobs that look good on gross revenue look different when you account for moving costs and lower production rates.
Watch the weekly cost number. The Total Weekly Cost on Step 2 is the single most important number in the app. It’s the nut you have to crack every week before you start making money. Know this number cold.
Revisit annually. Equipment values change. Insurance premiums change. Overhead creeps up. Come back to Steps 1 and 2 at the start of each year and update your numbers. Your weekly cost may be different than you think.
About
LiVT was developed by the Vermont Forest Business School, a program of Northeast Forests LLC. It was originally funded by the Vermont Working Lands Enterprise Initiative and built to help Vermont logging businesses understand their true cost of production and make better financial decisions.
LiVT is free to use. No registration, no data collection, no ads.
For questions, feedback, or to learn more about the Vermont Forest Business School, visit www.loginvt.com.
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