January is often a sobering month for yard owners and managers. After the pressures of Christmas and the reality of winter settling in, attention naturally turns to budgets, cash flow, and how to stretch finances to the end of the month. It’s also a time when many businesses look closely at income streams, reviewing whether pricing, systems, and day-to-day processes are genuinely supporting a sustainable operation. Adi Devonish from LiveryLive explains why it’s important to stay ahead of extras when it comes to yard management.
For the equestrian industry, these reflections come at a particularly challenging time. Winter brings inevitable cost increases — higher hay and bedding usage, increased electricity and water consumption, more staff hours for bring-ins, turnouts, rug changes and monitoring — all against a backdrop of rising utility bills, business rates, insurance premiums and staffing costs. Worryingly, livery prices have not always kept pace with these increases, leaving many yards absorbing costs rather than passing them on.
This issue was highlighted clearly in the 2026 Livery Pricing Survey, which revealed a huge variation in what yards across the UK are charging for similar livery packages. While some variation is expected due to location, facilities and staffing levels, the scale of the differences suggests that many yards may not be charging fully for the services and resources they provide. In an environment where margins are already tight, failing to capture all costs is no longer sustainable. More than ever, it’s vital that yards accurately charge for the products, services and time they are using.
Missed Costs Add Up Quickly
On a medium-sized yard — for example, one with around 30 horses — it’s surprisingly easy for small charges to slip through the cracks. Extras get done “just this once”, hay nets are taken without being logged, bedding use isn’t always tracked accurately, and additional services are quietly absorbed into the day.
A yard in East Anglia recently shared their current winter costs with the LiveryLive team, with further increases expected imminently:
- Hay (small bale): £10
- Woodchip: £12
- Turnout as an extra service: £4
If just three of each of these items are missed each week, that’s £78 lost — which equates to £4,056 over the course of a year. That’s not an insignificant figure; for many yards it could be the difference between breaking even and operating at a loss. When viewed in the context of the 2026 pricing survey results, it also raises an important question: how many yards are unintentionally undercharging simply because they don’t have systems in place to capture everything?
Why “Quick Jobs” Cost the Most
Many yard owners recognise the problem, but the reality of busy routines means admin often slips down the priority list. Charging for “odd jobs” — holding for the vet, extra rug changes, additional hay nets, bringing in or turning out — can feel too time-consuming to record manually. Over time, these unbilled extras quietly erode profitability.
This is where better systems can make a tangible difference. Tools like the LiveryLive App are designed specifically to fit around real yard routines, making it easy to track stock levels, services and extras so that everything makes it onto a bill without adding hours of admin.
LiveryLive users frequently report how quickly these gaps become visible once they start tracking properly:
“All those little extras that I used to just do are now being billed for and more than cover the subscription, so I’m one very happy yard owner.”
Joanne, Yard Owner, Northern Ireland“We went from 18 nets taken and paid for last month to 83 in the first month using LiveryLive — that’s almost £100 a month difference. It wasn’t dishonesty, just carelessness, but it shows where the money goes.”
Susie, Yard Owner, Derbyshire“In our first month with LiveryLive, we billed over £700 of extras. Around £300 of that would never have been charged before because it was too admin-heavy. That’s like having an extra livery without the extra horse.”
Jenny, Yard Owner, Wiltshire
Planning for a More Sustainable Year Ahead
January is the ideal time for yards to step back and review their overall financial picture. This isn’t just about raising prices, but about understanding true costs, ensuring services are charged correctly, and putting systems in place that protect income going forward.
It’s also a valuable moment to look at staffing efficiency, workload distribution, billing processes and operating costs. Streamlining how services are logged and charged can reduce admin pressure, improve transparency with clients, and help ensure that staff time, materials and resources are properly accounted for.
Ultimately, if yards are not capturing all of their costs, no amount of careful budgeting will fix the problem. In a sector where costs continue to rise and expectations around welfare and compliance are higher than ever, sustainable pricing and accurate billing are essential.
If you suspect that costs are slipping through the net, now is the time to act. Tools like the LiveryLive App offer a practical, yard-focused solution, with a six-week free trial and support from a team who understand not just the technology, but the realities of running a yard day to day. Taking control of billing now can make a significant difference to your financial resilience throughout the year ahead.