Getting started

From a fresh account to your first uploaded prescription in about ten minutes. You'll need a soil-test CSV from any major lab — and, if you want over-the-air transfer, an account on your operations platform (manual shapefile download works without one).

1. Create your account

Sign up at Zone Forge with your email and a password, or with Google. No credit card required.

Once verified, you'll land on the plan picker. You can pick a plan now or skip it and explore the app first — you only need a plan to generate a prescription, not to set everything up.

2. Connect platform

From the onboarding screen, click Connect platform. You'll be redirected to your platform's sign-in page. Sign in with your existing platform credentials and approve the requested scopes (read your organizations, read your fields, write your prescriptions).

You'll be redirected back to Zone Forge, which now holds a refresh token so you stay connected. You won't need to sign in again until that token expires — up to 365 days, depending on the platform.

3. Upload your first soil samples

Pick an organization and a field from the field list. Click Upload soil samples and drag in a CSV from your lab.

Zone Forge auto-detects which columns are which: latitude, longitude, pH, phosphorus, potassium, organic matter, CEC, and any micronutrients. It also detects the phosphorus extractant (Mehlich-3, Bray-P1, or Olsen) from the column header or lab name.

Click Process. Within a few seconds you'll see your samples plotted on the field map.

You'll also get an instant Soil Health report card: a worst-first list of every nutrient, each graded in plain words (color- and word-coded, never color alone) with a variability hint where a field is patchy, plus a fertility trend once you've uploaded more than once. In the 26 states where we can stand behind a graded verdict, we grade in that state university's own rating words; everywhere else we honestly show your measured values with a note on why we don't grade that lab format yet. pH and lime are calibrated for all 50 states.

Read more in the soil upload guide.

4. Generate your first prescription

Once your samples are processed, click Create prescription. You'll be asked three questions:

1. Which nutrient? P, K, N, lime, or any of the secondary or micronutrients in your samples.
2. Which source? Iowa PM 1688, Tri-State 2020, or Penn State. The list will warn you if your sample extractant doesn't match the source's calibration.
3. Which philosophy? Hybrid (default), Build-and-Maintain, or Sufficiency.

Then enter a yield goal and product (e.g., DAP for P, KCl for K, urea for N) and click Generate.

If this field is covered by the $1/acre single-field unlock instead of a subscription, a confirmation modal will show you the exact charge before proceeding.

5. Review and adjust

Within a few seconds you'll see a five-zone prescription overlaid on your field, with a per-zone table showing rates, acres, and cost-per-acre.

Tap any contour to reassign it to a different zone. Tap any rate to override it. The field total updates live.

6. Push to your platform — or download the shapefile

Click Send to your platform. Zone Forge validates the shapefile, packages it, and runs the four-step upload pipeline. You'll see live status as it progresses through QUEUED to VALID.

If anything fails, your prescription stays saved locally and you can retry with one tap.

Prefer to load it yourself? On any saved prescription, open the kebab menu and pick Download shapefile. You get the exact ZIP we'd otherwise push to your platform, ready to copy to a USB stick and side-load onto a 2630, an early in-cab display, or any non-in-cab display. Works without a platform connection. More on manual download.

You can also click Print field report for a one-page PDF with the map, per-zone table, and source citations.

What's next?

• Read the recommendation sources guide to understand which table fits your operation.
• Explore the calculations guide if you want to see every formula.
• Tune the build path in Field Setup: per-nutrient target soil level (e.g. P = 75 ppm) and years to reach target (1–20). Hybrid builds toward your number, not the source default.
• If you spread manure or poultry litter, open the Stacked Rx wizard from the Rx tab — the engine generates three linked Rxs (Litter → Potash → Nitrogen) with the K and N credits subtracted per zone. Read the docs.
• Need more than one product on a field? Open the Blend Rx wizard from the Rx tab to assign several products in one pass — applied either as a separate prescription per product, or blended into a single variable-rate bag. Read the docs.
• Open any field to see its spray-window advisory (an advisory, not a guarantee) and the local cash bid for your crop from USDA AMS — pulled for your field's location.