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FBS Systems (MASA) vs Traction Ag
Both rows from the comparison table, set side by side. Nothing here is a recommendation; the facts are the vendors' own public statements, cited on each product page.
Capabilities
FBS Systems (MASA) describes 1 of 10 capabilities (7 partial); Traction Ag describes 5 (3 partial). They differ on ai assistant, inputs, labor & staff, equipment data, mobile app. Both describe accounting.
| Capability | FBS Systems (MASA) | Traction Ag |
|---|---|---|
| AI assistant | ◐ Partial | ? Unverified |
| Accounting | ● Yes | ● Yes |
| Grain marketing | ◐ Partial | ◐ Partial |
| Field maps & agronomy | ◐ Partial | ◐ Partial |
| Inputs | ○ No | ● Yes |
| Labor & staff | ◐ Partial | ● Yes |
| Weather | ○ No | ○ No |
| Equipment data | ◐ Partial | ● Yes |
| Elevator / buyer connection | ◐ Partial | ◐ Partial |
| Mobile app | ◐ Partial | ● Yes |
FBS Systems (MASA): Accounting: general ledger with cash, accrual, market-value and lower-of-cost/market bases, multi-entity consolidation, AP/AR, ACH e-payments, payroll (legacy FBS page), W-2/1099, activity-based cost accounting, Farm Financial Standards 'Sweet Sixteen' ratios. Grain marketing: tracks cash/futures contract status for crops and imports grain tickets from electronic scales/sales and Excel (not a bid/offer marketplace). Agronomy: crop production records (fields, inputs, applications, harvest), no field-map/agronomy imagery described. Equipment: 'machinery economics' pulls telemetry from machines and trucks (via acquired CropZilla) to compute cost per acre; no equipment brands named. Mobile: legacy FBS site says field production activity can be recorded via the Conservis Mobile App; no MASA-native app described. Labor: labor cost per acre tracked; payroll on legacy FBS page. AI: MASA sells a synced data replica that external tools (Power BI, Tableau, Claude) can query and runs 'MASA Labs' where producers build AI tools; no built-in assistant. Buyer integrations: packer settlements/carcass data and feed-mill imports; grain tickets from electronic scales.
Traction Ag: Core product is cloud farm accounting: multi-entity books, bank/credit-card sync via Plaid, cash and accrual reports, Schedule F and 1099s, land agreements, invoicing, payroll via Paylocity add-on. Grain: scale tickets, load tracking and crop/grain inventory in Plus; full grain contract/position/settlement management is in the enterprise 'Advanced Farm Management' suite. Field records: tillage, planting, application and harvest records with per-field profitability; machine integrations are John Deere Operations Center and Climate FieldView (no Case IH/AGCO listed); no imagery or agronomy modeling described. Inputs: seed, chemical and fertilizer inventory and prepay tracking. Labor: payroll integration, work orders and roles/permissions (enterprise and Sept 2026 update). Buyer/retailer: bill import from Keystone Cooperative and FS Billing; no grain buyer contract feeds named. Mobile: Traction Mobile on Apple App Store and Google Play. No AI assistant feature found on public pages.
Price, data and ownership
| FBS Systems (MASA) | Traction Ag | |
|---|---|---|
| Company | MASA LLC (Mutual Agricultural Software Alliance), formerly FBS Systems, Inc. | Traction Ag Inc. |
| Category | accounting-financials | whole-farm management |
| What the AI does | Unverified — MASA/FBS pages describe analytics; no assistant could be confirmed. | Unverified — AI level not assessed. |
| Pricing model | Contact sales | Subscription |
| Published price | Not published | Basic $95/month or $950/year; Plus $195/month or $1,950/year; Pro $395/month or $3,950/year (yearly billing shown as 'save 15%'); no per-acre or per-entity charges listed; free trial offered. Enterprise 'Advanced Farm Management' pricing not published. Accessed 2026-10-25 at tractionag.com/pricing-and-plans. |
| Your data | Not published | Traction's Ag Data Use Agreement (Trust Center) states 'Traction believes that you are the owner of Ag Data that originates from your farm, device, or equipment' and 'Traction will not sell or share your Ag Data to third parties without your consent'; anonymized aggregated benchmarking is on by default with an opt-out. |
| Crops and regions | Crop (row-crop), swine, cattle, dairy and diversified operations, multi-entity and farm-management companies; North America (vendor states ~3,000 agricultural clients across North America). | '100+ crop types' with customizable harvest units; U.S. (Midwest origin) and Australia; livestock tracking not supported per FAQ |
| Farm size | Not published | Not published |
| Ownership | Producer-owned — producer-owned private (producer-owned: owners are farm operations, an accounting firm serving producers, and founder Norm Brown; 7 of 10 board seats held by farm operations using the software; vendor states it is not venture-backed) | Private, investor-backed — VC-backed private (vendor: 'proudly independent and owned by farm investors'; $10M Series A May 2024 led by Cooperative Ventures, a CHS–GROWMARK joint venture, with Plymouth Growth; 2022 release described it as majority employee- and farmer-owned) |
| What else they sell | Farm software co. — farm-software-only company | Farm software co. — farm-software-only company (lead investor is a venture arm of two farmer-owned cooperatives) |
| Headquarters | Tipton, IA (US) | Auburn, Indiana (US) |
| Built and supported | US-built, US support (remote team; vendor states service area is North America; 2025 newsletter lists weekly maintenance windows in Central Time) | US-built ('Born in the Midwest'); US phone/live-chat/video support team (888-466-6080); also operates in Australia following the Conservis acquisition |
| Founded | 1980 | 2020 |
| Status | REBRANDED: The FBS Systems name has been retired; the software continues under MASA (Mutual Agricultural Software Alliance), a producer-owned LLC in Tipton, IA. fbssystems.com remains live with legacy product descriptions, and MASA pages still reference 'FBS accounting' integration and fbssystems.com email addresses. Date of the ownership change is not published on vendor pages. | Active. Now the owner of both Conservis and Granular Business, marketed together as 'Advanced Farm Management'; vendor says it plans to fold that functionality into the core Traction Accounting product. Pricing page shows overlapping promotions (one dated 'expires December 19, 2025', another 'rest of 2026 free with yearly 2027 plan — expires Nov 15'). Founders not named on site; CEO Dustin Sapp named in 2024 funding coverage; team roots in Farm Works Software. |
| Confidence | partially verified | partially verified |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-25 | 2026-10-25 |
Prices are quoted as shown on the vendor page on the review date and change often. Sources with access dates are on each product page: FBS Systems (MASA) and Traction Ag. Request a correction.