Different approaches to modelling soil biological processes are reviewed. Soil biology modelling can be divided into process-oriented modelling and organism-oriented modelling. Process-oriented models based on first-order kinetics have been successfully used to represent environmental and management efforts on organic matter and nutrient dynamics in a number of applications but several unresolved issues remain e.g. the lack of a consistent functional definition of organic matter fractions and conflicting hypotheses about N mineralization-immobilization mechanisms. The attributes of various process-oriented organic matter and nutrient cycling models are tabulated. Organism-oriented models have been used primarily to analyse C and nutrient flow through soil food webs. Use of these models in agricultural systems has provided insight into the influence of soil fauna on nutrient mobilization. Advances in modelling technology are reviewed.