2012 Trade Show Schedule,Looking For An Accounting Firm?, "Best Practices" For Crop Marketing Centers, New Website,The Mystery of the Changing Accounts, Free January Webinar Schedule
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 FarmSMART                                              December 2011 

In this Issue:

2012 Trade Show Schedule

Looking For An Accounting Firm?

"Best Practices" For Crop Marketing Centers

New Website

Free January Webinar Schedule

The Mystery of the Changing Accounts 

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Greetings!   

FBS Christmas 2011

 Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year to all our clients and friends.  

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."  (John 1:14)  May you truly behold this Grace and Truth this Christmas season, throughout 2012 and for all eternity.  

We're looking forward to crossing paths with you at one or more of our upcoming trade shows

Maybe it's time to hire an accountant who does more than taxes. 

Our Best Practices series covers the concept of crop marketing centers. 

The Q&A column explains how to prevent changing accounts in past years' data. 

For more background on accounting and recordkeeping topics please visit our blog site

                                                                                      SDG

2012 Trade Show Schedule    

FBS Booth
The genuine FBS trade show booth. Accept no substitutes.

Trade shows are a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, discuss what's new on the farm and discover what's new with FBS SERVware.  Here's where we'll be "setting up camp" in the next six months:

January 18-19   Minnesota Pork Congress, Minneapolis, MN

January 24-26   Iowa Pork Congress, Des Moines, IA

Jan. 31-Feb.1    Illinois Pork Expo, Peoria, IL

February 15-18  National Farm Machinery Show, Louisville, KY

March     1-3     Commodity Classic, Nashville, TN 

June        6-8    World Pork Expo, Des Moines, IA

Click here for venue location and booth number details.    

Looking For An Accounting Firm That Does More Than Taxes?   

 

Finding an accountant who's up on taxes is sure a good first step, but unfortunately it's where most farmers stop.  Locating a firm that understands production agriculture and offers management counsel and financial analysis to help you make more money so you can consistently experience a tax "problem" is a rare find.  But you can do even better than that.  How about a firm that offers these comprehensive services plus appreciates and leverages the power of FBS software?  

Here are some professional firms that meet that criteria: 

Latta, Harris, Hanon & Penningroth, LLP (563.886.2187)

LarsenAllen, LLP (507.233.5200)

EideBailly, LLP (952.944.6166)

Frost, PLLC  (501.376.9241)

HF Financial, LLC (620.275.7517)

Morgan & Associates (270.442.4100)

Agri-Accounting Services (419.927.6227)

Gayle Smith, CPA (252.568.4500) 

If you're an accountant or CPA who would like to join this growing list please contact us at sales@fbssystems.com or 800.437.7638 /Ext. 1 

"Best Practices" For Crop Marketing Centers  

 Editor's noteThis article continues a new series on the "best practices" FBS users have developed to improve effectiveness, efficiency, internal control and compliance from their information system.  

Previously we have covered crop and livestock production centers-where plants and animals grow to maturity. From an accounting perspective, these are also work-in-process cost centers. When this production cycle is completed these products are considered finished goods. Because of the perishable nature of livestock, this finished goods stage is extremely short; usually equal to the ride from the feedlot to the slaughterhouse. The finished goods period for crops, though, can be quite lengthy, beginning at harvest and lasting to the last load is sold many months later. 

Most FBS users are familiar with the concept of crop production center by commodity/crop year and farm. Adding marketing centers, though, will actually simplify coding and and provide better analysis. 

The coding is simplified because crop sales don't have to identify the production center (i.e. farm), only the commodity andproduction year. 

Figure 1 is a flow chart showing the relationships between corn and soybean production and marketing centers in an operation spanning multiple farms and landlords. 

Crop Marketing Centers
Figure 1.  Production - Marketing Center Flow Chart.

 How do production inventories and costs get transferred to marketing centers? 

The recommended best practice is to record this through either a production Center Transfer using market prices (Figure 2) or a management or accrual Journal Entry using cost (Figure 3). 

Crop Audit transfer between centers
Figure 2. Production transfer between centers.
 
E.CLIPSE internal crop sale
Figure 3.  Automated internal crop sale through E.CLIPSE Managerial Accounting).

 Why not maintain harvested crops in their original production centers?

  • It makes the most repetitive crop transaction--delivery and sales--much more complicated as you would need to allocate loads and track inventories by center as well as storage location.
  • It doesn't make sense to arbitrarily assign different sale prices to different farms; production is a separate management activity from marketing.  Otherwise "Farm A" would appear more profitable than "Farm B" simply because it got credit for higher-priced sales.  Nor is it practical to to manually "spread" sales between multiple centers to even up the discrepancy.
     
  • Marketing centers cleanly separate finished goods (stored crops) from work-in-process (growing crops) in your accounting system and financial reports.
  • FBS E.CLIPSE Managerial Accounting provides automated links to combine marketing center activity with production activity for a comprehensive seed-to-sale cost analysis that producers ultimately expect.  See Figure 4.  
Cost Analysis with revenued assigned to fields
Figure 4.  E.CLIPSE will automatically assign revenue from a marketing center back to the field.
 
Visited Our Website Yet?
FBS Systems Home PageThere's a wealth of timely information waiting your inspection at our new website. Check them out now by clicking on the image or any of the links below.

To start your tour, click on the image above. 

Leave comments or suggestions regarding our website.

Free January Webinar Schedule 
Webinar Screen
 
Starting the New Year, January 9  
Crop Management Accounting
, January 16  
Livestock Management Accounting, January 23 
Smart Feeder Reports
, January 30 

To register, e-mail support@fbssystems.com by 9:00 am CST on the day of the webinar.

Q&A of the Month--The Mystery of the Changing Accounts

 Q.   I've noticed that when I run reports for past years and drill down to look at the checks and deposits that the entries are changing the bank account that they are written to.    

A.  It's possible that the ledger account, checking account, center or division in the original entry has since been inactivated so it is no longer on the list to choose from. If the program cannot find the ledger, center, etc the original entry was posted to and you click on SAVE instead ofCANCEL it will save it to the default for that field (which is always the first on the list). So to avoid entries being saved incorrectly when you did not intend to make any changes always click CANCELinstead of SAVE, especially when reviewing old/"closed" years.
Sincerely,

FBS Systems
Sincerely,

FBS Systems
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