December 2017 FarmSmart Newsletter

Merry Christmas from the FBS "Stable"

And 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)

In this issue we'll be looking ahead into 2018 and beyond:

Winter Conferences and Trade Shows.
Farm Financial Standards Free Implementation Guide.
Successful Farming Looks at ERP for Farming.
24/7 Webinars.
Username & Password Changes.

SDG

Winter Conferences and Shows

Date	Event	Location	Booth
Jan. 18-19		Coralville, IA
Jan. 24-25		Des Moines, IA	207
Feb. 14-17		Louisville, KY	1009
Feb. 27-March1		Anaheim, CA	2925

FFSC Releases Free Implementation Guide

Never have the financial stakes been higher in agriculture, yet few producers have the accounting training to effectively monitor and control their expanding operations. In direct response to the Farm Crisis of the ‘80s the Farm Financial Standards Council (the Council) developed its Financial Guidelines for Agriculture. This document is designed to assist in developing sound financial statements on agricultural operations. However, direct adoption of the Guidelines by farmers has been hampered by two obstacles – understanding financial terms and not being accountants.

As farmers implement the Guidelines they can begin benefiting in these areas:
• Improve management decision-making and enhanced profitability
• Better lender relationships and access to capital
• Enhance production as well as financial understanding of their business
• Focus on strengths that set them apart from their peers
• Determine cost of production (through the Council’s Managerial Accounting Guidelines)
• Gain a better understanding of standard financial measures

Retired Purdue University Extension Specialist and CPA Alan Miller comments, “The net benefit of moving to the next stage — accrual-adjusted financial reports to assess farm profitability and financial condition — will be a huge improvement in the quality of information available for decision-making.”

Click here to download a free copy of the Implementation Guide. For help in implementing your accounting system contact mike@fbssytems.com.

ERP For Ag?

Successful Farming's story on ERP software adopters reveals substantial benefits and costs.

Congratulations to Successful Farming Magazine for their bold look into the future of farm management in their Technology Edition story "Good-Enough Data Isn't Good Enough Anymore."

While FBS wasn't mentioned the problems we solve and the technology we've developed--integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)--were emphasized and validated. Here are some quotes from the article in italics along with our comments in bold. We highly encourage you to read this ground-breaking article in its entirety.

Problems Identified

“We had six people who had six separate lists. It was impossible to get accurate information when we worked off so many different silos of information,” says Rob Sladek, a fifth-generation farmer at JCS Family Farms. “It was so frustrating knowing we generated all of this data, yet we questioned its validity.” (See FBS's 8 information silos video.)

ERP Manufacturing Model

If it was going to stay relevant, as well as position itself for the next generation to farm, the family knew it had to start treating the operation as if it were more of a manufacturing facility – with raw goods in and finished goods out – that based decisions on concrete figures.

(The Farm Financial Standards Council has thoroughly addressed this goal through its Management Accounting Guidelines, and FBS has gone further than any other company in implementing Activity-Based Costing based on these guidelines.)

Financial Hub

The ERP system JCS Family Farms uses centers around its financials. All of the information being generated across the entire operation flows through this system. "Incorporating the data silos meant investing in one complete system – with financials at the center – to streamline processes, procedures, and information across their entire business."

“If you do not have a near-real-time view of the integrated data from all aspects of your operation, you will never have any real, fact-based insight into what works, what doesn’t work, what has happened, what is currently happening, and what will happen in the future,” says Douglas Hackney, president, Enterprise Group, Ltd.

(Note that the first generation of Ag ERP systems have all come from the production side with "plugged" rather than integrated financials, missing out on the benefits of accounting control. We explain this in our video, Turn Your Data Into Decisions.)

What's the Bottom Line to Implement ERP?

To on-board an operation in year one costs around $100,000. After that, the yearly cost drops to about 50% of that figure.

(We think this might be 5-10x higher than it needs to be. If you're considering upgrading to an ERP system please visit with Mike (mike@fbssystems.com) or Norm (norm@fbssystems.com) first. Our phone number is 800.437.7638.

Thanks, Laurie Bedford and Successful Farming for covering this trend!

Q&A: Usernames & Passwords

Sarah Dixon, FBS Sales and Support Coordinator

Q. When I tried to sign into FBS it gave me an invalid username message, but I know I am using the same username that I have always used.

A. With our release of Version 11.2 and in preparation to its release on the AgCompass server, we have been updating the functionality of the FBS user file that stores usernames and passwords for those clients running on networks. This code is shared by our Farm/Trust Manager product on AgCompass as well.

Part of the upgrade we made involved making the username and password case sensitive for all the products. In the past, regardless of what you typed, "standard" FBS stored the username and password in uppercase in the database. Since most people are typing in lowercase the upgrade converts username and password to lowercase in the database. During this implementation you might find that your username was in all caps or was in mixed case but is now all lowercase. We also had some timing issues with our updates on the AgCompass server that caused some confusion and a short stint of requiring uppercase usernames. This has been cleaned up and is back to lowercase usernames. In the end standard FBS and Farm/Trust Manager are now case sensitive.

If you have any questions or run into any issues with this please do not hesitate to call our Technical Support team for help!

As always if you have any questions or concerns please call FBS Technical Support at 800-437-7638 x 100 or email us at support@fbssystems.com . If you feel you will need help please schedule an appointment ahead of time to ensure there will be someone available to help you. This is our busiest time of the year and we do tend to have several appointments scheduled each day so scheduling ahead of time allows us to give you our full attention, You can also watch a video on Installing Version 11.2.

24/7 Webinars

Q&A: Usernames & Passwords