When analyzing your farm’s financial reporting system, what level of reporting does your farm use? Are you on a cash basis, an accrual/management accounting basis, or both? In other articles, we’ve contrasted the ways that farmers produce their financial statements and the conflicting goals of maintaining simultaneous financial records using both cash and accrual.
Topics: farm financial statements, farm financial reporting, farm inventories, cash or accrual
Standardizing accounting practices for any industry can be incredibly difficult. In farming especially, there are countless variables that can severely impact the production numbers of a farm—everything from the vagaries of natural weather patterns to soil quality, crop/livestock genetic factors, and the availability of labor at an affordable cost.
Agriculture accounting needs to account for all of these variables and standardized, “Big Bucket” accounting solutions and practices often fail to, well, account for these variables and the impact they can have on farm operations.
Topics: accrual accounting, agricultural managerial accounting, farm inventories, farm accounting, agricultural inventories, quickbooks, activity-based costing
For any farm, inventory management is one of the most challenging, yet rewarding accounting processes affecting the integrity of your entire management information system. This process is crucial to ensuring that owner-operators can successfully take their crops and livestock to market. To help better track their inventory, many farmers use a farm inventory management software solution.
Topics: farm inventories
For a long time, in the agricultural sector, technology, beyond farm equipment, was relegated to the back office. Thankfully, farms don’t operate that way anymore. In fact, most have learned to leverage ag tech to assist in improving productivity and profitability.
Topics: farm management accounting, cost accounting, accrual accounting, agricultural managerial accounting, farm inventories, farm software, agricultural decision support, agricultural software, enterprise analysis, farm budgeting, farm profit centers
When it comes to farming, much of what you do is about timing. Often, it doesn’t feel like there’s much time to make decisions, the seasons seem to come quickly, and the work of one leads right into another. But, taking the time to consider how you manage your farm accounting and understanding what those decisions mean is worth the investment.
Topics: farm financial statements, accrual accounting, farm financial reporting, farm inventories, agricultural software, enterprise analysis, agricultural inventories, cash or accrual, cost analysis, farm accountant
When it comes to farm oversight, understanding where you are, in terms of financial information and accounting is vital. Growth Path Accounting starts with asking where you are now and what your information goals are. Growth Path Accounting can be narrowed down to three objectives:
To get there, you first need to understand Growth Path accounting and all of its separate parts. That informs not just your understanding of where you are and which accounting method you’re currently using, but also where you’d like to be and the advantages of the other accounting methods available to you.
Topics: managerial accounting, farm management accounting, accrual accounting, farm financial reporting, farm inventories, agricultural software, farm accounting, agricultural inventories, cash or accrual, farm accountant
It’s sometimes easy to overlook the back office needs of farming. So much decision making happens in response to conditions in the barn or field, overlooking the role that record keeping and accounting should play in those decisions could be a mistake. But, agricultural accounting isn’t easy. The nuances rely on both the circumstances of farm accounting, production cycles, and generally accepted accounting principles. Combining all aspects takes detailed record keeping, a good understanding of the ins and outs, and the right tools.
Topics: farm financial statements, farm financial reporting, farm inventories, agricultural inventories
Two recent articles in the farm press validate how far farm management technology has come, yet how far it has yet to progress to make a serious business impact.
Topics: managerial accounting, farm management accounting, cost accounting, farm financial statements, accrual accounting, farm financial reporting, agricultural managerial accounting, farm inventories, farm records, farm software, ag software, agricultural decision support, business processes, agricultural software, farm accounting, enterprise analysis, precision farming
"The next generation of agricultural managers are asking how the industry can enable seamless data exchange between machines and Farm Management Information Systems. The costs of exchanging data are high due to the lack of common implementation guidelines, data transfer protocols, message standards, and standard reference data. Producers report that it is difficult or nearly impossible to move data from one system to another. To do so almost always requires data reentry, manual data transformation, and/or specialists to manage data."
Topics: farm management accounting, agricultural managerial accounting, farm inventories, ag software, agricultural decision support, agricultural software, agricultural inventories, agricultural compliance, farm
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