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FarmSMART                  
 October 2022

Harvest 2022

Trucks and Technology.

Dear Friend,

Even though FBS moved from the farm to the business park nearly 4 years ago, we're never far from the ag action.  The bountiful harvest and low Mississippi River have queued up a long line of grain trucks at the ethanol cooperative across the street.  Meanwhile, our developers are working on the latest software releases for tracking grain and other farm inventories.  If you're only using TransAction Plus or TransAction Lite accounting software this would be a great time to activate Crop Audit to integrate your farm inventories and production records with accounting.

Here's what you need to know:

  • FBS/MASA upgrade status.
  • Gangwish Seed Farm's "Secret sauce."
  • Read our latest blog posts.
  • Forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
  • Timeless tips.
                                                                             SDG

 

FBS-MASA

 

Upgrade Status
Version 11.7 was released to all FBS clients on April 29th of this year, and is available through download, disc, or AgCompass.  We have contacted all registered users via email or First Class mail.  If you have not received your upgrade contact cheryl@fbssystems.com or 800.437.7638 / Extension 105.

Version 11.8 was released on October 19th for all MASA members.  It will be available only as a download.  Contact Sarah at support@fbssystems.com or 800.437.7638 / Extension 100 to schedule your installation.
Secret Sauce Gangwish
Secret Sauce

Three innovative and thriving operations shared their "secret sauce" at the 2022 Ag Software Success Summit. Our second presentation is from Gangwish Seed Farms of Shelton, Nebraska, which uses Activity Based Costing to track and manage field operations.  Click here to watch a video by Randy Gangwish.

Read Our Latest Blog Posts

Blog October 4 panel


AGRICULTURAL ACCOUNTING FOR FARM INVENTORY

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,...

TOP AG TECH TRENDS FOR 2022 AND 2023

The world population continues to grow putting more and more pressure on not just natural resources but food production as well. Farmers and ranchers...

TOP 6 FARM ACCOUNTING PROBLEMS AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM

There may be a lot of things that happen on the farm that present challenges, but for a lot of farms, nothing compares to the challenges faced in the...

8 TIPS TO IMPROVE FARM ACCOUNTING

Assets on the farm have value, but so does versatility. For decades, engineers have tried to find ways to increase the versatility of farm equipment...
Newsletter Fall 1982 rotated

Forty Years of Wandering in the Wilderness

The Fall 1982 edition of The Friendly Farm Computer Newsletter focused on the "Age of Uncertainty" (including the transition from the inflationary expectations of the 70s to the looming Farm Crisis of the 80s).   Some excerpts:  

  • "What can be done?  Rather than making capital investments, we need to invest in management.  For some, it is already too late, but for most farmers, knowing their exact costs and precisely where their operation is going and acting on that information....can make the difference between survival and failure."
  • Farm computer user groups form in Ohio and Illinois

  • Market updates available through your computer (AgriStar, Instant Update, and AgriVisor.)

  • Beyond the Spreadsheet--Decision Aids Are Just the Start, which identified the "killer app" of day--the spreadsheet--and warned that decision aids were of little value without good records.

  • Sources of Information on Farm Computers:  Computer Farming newsletter, Doane Agricultural Computing newsletter, and Successful Farming's Farm Computer News.

  • A Revolution in Perspective Or Why We Will Soon Be Taking Farm Computers For Granted, which compared the farm adoption of the telephone, radio, and microcomputer and concluded with this implausible prediction:  "It is possible that the various communications technologies (telephone, radio, and computers) may blend into one."

Q&A:  Timeless Tips



Here are three timeless "how-to" tips from our website's "attic."
Sarah 2019

Sarah Dixon, FBS Support Coordinator
sarah@fbssystems.com (800.437.7638/extension 100). 

1.  Recording a debit or ACH purchase.
Input>General>Check and click Add. Select the correct bank account and then in the Check Number field enter "Debit Card," "ACH," or "EFT" plus the date of the entry in numeric format (i.e. "062522" to represent June 25, 2022). Then complete the remaining fields just like a check. This entry will be show up as a check on the Check Register/Reconciliation report and the Clear Checks and Deposits screen.
Note that this process can also be used with Accounts Payable payments as an alternative to printing checks.

2. "Friendly fire" from antivirus software. They can cause a multitude of issues. It is best practice to go into your antivirus software and find the setup area where you can exclude from scans and make sure that your current program folder for FBS is added to the exclusion list. Where you find this varies greatly by the brand of software you are using. If you need assistance finding the correct process contact the anti-virus support service.

3. Two ways to void a check or deposit.
• If you want to keep a record within your general ledger that the check was written, then voided, go to the original check and remove the amount and put "Void" in the Description. You can also change the vendor to "Void" if you don't want to keep track of which vendor the check was originally written to.

• The other way to void a check is simple to delete the original check. TransAction Plus maintains a full audit trail of all deleted entries including the Date Deleted. Just go to Accounting>Other Reports>Deleted Entries to view.
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