Takin’ Care of Business
Farming is a business, Wait, what?
As a matter of fact it is a very challenging business, there are so many factors that are out of our control, weather, pests, animal behavior and health, the price of goods and services, consumer preferences, the list goes on and on. Nonetheless, whether you ranch, row crop, produce vegetables, flowers etc on land you own or lease, no matter how big or small, the bottom line is very important.
No matter how many acres you have in production, as long as your end result is to sell to a consumer, it’s a business.
Many of us farmers focus on how the heck to keep our crops, livestock etc healthy and safe from all those uncontrollable factors. We spend the bulk of our time and energy on the growth and survival of the crops. Of course we care about the success of the crop in order to pay the bills but feeding people is our primary goal. Paying attention to the money flow often gets moved to the end of the list.. After all the emergency situations we have to manage right?
One of the things I have noticed in the farming world, nobody wants to talk about how they manage their money. I’ve gone to lots of farming conferences hoping to be able to ask questions about how farmers manage money. I quickly learned it's not a polite question to ask. So through the years I have struggled with what kind of records to keep. Notebooks, file folders, spreadsheets, e- docs I’vr tried them all. My local extension office helped me a lot with many farming strategies. But I had to go to business development agencies to gain some skills on revenue and expenses. I still found paper charts and clip boards were unruly in the Kansas wind and i had to handle the same information twice. Could there be an app out there that could streamline the farm business? I had seen some adds for expense tracking but they really weren't for farms.
But then I stumbled upon an app that caught my eye.
FARMKEEP.
I did some exploring and was impressed with what I saw, I decided to do a trial year subscription for under a hundred bucks and I have to say I’m a solid fan!
Not only does it have a great place to inventory livestock, keep animal health records and map your farm, and has a stellar financial tracking system I’ve been looking for. Finally it's all at my fingertips.
Because this is supposed to be a short blog, I am just going to highlight the financial features.
The Expense tracking feature has a drop down menu feature that aligns with schedule F of the IRS tax form. I enter receipts either daily or weekly, and the app keeps a running total.
The revenue side has a drop down menu that can be customized to list the exact products you sell. At a quick glance look at any of my enterprises, for example egg sales and have an up to date record of how many dozen to date and how much feed costs are and know if I am generating a profit or I’m in the hole. When Tax time comes I can download and print, no more long days in March adding up mass quantities of paper receipts.
Included in a financial feature on it where I can track all of my revenue and expenses, take pictures of a receipt and download a report monthly, quarterly and annually.
One of the nicest discoveries about this app was having a communication pathway to the creators of the app (who of course are farmers!). They are easy to get a hold of and helpful with questions and open to further features on the app.
Check out their website and the app www.farmkeep.com