Quick Tips to Keep Your Farm Books in Order
Spring is full steam ahead over here, and it’s been a busy and important season for our whole team. Recently, Holly, I, and some of the Empire Financial Services (EFS) team traveled to Denver for a catch-up meeting with the Figured team. For those unfamiliar, Figured provides the cloud-based farm financial software that many of our EFS clients use, and the meeting was a great opportunity to strengthen that partnership and make sure we’re aligned on delivering the best financial tools and advice to you.
The world of farm finance is evolving quickly, and software like Figured is at the forefront of giving farmers and ranchers more clarity and control over their numbers. Our Denver meeting focused on improving user experience and finding ways to make farmers’ and ranchers’ lives easier when it comes to managing their finances.
Keeping Your Books Clean
On the financial side, many of our clients who use QuickBooks have asked for practical tips to improve bookkeeping efficiency and accuracy, especially with the busy season underway. Here are a few reminders from the EFS team that can help:
Keep bank feeds clean: Make sure you’re regularly reviewing and categorizing transactions from your bank feed. It’s tempting to let it pile up, but staying on top reduces end-of-month headaches.
Use classes, locations, or tags: If you operate multiple farms, ranches, or business units, take advantage of QuickBooks’ class and location tracking to break down profitability by operation. If you're using a version of QuickBooks that charges extra for classes, consider using Tags as a budget-friendly alternative to keep things organized without needing separate files.
Reconcile regularly: Don’t let bank reconciliations wait until tax season. Reconciling monthly helps catch errors early and keeps your books audit-ready.
Split your loan payments: Be sure you’re splitting out loan payments into principal and interest. Interest is a tax-deductible expense that you want showing up on your P&L. You can do this from the Transactions screen by clicking Split.
Match deposits to invoices: If you’re creating invoices in QuickBooks, make sure you’re marking them as paid and matching the deposit when it shows up in your bank feed. If you skip this step, unpaid invoices will stack up and throw off your accounts receivable.
Do a quarterly deep dive: At least once per quarter, take time to review your Balance Sheet and Income Statement. Click into each category and double-check that everything is categorized correctly. It’s a small step that could save you big time if you’re ever audited.
Track 1099 payments properly: If you pay anyone for contract labor, make sure you enter their full address and check the box labeled “Track payments for 1099”. This ensures those payments show up correctly on your 1099 reports at year-end.
Leverage your reports: QuickBooks offers customizable reports that can help you see what’s actually happening in your business. Ask your EFS advisor about setting up dashboards to track cash flow, profitability, and other key ratios specific to your operation.
Keeping your financials organized and up to date is a big part of running a successful operation. If you want to dive deeper into managing your farm or ranch finances with confidence, Holly Haralson, our COO at Empire Financial Services, is hosting a virtual workshop just for rural women. She’ll cover the basics how to make your finances work for you—not the other way around.
