|
Iowa | I'll second the spreadsheets, Excel spreadsheets in my case.
My accounting spreadsheet tracks bushels sold as well as the dollar amounts. I just modified it to track inventories by crop year as well. Another spreadsheet added to the workbook tracks the marketing plan by crop and crop year as well as the terms & price of the associated contracts. Harvest totals are allocated to individual fields in the crop production spreadsheet (also part of the accounting spreadsheet workbook) where the field totals are combined on a whole farm basis. I usually do bin measurements when harvest is complete and make some adjustments accordingly. The overall harvest totals are entered into the accounting spreadsheet so that sales and inventory for the current crop year can be tracked along with carryover from previous crop years if any is left over. These inventories go on the balance sheet at the end of the year and the beginning balance sheet for the next year to start the whole process over again.
There is managerial accounting software out there that will do some of the same stuff, and that's what most will use to accomplish these goals. The spreadsheet workbook is more simple and straight forward for my purposes. It's something I built and understand inside and out. That's a good feeling to have, and something I really miss when using purchased software.
None of this, unfortunately, makes me a better marketer, or a better producer. It just makes me more aware of where things stand. | |
|
marketing software
