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before i buy QuickBooks, is there something better?
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tigger
Posted 1/25/2021 10:40 (#8780157 - in reply to #8778251)
Subject: RE: before i buy QuickBooks, is there something better?


Iowa
I could send you a blank copy of my first spreadsheet that only keeps track of cash deposits and cash disbursements. I don't want to post it on here for everyone to see and possibly misuse and make some costly mistakes. It's easier to use your own spreadsheet because you will know exactly where the equations are and how it works if you build it yourself. I also do not want to post my email in my profile on this board because it could possibly open the doorway for more spam in my inbox. You can post your email if you wish & I'll send you a copy of a basic ledger setup.

I don't have a blank copy of the spreadsheet with all the other features added on to it that I'm currently using. It would take some time to wipe all of my data off of it, and it would take a lot of instructions for anyone else to use it properly.

Someone just posted a link to an income and expense spreadsheet on this discussion board:

https://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=975028&mid=877...

Most spreadsheets I've seen for farm income and expense are set up like that one. They are better than pencil and paper, but have a lot of limitations in terms of printing out useful reports, finding specific transactions, and keeping some inventories. It does not look like this one tracks cash balances either, but a running cash balance could easily be added to that format.

My basic spreadsheet groups all of transactions from individual income and expense accounts together so that you can look at all of the year's repair expense transactions (instead of mixing the repair transactions with all of the other expense transactions) for example, in one location and print it out on standard paper without having it mixed in with expense transactions from everything else. That printout would include the date, check number, vendor, description, and amount for each repair transaction and the total of all the repair costs (and number of units for some other accounts when it made sense so it will also track total units and average price as well as the total dollar amount). Each expense account can also be broken down into sub accounts as desired, like insurance expense getting broken down to health, property, auto, life, and crop insurance for example. That helps if you need to split out personal expense from farm expense, and is necessary when doing financial statements and tax prep. Income accounts can also be split into sub accounts. Corn sales, for example, can easily be split into crop years to help with inventory calculations. It's hard to do that sort of thing with typical spreadsheets formatted like the one I linked above (it could possibly be done with pivot tables, but they seem to have some limitations too). The ledger portion of my spreadsheet does get to be excessively large and takes a lot of scrolling to navigate, so I added hyperlink cells to quickly get from one income or expense account to another as well as back and fourth to another area with all of the account & cash balance totals. It's not really complicated to set up, and I think it is far more functional than the typical format like the one linked above. Clear as mud?

One of the features I added was the capability to print checks and deposit slips. I built a template for each and put them on different tabs in the workbook. The vital information to do this is on a consistent format across all of the expense and income accounts so that it can be copied and pasted to the templates to write the checks and deposits. Another tab has a contact list so the vendors address could be copied and pasted to the check template. Then the check could be printed and put in an envelope (with the clear windows) so the address will show through the window. Just put a stamp on it, and it is good to mail and is recorded in the same process and eliminates transposing errors. A macro had to be added to print the amount on the checks. Another template will put the address on a plain business envelope. You can probably do a google search to get what you need to add the macro to make it possible.

Edited by tigger 1/25/2021 11:16
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