Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Enterprise Analysis with Quickbooks?

One of the more valuable sessions at the Missouri Computers on the Farm Conference was entitled, "Enterprise Analysis Using Quickbooks." Presented by an Extension economist who was also a CPA, it mirrored work done by Texas A&M to extract meaningful farm analysis from this popular "main street" accounting program.

On the plus side, he demonstrated how Quickbooks offers a very flexible interface, definitions and reporting format understood and supported by many accountants. Quickbook "classes" are rough parallels to FBS "centers" (originally called "enterprises").

I appreciated his candor, though, as he described the convoluted process of capturing quantites in the Quickbooks "memo" field, then exporting reports to Excel to "mash up" dollars with externally-maintained quantities (acres, bushels, gallons, bags, etc.) in order to produce some type of useful unit-based cost analysis. (Determining overhead allocations is also an external process.)

As the instructor so effectively demonstrated, Quickbooks offers many alternatives in setting up accounts and classes to emulate the financial, if not the quantitative, dimension of a farm. Which raises the question, where does the average farmer turn to for training and technical support in applying Quickbooks to the day-to-day operation of his own business? It's obviously a different experience than what FBS clients are used to.

What do you think?

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