Reviewed by Andrew Mefferd
I don’t know anyone who farms because they wanted to do accounting or bookkeeping. But to stay in business, we have to become competent businesspeople.
Whether you use Quickbooks, spreadsheets or pencil and paper, The Farmer’s Office, a new book by Julia Shanks, can help you improve your recordkeeping, and comprehend financial reports and why they are important. Even if you use an accountant or bookkeeper, it’s important to keep good records, and understand the numbers you are giving them and what you are getting back. Though there is plenty of writing on accounting, it can be very dense and little of it is tailored to agricultural businesses.
With a background as a chef and an MBA, the author has helped many growers with planning and record keeping through her business, Julia Shanks Food Consulting. Shanks tailors her writing to the needs of farmers, and backs it up with real world examples from her clients. This makes the book remarkably easy to read, especially for a subject that can be so impenetrable.
In addition to the basics, Shanks has sections to deal with specific situations that many of us will face at some point in the life of our farm businesses: planning a new venture, financing, growing a business, and stabilizing the business when you are in a cash flow crunch. She also includes a number of templates and sample charts customized for farms, which can be used as the basis for your own charts.
The foreword of the book is written by another great farm business writer, Richard Wiswall. His book, The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook, (available from growingformarket.com), set the standard for business texts for small farms. This book is still essential for managing your farm for profit. The value of Shanks’ book is that she delves into the bookkeeping aspect of farming, to make sure you know what records to keep, and how to analyze them to get the information you need.
As Wiswall says in his foreword, “ultimately, the reason to track numbers is to better manage your business, to shine a light on the inner workings of your farm so you can make better decisions to work more efficiently and make more money…The Farmer’s Office is the light that illuminates these concepts of business for farmers…Julia covers all the bases in a step by step manner that will help beginning and seasoned farmers alike. This book is for you, for every farmer.”
I read the book myself this summer, and learned a lot. It’s fascinating what your records have to tell you once you know how to understand them. There’s so much in this book, I know I didn’t pick it all up the first time. I’m going to read it again this winter. Curl up with The Farmer’s Office in your office this winter.
The Farmers Office is available from growingformarket.com for $24.95 plus $5 shipping. Subscribers get a 20% discount automatically when they are signed in. Or phone 800-307-8949. Buy now in our store.
Exchanging goods or services is a common way for farmers to interact with service providers and other farmers. In fact, as a bookkeeping consultant, I often accept payment in the form of pork chops or organic coffee. I know farmers who trade fresh bread for carpentry work and beef for hay mowing. Not all vendors are comfortable with this sort of payment, but when they are, it can add great value to both businesses.
There are a lot of options to consider before picking the best bookkeeping software for your business. One choice a lot of growers have been facing lately is whether to stick with desktop software or move over to the cloud-based software that most developers are switching to. 
Stop recordkeeping. That’s right, put down your scribbled pencil notes, delete those apps you forget to open and drop that unfinished Excel spreadsheet in the trash. Like most things in life, more is not always better. More recordkeeping cannot lead to more knowledge and better decisions if you have incomplete data or do not turn raw numbers into useable information. It is important to start small, develop good procedures (and habits), and build from there. 
I’ve been teaching business skills and financial management to farmers for over ten years. When I started out, I was fresh out of business school and teaching college accounting. I was very academic in my approach.
Our expectations as farmers are way out of whack. We wear a dozen different hats in a single day: tractor mechanic, HR professional, educator, parent and so many more. Why are we asking ourselves to be our own financial advisors too? The most common message is that, with a bit of focus during the off season, a few tweaks to our daily routine, and a three-hour workshop we will be an expert in QuickBooks and able to set up and run our business’ financial recordkeeping with ease. This is simply not true for most business owners.
Have you ever ended the season feeling like you rocked it with sales and production, yet still have no cash in the bank? You worked your tail off, but there’s nothing to show for it.
Close your eyes; think about your last trip to visit an accountant. Did you have an awful feeling in the pit of your stomach? Maybe you remembered the growing stack of invoices on your dining room table, or talking about money makes you uncomfortable. Visiting an accountant can feel like a dreaded dentist appointment, but it doesn’t need to and remember it’s an important aspect of a successful farm business.
Like it or not, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of money in our farming lives. Most of us chose this profession for reasons unrelated to income, but money is the ultimate trump card when it comes to our farms’ viability. Put simply, if a farm spends more money than it earns for more than a short amount of time, no amount of planting plans, fertility regimens, or even tenacious hard work will keep it afloat.