7 Best Farm Accounting Software Options for 2022

The best farm accounting software should be able to handle both general accounting tasks like bill tracking and invoicing, and farm-specific accounting duties, such as creating cost centers to track profit and loss by specific farm units. It should also manage inventory items like feed and grain, track activities related to fixed assets, and monitor personal income and expenses.

Here are the seven best accounting software options for farmers:

• QuickBooks Desktop: Best overall accounting software for farmers and ranchers (7.85 out of 10)
• QuickBooks Online: Best cloud-based accounting software for farmers and ranchers (7.75 out of 10)
• FarmBooks: Most affordable farm-specific software (6.79 out of 10)
• EasyFarm: Best for self-employed farmers (5.31 out of 10)
• The Farmer’s Office: Best for detailed cost accounting by farmers and ranchers (6.11 out of 10)
• CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture: Best for agriculture companies with in-house accountants (7.60 out of 10)
• Lendio Accounting (formerly Sunrise): Best free accounting software for farmers to track income and expense (5.59 out of 10)

Comparison of Best Farm Accounting Software

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QuickBooks Desktop: Best Overall Accounting Software for Farmers and Ranchers

QuickBooks Desktop has no farm-specific management features, but it brings in a lot of customization for farming operations, including the ability to assign income and expenses to specific cost centers or enterprises, which helps you track your yields and profitability better. It even lets you keep the books of multiple farms, making it our best multicompany accounting software.

Standout Features

• Industry-specific reports: Track your profitability by product, client, or project, depending on how you want to see your performance. With QuickBooks Desktop, you can generate reports on different areas of your business for analysis.
• Cash and accrual reports: Reports can be printed using either accrual or cash-basis accounting. Cash-basis reports can help farm managers identify cash flows and assess how to maintain or fix cash flow issues.
• Class and location tracking: As with its cloud-based counterpart, QuickBooks Desktop has class and location tracking to help farm managers classify operations and set locations for performance evaluation.
• Create cost centers: This is a great feature to help you track income and expenses across specific elements of your farm, such as fields and herds.

Expert Opinion

QuickBooks Desktop is an affordable yet comprehensive accounting program that can be customized to any business requirements, including farm operations. The QuickBooks Desktop Pro edition is usually sufficient for farmers, but those needing forecasting or advanced job costing should upgrade to QuickBooks Premier.

As it’s an on-premise program, it’s great for farmers who have no or a low-speed connection. It’s easy to share your books with an external accountant or certified public accountant (CPA) at tax time by creating an accountant’s copy that will allow them to make changes to your books.

Read our comparison of the QuickBooks Desktop products to help you decide which is best for you.

QuickBooks Online: Best Cloud-based Accounting Software for Farmers

QuickBooks Online has most of the features of QuickBooks Desktop but there are also important differences between QuickBooks Online and Desktop. In exchange for a little higher cost, farmers get remote access to all relevant data without having to sit at a desk. It’s also easier for you to share your data with your accountant because files can be shared through the cloud. The platform is flexible enough that it can be customized to nearly any business, making it our best accounting software for small businesses.

Standout Features

• Class and location tracking: In farm accounting, classes help farm managers classify groups of assets or expenses by crop or livestock. Location tracking can also be used to track individual fields.
• Access to QuickBooks ProAdvisors: A large QuickBooks Online ProAdvisors network makes it very easy to set up your books. Plus, you can share your books with your accountant to make tax time extremely simple.
• Cost Centers: QuickBooks Online also lets you assign income and expenses to cost centers or enterprises to help you gauge the productivity of your farm business.

Our Expert Opinion

QuickBooks Online has outstanding general accounting features that can be customized easily for farm operations. While it doesn’t come tailored to farms out of the box, it’s easy to set up classes and locations to track income and expenses by your cost centers and enterprises. You can get even more detailed by using project tracking to track small parts of an enterprise, such as particular breeding stock or fields.

Our QuickBooks Online comparison will help you find the best plan for your business.

FarmBooks: Most Affordable Farm-specific Software

FarmBooks is a desktop-based farm accounting application. The biggest strength of FarmBooks is its pricing—it’s significantly less expensive than the other providers on the list. Despite its low price tag, it doesn’t fall short of the features we look for in farm accounting software. For instance, it includes real-time inventory for crops and livestock and tracks both farm and personal income and expenses.

Standout Features

• Specialized chart of accounts: FarmBooks provides a specialized chart of accounts, making it easy for farmers to maintain the books, even if they don’t have an accounting background.
• Financial reports: FarmBooks’ financial reports can provide insightful information about farm performance and liquidity. They contain financial analysis, basic financial statements, Schedule F, cash flow statements, and more.
• Inventory management: A notable feature of FarmBooks’ inventory management is its real-time inventory for crops, key dates, and weight measures for livestock. Animal births, weanings, and deaths can also be tracked.

Our Expert Opinion

If you need full-featured farm accounting software and you’re on a tight budget, FarmBooks is your best option. For less than $400, you get all the must-have features that you need to manage both farm and nonfarm transactions. It has a specially designed chart of accounts and customized reports for farmers. Its main drawback is that each farm requires an additional fee, so it might not be the best choice for farmers with multiple farms.

EasyFarm: Best for Self-employed Farmers

EasyFarm has a unique user interface that uses farm-specific jargon and preset calculation and reports, making it a great option for unincorporated farmers. It has integrated farm management and accounting features, which allow farmers and ranch managers to handle bookkeeping and crop and livestock management tasks. Many self-employed farmers also use EasyFarm to report their farm income and expenses on Form 1040, Schedule F.

Standout Features

• Single-entry input: The single-entry input is an easy solution for people without a solid background in double-entry bookkeeping. You can record multiple items in a single entry, which effectively reduces data entry time.
• Cost centers: Creating cost centers helps you track income and expenses by fields, herds, and other farm elements. Moreover, these cost centers can help you allocate costs strategically and appropriately.
• FINPACK Exports: EasyFarm exports to FINPACK, a software program for financial and credit analysis of farm and agricultural producers.
• Payroll: EasyFarm lets you manage your farm payroll through its check writer, time and cost assignment, and tax withholding features.

Our Expert Opinion

Self-employed farmers who tend to mix their personal and farm income and expenses and report on Form 1040, Schedule F can benefit from EasyFarm. It isn’t the most affordable farm accounting software, but the ability to manage both accounting and farm-related management tasks provides tremendous value for your business.

The Farmer’s Office: Best for Detailed Cost Accounting for Farmers & Ranchers

The Farmer’s Office by Datatech is ideal for farmers and ranch managers wanting to rely on detailed cost accounting to see which of their crops, farms, and livestock are profitable. It has enhanced cost accounting features that give you deeper insights into your income, expenses, and yields. For instance, you can group expenses by crop year, set up equipment cost centers, and track a different commodity for each crop year, which is helpful if you have open ground fields. A unique feature is the pesticide application reporting module that helps you manage your tank mixes, pesticide usage, and chemical inventories easily.

Standout Features

• Cost accounting: Farms need dedicated cost accounting functions to keep track of costs, overhead, and other farm-related expenses. Farmer’s Office lets you create crop and equipment cost centers to compute materials, labor, and overhead used in farming activities. You can also generate cost accounting reports, like crop reports, expense reports, and variance analysis reports.
• Crop budgeting: Crop budgeting is helpful for keeping track of costs and applying for loans. Budgets can also be a performance indicator when analyzing variances.
• Pesticide application reporting: Another useful feature of Farmer’s Office is its pesticide application reporting. It lets you monitor pesticide activities, including materials used during application, and can assist in production since pesticides help secure a high yield from farm products.

Our Expert Opinion

The Farmer’s Office comes with enhanced cost-accounting features, which are extremely important for farm planning and decision-making. These features include crop budgeting, equipment costing, crop-year tracking, and consolidated reporting. Using cost centers or enterprises, the platform tracks your income and expenses based on specific elements of your farm, like fields and herds.

It also includes chemical inventory and pesticide application reporting systems, which help farmers avoid the overapplication of pesticides and chemicals. Farm managers can use the customized payroll features to manage their farm employees’ salaries and deductions better.

CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture: Best for Ag Companies With In-house Accountants

CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture by Red Wing Software is our top pick for farm companies with in-house bookkeepers because it has a very comprehensive set of farm-specific accounting features. It’s a locally installed farm accounting software, which means you can only access your files from the computer it’s installed on.

Standout Features

• Production analysis tool: The production analysis tool can help with farm management decisions, such as those involving profitability and cost control. This feature also uses geospatial maps to show production details visually.
• Ratio analysis: Decision-makers will like ratio analysis because it can help them assess the performance, liquidity, and profitability of the business.
• Management accounting module: This module tracks income and expenses on an actual cost basis rather than an accrual basis. With this module, farm managers can see the flow of actual costs and how it impacts cash flow and income. Moreover, this feature lets you set up profit and cost centers to help in tracking performance for responsibility centers and accountable employees.

Our Expert Opinion

CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture is ideal if you’re working with an in-house accounting, finance, or tax professional. It has a strong set of farm-specific features, such as the ability to track fixed assets, manage farm inventory, track personal income and expenses, and build cost centers or enterprises for detailed income and expense tracking.

It’s also rich in general accounting features, which are nearly on par with QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online. A major difference is that it doesn’t allow you to connect your bank or credit card accounts. Nonetheless, it’s a versatile software program and can be a great help for agricultural firms wanting to scale their business.

Lendio Accounting (formerly Sunrise): Best Free Accounting Software for Farmers

Lendio Accounting, formerly Sunrise, is a good option if you simply need to compile your income and expenses. It has a free plan that allows you to perform basic accounting duties like tracking invoices, managing bills and expenses, and creating financial reports. However, it has no farm-specific accounting features—but it can help you keep your books in order. We chose it as our best free accounting software.

Standout Features

• Invoicing: For a free application, Lendio Accounting has terrific invoicing features, such as the ability to create recurring invoices and accept short payments from customers. This feature is useful for farmers who sell agricultural products and services directly to consumers.
• Bill tracking: You can enter bills as you receive them and Lendio Accounting will track them until paid.

Expert Opinion

If you don’t need farm-specific features or have other apps to manage your farm operations, you can use Lendio Accounting to focus on tracking your income and expenses. The invoicing feature, which is offered for free, is great if you’re selling products and services.

How We Evaluated Farm Accounting Software

Using an internal scoring rubric, we examined our seven best farm accounting software programs based on their affordability, ease of use, available support, and ability to manage general accounting and farm-accounting tasks. Our evaluation boils down to five categories as explained below.

Bottom Line

The best farm accounting software depends on your budget and farm business needs. For instance, if you need locally installed accounting software with powerful accounting features, choose QuickBooks Desktop. If you’re working with a remote bookkeeper, you might prefer QuickBooks Online. If you’re looking for features specific to farm management, like the ability to track farm inventory items, CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture or The Farmer’s Office might be a good choice. If you only need simple tracking of income and expenses and can’t afford premium accounting software, you can go with Lendio Accounting.