FarmBooks Review: Pricing, Features & Alternatives for 2023

Transactions in FarmBooks are classified using three types of codes:

1. The ATIGD is a five-digit code that provides a general classification of your farm’s earnings, expenditures, losses, wage, wage withholdings, and A/R.
2. External codes may be used with ATIGD for more detailed transactions, such as family living, miscellaneous, or loans.
3. The optional enterprise codes can track crop or livestock production or other nonfarm business.

The coding system will take time to learn, but it’s intended to allow you to track all of your activity in meaningful ways without having to understand the journal entries that bookkeepers generally rely upon.

You can set up and manage as many bank accounts as needed in FarmBooks. To set up a bank account, click on the Setup menu and select Bank Accounts. Click the Add button on the Bank Accounts window, enter your bank information, and click Add:

Adding a new bank account in FarmBooks (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

The A/P module in FarmBooks allows you to create a new vendor and manage your list of vendors. What we like about the A/P feature is that you can track your unpaid bills as well as track payments to 1099 contractors. However, FarmBooks has a few downsides, such as the inability to enter vendor credits to record refunds to the vendor and attach receipts to expenses.

Below is a sample vendor list in FarmBooks:

Sample vendor list in FarmBooks (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

With FarmBooks, you can generate invoices, estimates, and billings, which can be sent directly to your customers. It can also post payments and deposits automatically and monitor customer balances. You can generate various invoice forms and statements and email them to your customers, and you can also track sales tax collections.

The biggest limitation of FarmBooks’ A/R feature is that there’s no option to create recurring invoices. If you have a customer who orders the same product or service on a regular basis, you may benefit from recurring invoices, which are offered by other programs such as QuickBooks Online and The Farmer’s Office.

When it’s your first time using the invoicing feature in FarmBooks, you need to specify a few invoice preferences before you can create invoices:

• Invoice options: This tab lets you enter your business remitter mailing details, as well as set up a few important options, such as whether you collect sales taxes or you apply finance charges to statements. You’ll also specify how you want your income to be tracked.
• Forms: This section allows you to personalize your forms by including your business logo and adding images and text messages. You can customize various forms, including invoices, estimates, and credit memos.
• Email forms: Make your email more personalized by adding customized email messages.
• Payment terms: Indicate due dates and any discount given within a certain period.
• Sales tax items: Set up important tax items like tax rate, description, and payment vendor.
• Sales tax groups: This feature is for users who need to pay tax amounts to several tax authorities―city, local, and state.
• Customers: Set up customer addresses, email contact information, and payment terms.
• Product and service items: Set up items for the products or services you sell to your customers, including unit prices, weight per unit, and quantity codes:

Setting up invoice options in FarmBooks (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

FarmBooks allows you to record and print checks directly while completing the payee/vendor, date, check number, and bank account information automatically. The checks are then registered in the farm’s accounts automatically to help monitor payments to vendors and other expenses.

To print a check in FarmBooks, click on File and select the Print Checks drop-down. Choose from the list of checks, click beside the check icon in the check item, and click the printer button:

Selecting checks to print in FarmBooks (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

Your FarmBooks account includes “Payroll Defaults,” which contains a master list of earnings, deductions, and benefits that you can assign to your employees. You can adjust this list based on your needs, and you can pull in these items quickly when setting up employee records. You’ll need to keep your tax tables up to date, but FarmBooks will help. You can download the tax table update for 2022 from the FarmBooks website:

Sample Payroll Defaults in FarmBooks (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

The FarmBooks Accounts Register is similar to the typical paper check register with color-coded transactions. Checks, deposits, and paychecks are green, blue, and burgundy, respectively. The accounts register tab gives you a quick list of all of your farm’s income and expenses:

Accounts Register in FarmBooks (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

The Details Register tab displays the same information as the Accounts Register Tab, but you can toggle between the payee and the detail. This means that you can filter down or search for a specific transaction by description, amount, external code, date, check number, and check memo as well as account, transaction, item, and general (ATIG) code:

Details Register in FarmBooks (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

FarmBooks generates an extensive list of reports for farm and nonfarm transactions. These reports help determine how well your farm is doing, which can help you evaluate business plans or expansion. Some reports you can run in FarmBooks include the following:

• Income Statement: Shows total farm income and expenses, including net operating income:

Sample Income Statement in FarmBooks (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

• Transaction journals: All transactions for income, expense, wage withholdings, losses, loans, and A/Rs
• Financial analysis: Farm and nonfarm income and expenses
• Nonfarm income statement: Summary of nonfarm income, itemized expenses, family living expenses, and net nonfarm income
• Monthly cash flow report: Sources and uses of cash by income and expense
• Check register: Listing of all checks, deposits, and transfers
• Balance Sheet: Detailed information on assets and liabilities:
• Income statement/profit and loss (P&L) statement: Farm business receipts, expenses, and depreciation
• Net taxable income statement: Farm and nonfarm taxable income as well as net income
• Schedule F: Farm income and expenses that need to be reported on Schedule F of your individual income tax return
• Sources and uses statement: Sources and uses of cash to compute the net change in cash and ending bank balances.
• Credit analysis: Detailed information on loans and A/R, highlights the financial strengths and weaknesses of your farm
• Flow of funds: Budget versus actual values and the percentage of budget used

FarmBooks helps you track all your inventory items for easy organization. It includes two units of measurement, real-time inventory for crops, and key dates and weight measures for livestock. With FarmBooks, you can also track births, weanings, and deaths.

FarmBooks inventory module for livestock production (Source: Sanders Software Consulting)

Enterprise codes are used to track both farm-related and personal business expenses. With this feature, you also take advantage of FarmBooks’ allocation feature. For instance, when you purchase a 40,000-pound fertilizer, you don’t know where it is allocated to, so you record the cash expense without an enterprise code. By using enterprise codes, you’ll be able to record and track the actual usage of the fertilizer to a specific crop species or crop field, helping you determine which among your fields or crops are the most profitable.

FarmBooks has a fixed asset manager that allows you to track the cost and value of your agricultural assets. It helps you set up depreciation, and it calculates the annual depreciation value of your equipment automatically, which can be used for tax planning. If you plan to purchase equipment with a loan, you can create amortization schedules to help you better plan your cash flow requirements.