Checklist
If you haven’t received anything from your accountant, ask for a checklist with the reconciliations needed for the end of financial year. They might want to know wool on hand, up to date stock tallies, shares/dividend statements etc. The sooner you do this the easier it is. And of course, you’ll need to ensure your financial software is all up to date and reconciled, inclusive of payroll, transactions and stock tallies.
Using Cloud Farmer to help
- If you’ve been using Cloud Farmer all the information should be there at your fingertips—tallies, purchases and sales, deaths etc.
- If you need help setting up systems and processes to make end of year 2021 even easier give us a shout.
QUICK TIP
Finding your info is easy if you use the search function, or sort the information alphabetically by clicking the column heading. You can also export any tables to Excel and perform as much analysis as you like.
Year in Review
- Now is a great time to review the year that’s been and adjust your plans for the coming year.
- Review your key performance indicators (KPI’s), how well did you go against target? You might look at things such as scanning, body condition scores, docking and weaning percentages, and death rates.
- Use your farm results to benchmark against other farms once regional data is released.
- Cloud Farmer is a great place to store and share your farm KPI’s (targets vs actuals). This makes them visible and will increase accountability for yourself and your team.
Team
- Seeing results is highly motivating for individuals and makes all the hard work worth it. Cloud Farmer is the ideal platform to share how the farm is performing. It’s good to be able to understand the ‘why’. For example, docking percentages were down, but the team can also see that body condition scores were also below target at tupping and the results flowed through.
- Start the year off with a team meeting to discuss this years goals and plan for spring and beyond before you get really busy. Document your meeting and save it onto Cloud Farmer, because if it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen!
- You might want to think about staff performance reviews—one recommendation is to do four smaller ‘seasonal’ reviews throughout the year. This allows you to get on top of things quickly, stops any issues getting bottled up, and makes the review about the season rather than being personal.
- If you’ve got a set stocking, rotation, or animal health plan put it on Cloud Farmer so everyone is on the same page.
*Your ‘team’ might be you and your spouse, or you and your parents, or just you. The size of your team doesn’t matter, it’s still good to review, reflect, and goal set.
