Real Cattle Question - Accounting Software!

[SRBeef]

I use Cattlemax to keep the cattle records. It has a place to put expenses and income but it's not really an accounting program. Is there a good small operation accounting program that works particularly well in cattle operations? Quicken, Quickbooks, Peachtree etc just don't appear to have the accounts for a livestock operation or am I missing something?

 

[grubbie]

I'm not sure about the other Quickbooks programs, (there are several), but I use Quickbooks Pro. I use it for my other business as well. It did not come preloaded with the categories and such that I needed for either operation. But, it allows you to make your own. It works very well. I can pull up charts and trends for anything I want. You can have as many seperate accounts as you need. For instance, if I wanted to seperate my gas usage for every vehicle, I can set up one account and call it "ATV gas", another for "Pickup gas", or "Tractor gas",.....anything you want to track can be easily tracked. You can probably even track your cows as inventory if you like, although I don't use it for that. I just use it for accounting purposes. At the end of the fiscal year, you print out the profit and loss page and take it to your accountant if you want. Most accountants will have a Quickbooks program so you can email your files as well. Some of my accounts that I put in there are;
Feed
Veterinary supplies
Fencing supplies
New corral supplies (seperated this so I could track the total cost away from the other fencing supplies)
Gas- tractor
Diesel- tractor
Gas- trucks &ATVs
Diesel- tucks
Equipment Maintenance
Equipment Purchase

Just an example.......You can split things up with as much detail as you want. For instance, all of my fuel categories listed above are sub-categories of "Fuel", so I can click on that to see my total fuel cost or click on one of the sub-categories to view them by vehicle. It works very well for me, I highly recommend it. Good luck!

 

[1982vett]

I use Cattlemax to keep the cattle records. It has a place to put expenses and income but it's not really an accounting program. Is there a good small operation accounting program that works particularly well in cattle operations? Quicken, Quickbooks, Peachtree etc just don't appear to have the accounts for a livestock operation or am I missing something?

Neither will do both like I think you are wanting. I use Cattlemax for the cattle records and Quicken for an accounting program however it is weak as far as tracking capital. Quickbooks would probably do a better job but it does cost more. I will warn you, the last several versions of Quicken products are getting rather buggy. Printing can be a nighmare, especially if you are running 64-bit Vista. From my latest experience with Quicken, and it appears Quickbooks has many of the same issues as Quicken, I would tend to guide you over to Microsofts Money program. It is quite similar to Quicken in use and I havn't heard (but havn't checked either) about a lot of problems. I tend to believe Quickens biggest problem is that they are trying to be an electronic bookkeeping program where you download all of your transactions from your financial institutions instead of manually entering them and their is just to much that can go wrong and cause problems. JMOP

At least before you spend money on Quicken products, go read some of the posts on Quicken Community forums.
http://www.quickencommunity.com/webx/?l ... 9kebolHQR7

Peachtree, I have never used or looked at so I have no opinion on it.

Oh, another thing, Quicken seems to "sunset" their products rather quickly, after 3 or 4 years. Which isn't a problem if you want just a bare bones accounting program. The program will still work, but downloading bank statments, creditcard bills, using bill pay and downloading stock quotes and all the other foo-foo type junk is not supported after they sunset a product.

 

[Terrell]

You are right on that most cattle software programs don't handle accounting very well - it's really not cost effective to reinvent the wheel when QuickBooks works so well. We find that many of our more business-oriented producers will keep their production records in CattleMax and then export purchases and sales to Excel and then import the spreadsheet into QuickBooks.

I've worked with several ag economists at Texas A&M and Oklahoma State over the past few years and they all recommend using QuickBooks for financial records. Here's a link to a Beef Magazine article from last Fall on accounting software (http://beefmagazine.com/business/computer_savvy_accounting/ that may help. I would imagine you could contact some of these extension personnel and see if they could provide you with a sample chart of accounts.

You may also find helpful a book called The QuickBooks Farm Accounting Cookbook at http://www.amazon.com/dp/0967308305/?tag=cattletoday00-20.

Terrell

 

[rockridgecattle]

we use a farm software called Ag Expert. It is Canadian, and you might be able to adapt the sales tax part. You can download a demo from FCC...farm credit Canada. With this software you can go as detailed or as simple as you like.
RR

 

[IluvABbeef]

I been learning to use an accounting software called CowProfit$, it's good if you got a bunch of enterprises related to cow-calf.

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department ... all/hst885