Accounting software

Feldspar said:

Have just had a word with our accountants. They say that a lot of their clients currently use Farmplan, but that a number are moving over to Xero. One feature that they said is very useful in the Farmplan software is the ability to separate harvest accounts from year end accounts (I think, although I must admit I didn't entirely understand every bit of terminology down the phone) -- i.e. to be able to allocate invoices and receipts to one harvest or another. They weren't sure if Xero is able to do this. Does anyone know if it can?

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JJT said:

Surely you could create different enterprises for different crops to allocate invoices to, eg wheat '16, wheat '17.

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JJT said:

Surely you could create different enterprises for different crops to allocate invoices to, eg wheat '16, wheat '17.

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Feldspar said:

So, if you did this, you could generate a profit and loss account for that enterprise, or that harvest?

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Woody said:

Xero does tracking to allocate tranastions to categories

https://help.xero.com/uk/Settings_Tracking

Maybe useful for some?

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Feldspar said:

Presumably you could then make the categories harvest 2016 and harvest 2017 and then produce separated financial performance figures?

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Feldspar said:

Does anyone use Sage One? This looks not too dissimilar to Xero. What are the major differences between the two? The problem that I can foresee is that because our accountants use Sage, it might be quite a lot of effort to transfer all the lists of fixed assets across with worries about differences in formats making tricky.

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former farmer said:

Since leaving farming a while ago I have been a part-time bookkeeper. Most of the outfits I worked for have had Sage software, so I am familiar with it. I certainly get the impression, from other bookkeepers, that the other software is better value.

The other aspect of Sage is that their telephone support is damn expensive. They offer an on-line help facility, where you type in your questions, which seems to take an age to get anywhere, I found this after a recent upgrade which was not cheaap.

I would steer clear of Sage and look elsewhere.

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Feldspar said:

Thanks for the advice. Very much appreciated.

Have you had any experience with these people: http://www.movemybooks.co.uk/ ? It looks like Xero will pay for them to move everything across from Sage. If our accountants oversee this bit, it might not be as difficult as I have imagined. Then, once set up, hopefully it will be OK.

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Feldspar said:

Looking at Receipt Bank it seems like it would do fuel invoices quite nicely, but I wonder if I can look at a pdf invoice from someone like Agrii and work out what is going on.

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Dairyfarmerswife said:

Receipt bank doesn't strip out line items (or at least not for the subscription I pay) so a bill with multiple items just gets split into vat and zero rated. I dont find it that much hassle to edit the invoice once it's in Xero though. My system is basically scan and upload invoices to receipt bank as they arrive, then a couple of times a month, export to Xero, approve and edit as necessary. My scanner is right next to where I work so I keep scanning as I'm doing other jobs. It can also handle multiple page PDFs so you can stick a pile of invoices in the autofeed and then upload all at once. There is also a phone app which is invaluable for things like petrol receipts, which were always getting lost.

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Feldspar said:

Thank you for this reply. Just to clarify, you use Receipt Bank for all supplier invoices, as well as receipts for things like fuel? Are digital copies of invoices and receipts then retained within Receipt Bank or within Xero, and are they neatly paired with the transactions within the bank feed to enable a clear audit trail?

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Dairyfarmerswife said:

Yes the PDF document is automatically exported with the Xero transaction and attached to the transaction in Xero. The accountant doesn't need the paper invoices if there is an electronic copy attached. I keep paper invoices but I just bung them in a file now, rather than month by month.

And yes, I use it for all invoices, even hand written. There is the occasional glitch but on the whole it works well and saves me a lot of time. It will remember the nominal code for a supplier, so for example for your feed supplier it will always allocate it to feed, vet bill to vet and med, etc. Obviously for suppliers like Wynnstay, where you might have items under several different codes, you have to allocate yourself, as it puts everything in one line but the majority of bills are one or two lines so it's fairly simple.

I don't use Xero for payroll as it's £5 per month, up to 5 employees and I only have one or sometimes two employees on the books so I use mypaye which is £1/employee/month.

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Dairyfarmerswife said:

Yes the PDF document is automatically exported with the Xero transaction and attached to the transaction in Xero. The accountant doesn't need the paper invoices if there is an electronic copy attached. I keep paper invoices but I just bung them in a file now, rather than month by month.

And yes, I use it for all invoices, even hand written. There is the occasional glitch but on the whole it works well and saves me a lot of time. It will remember the nominal code for a supplier, so for example for your feed supplier it will always allocate it to feed, vet bill to vet and med, etc. Obviously for suppliers like Wynnstay, where you might have items under several different codes, you have to allocate yourself, as it puts everything in one line but the majority of bills are one or two lines so it's fairly simple.

I don't use Xero for payroll as it's £5 per month, up to 5 employees and I only have one or sometimes two employees on the books so I use mypaye which is £1/employee/month.

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Feldspar said:

Do you have all your fixed assets accessible, or are these only able to be modified by your accountant? I am hoping that I might be able to play around with depreciation rates, and to be able to remove items on the asset register to see the effect. Do you have capital accounts for land and property listed on there too, or is this type of information retained elsewhere? What about valuations (and from this unrealised profit calculations)? How are these incorporated into Xero?

Apologies for all the questions, however I want to try and get as clear a picture as is possible before deciding which way to turn.

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Dairyfarmerswife said:

That is starting to get a bit above my pay grade!

Yes there is an account for freehold property, capital accounts for the partners, and other asset accounts, plus columns for depreciation, opening and closing stock and so on. I leave all that to the accountant but it is certainly accessible. I think you would need to know a bit about entering manual journals to make use of it.

I think there is a demo company if you want to have a play about with it, or you can have a free trial I think

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