Farm Budgeting, Monitoring & Benchmarking

Budgets/Cashflows & Monitoring

Budgets and/or cashflows show the cash estimated to flow in and out of your business over a period of time.  They provide goals that you can use to measure and monitor performance.  We can:

• prepare estimates for the future based on your past performance and likely future events.
• regularly monitor your monthly cashflow and highlight potential problems before they arise
• use these reports as a tool to forecast your income, working capital requirements and taxation for the current year 
• analyse your results and provide you with up to date key performance indicators and trends

Benchmarking

Shand Thomson believe benchmarking your performance against your own trends and other like properties can help you identify opportunities for development and fine tuning on your farm.

We collate benchmarks for:

• sheep, beef and deer farming enterprises
• dairy farming enterprises

We have been monitoring production and financial results for sheep, beef and deer farmers in the Clutha District for over 10 years.  Annual statistical and trend summaries are:

• provided to our clients when their individual annual reports are prepared
• collated each year to arrive at a district summary which:
• categorises the results into two stock unit groupings
• reports on the “average” and “upper 25%” of farmers, as determined by economic farm surplus

The Shand Thomson district summary results are accompanied by a commentary which graphically displays results and illustrates trends.  Please refer to our Publications section to view sample reports.

Dairy farm results are monitored against the Shand Thomson “average” landowner and sharemilker database.  In addition, Shand Thomson is an accredited user of the Dairybase national database and we facilitate the entry of results into the database and the interpretation of key performance indicators.

Benchmarks enable us to assist you with:

• comparing your business results against similar businesses
• identification and monitoring of key performance indicators
• identifying opportunities to improve your profitability and grow your business
• determining and monitoring long term goals that incorporate your personal aspirations and objectives