Building on participants' previously acquired knowledge of financial record keeping and business analysis, training focused on managing to reduce financial and production risk, both of which impact the human risk of interpersonal and business relationships. Training concentrated on analysis of enterprise diversification, as well as adding, or scaling up, enterprises to financially sustain the business.
Through regular, one-on-one, on-farm instruction, participants 1) learned and/or continued to account for all financial transactions in QuickBooks®, or another accounting program, by enterprise, 2) completed a matrix of historical financial and production benchmarks (referred to as internal benchmarks) which is contained in current and past years individual FINAN reports, 3) prepared financial and production records completed a year-end FINAN® analysis, including a thorough inventory accounting of all current, intermediate, and long-term assets, and 4) focused analysis on newly added or adjusted enterprise contributions to the whole-farm financial and production benchmarks.
At the end of the project, 14 producers analyzed/identified variances in their business financial strength. Due to COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions, one-on-one consultations were almost eliminated; however there were approximately 107 face-to-face instructional activities and an additional 21 phone and Zoom meeting consultations.