Production and Financial Record Keeping

There are at least two types of records that farmers should keep, production and financial, and each has their own distinct purpose.

• Production records track the yield of a particular crop or produce, or perhaps the number of calves born (with weaning weights) versus the number of deaths in a herd.
  
• Financial records, as the name suggests, tracks money. Usually a farmer would record Income (such as product sales) against expenditure (operating costs, equipment and feed purchases etc.). The more sophisticated your farm the more likely it will be necessary to also track financial items such as inventory, depreciation records, loan balances etc.