Tips to improve farm office efficiency
© Debbie James An office littered with random piles of paper and general clutter is not uncommon in farming, but it is an environment that doesn’t inspire productivity and can mean costly mistakes and unnecessary time-wasting.
An inefficient office system will put pressure on other areas of the business, so making changes can potentially offer a big return on investment, says agricultural secretary and farmer’s daughter Lucy Atkin.
“On some farms you can walk into the office and literally identify where everything is, but it’s not quite like that on others,” says Lucy, a member of the Institute of Agricultural Secretaries and Administrators (IAgSA).
See also: Farm payroll rules employers need to know
She and other professionals providing office and bookkeeping services to farmers share ideas on how to improve general routines that make the farm office a place where tasks get done quickly and correctly.
Colour coding system for documents
An efficient office is one with a filing system that everyone can understand and follow.
Identifying the key record-keeping areas by assigning a colour to each is a simple way to help achieve that.
Specific colours can be assigned to each document type, or its category, priority, status, or date – for example red folders, tabs or stickers for urgent files, green for completed and blue for financial.
Lucy, of Sally Wood Farm Office Services, says most important of all is to label files clearly, accurately and neatly.
“The best way to approach the farm office environment is, as with everything else in life, to keep it simple, to not overwhelm yourself with every intricate detail.”
Use whiteboards
An office whiteboard is very useful for recording farm checklists and standard operating procedures and can provide a central location to track tasks for daily management.
It can also be a useful visual reminder, a place to jot down ideas and tasks that need doing as they come to mind and that might otherwise be forgotten or overlooked.
Bear in mind though that any financial information or other sensitive details that you might not want to share more widely will be seen by others with access to the office.
The bigger the whiteboard the greater the numbers of entries that can be made on it so think big.
Invest in a laminator
A laminator is a good investment for a farm office.
Laminated sheets don’t take up much room and preserve documents as good, quick reference points for regulatory bodies, farm assurance assessors, buyers, contractors and others.
Laminating farm maps helps make them more durable.
Set up a dedicated email account for invoices
Trawling through emails to find invoices takes time so create a specific address for invoices.
Lucy says this is a time-saving trick in place on her own family’s beef and arable farm.
“When I’m doing the books it means I don’t have to trawl through my dad’s personal email account which has a hundred other things in it,” she says.
“I know where I can find the invoices all in one place, and whether one has been received or not.”
Store archive documents in out-of-office location
There is often limited space in a farm office and that space can quickly get overwhelmed with documents the business has a legal obligation to keep, sometimes for as long as a decade.
For example, farming companies must keep the minutes of board meetings and resolutions for 10 years, general documentation such as contracts and business agreements for six years and, if the farm has received a government grant, it should generally retain the documentation for four years from the date the grant was received.
Physical business insurance documents and any relevant certificates should also be retained for at least seven years after the policy has expired.
While many of these records can now be stored digitally, if a farm has documents in paper form Lucy recommends keeping these in an archive area.
“There can be quite a few boxes when there are seven years’ worth of accounts to hold onto,” she says.
“Keeping them in a secure and dry area, the attic perhaps, where they can be accessed if needed, is better than having them cluttering up the office.”
Use cloud-based accounting software
Cloud-based software means multiple people, such as the farm accountant or bookkeeper, can access accounts when they are remote from the farm office.
Bookkeeper Becki Gilhooley, of The Rural Partnership, is a big advocate of this.
“It is really useful for us to be able to jump on a client’s system if there is a query or problem that needs to be resolved, and at the year-end we can access the accounts. Cloud-based software offers that really good collaboration.
© Tim Scrivener
“It will do all the inputting for you, your calculations, budgets, you can see your profitability day by day, and it’s accurate all year round so as long as you are keeping your income and expenses on there, there is always access to that data.”
It removes the need to retain receipts as evidence of VAT claims, too.
“I’m a sole trader too and when I go to the fuel station I snap a photograph of the receipt and then that is my evidence.”
Controlled settings allow staff to be given access to specific areas, such as variable costs, and other parts of the business they have responsibility for, says The Rural Partnership partner Richard Barnett.
There are many options on the market.
“Which is best suited to a farm business depends on what they want to get from it, what kind of business they are and their budget. Sometimes spending a bit extra can give the business some real financial benefits,” says Richard.
“Certain bookkeepers will have their favourites so it is perhaps worth speaking to the farm’s bookkeeper about this.”
Seek the views of staff and family before purchasing software too, he suggests.
Linking the business bank and credit card accounts to the software enables the statement transactions to be entered automatically, reducing work and helping keep the accounts reconciled.
Use apps to record staff hours
© Adobe Stock
Several apps (some free, others with a subscription fee) are available which will eliminate paper timesheets for staff recording their hours.
Information is collected daily in real-time, rather than when workers visit the farm office, and this is sent straight to the office computer.
Some, such as HarvestYield, allow managers to set up push notifications that send an alert when a job is starting and when it is completed, which is useful for keeping tabs on staff members who are lone working.
Keep manuals in a dedicated folder
User manuals and warranty documents for machinery and equipment often get lost or mislaid.
To avoid this, store all manuals, associated receipts, and warranties in one place, in a binder.
While it may seem a simple idea, organising this information can save countless frustrating hours searching for those documents and, again, it is the simple ideas that can be the most effective.
Use ‘message yourself’ feature on WhatsApp
Many farmers and managers have WhatsApp installed on their phones and computers, but what many might not be aware of is a useful feature which allows users to message themselves.
Self-chat messages can be pinned to the top of the conversation list which means that “chat” can be accessed quickly without the need to search through more recent messages.
Self-messaging can be useful in farm administration as it allows quick notes to be taken while you’re already in the app, and when ideas are fresh.
It is also useful for forwarding pictures or videos from colleagues to yourself, or for keeping voice notes as reminders.