In this episode of ILSoyAdvisor.com Profitability Radio, we speak with Todd Doehring, director at Centrec Consulting and V.P. of the Farm Financial Standards Council (FFSC) about the Council’s efforts to help farmers better understand basic financial terms, statements, and using this information to help with management decision making.

FFSC publishes two sets of guidelines:

1. Financial Guidelines for Agriculture provides recommended standards for the preparation, content, and format of financial statements; recommended financial measures and ratios common to all sectors of agriculture; and a sample set of statements and educational material.
2. Management Accounting Guidelines for Agriculture responds to the ever-increasing need for consistent, reliable, and accurate management information systems to support day-to-day production decisions.

In 2017, FFSC released a new Implementation Guide to introduce farmers to the work of the Council and help them to better understand basic financial terms, statements, and using this information to help with management decision making.

• Because much the accounting literature is written by and for accountants, it is sometimes lost on non-accountants.
• The Implementation Guide is a “Quick-Start Guide” — short and easier to understand, specifically written for non-accountants
• Step-by-step ways to introduce non-accountants to financial and accounting issues, assist farmers in how to get better, more accurate information beyond their income tax returns or a simple market-based balance sheet