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Financial records the farm already keeps, reconciled against each other, starting with fuel purchased against hours worked before checking anywhere else.
A credit sale lends the buyer your money until payment arrives, and the bank statement does not show how much. A receivables list holds the unpaid sales, with the buyer, the due date and the days past due.
A year of strong deposits mixes revenue with loans, sold assets and one-time payments. Three totals on one sheet show how much of this year the farm can count on before it buys, hires or draws more.
A dairy with $150,000 in the account and $30,000 of bills in an average month counts five months. Take out the household's money, add its draw and use the costliest month, and the same account lasts under two.
A lender asks whether the farm earns enough to pay the loan. Three ratios answer it from different sides, the formula you pick can move one of them a full band, and the weakest tells you what to do.
Two dryers can earn their price back in 2.5 years and still end $227,425 apart in value. Judge a purchase by what is left after your own rate, then check the cash against the loan.
One crop has more than one break-even. Divide every cost by the yield to decide what to plant, and only what is still left to spend to decide whether to harvest.
A split rule is the written statement of what each shared cost is divided by. Written before the arithmetic, it stops the choice of basis from deciding which enterprise looks profitable.
Neither the tax return nor a published cost table holds the hourly cost of your own machine. The purchase invoice, the hour meter and the dealer's repair history do, and with them you can tell whether hiring the job out would cost less.
Two sums with records you already keep, one for the tractor and one for the tank, tell you whether a fuel gap is worth a search and what to check first.