Feature Focus Fridays – First Look at Figured

We here at Insightful Accountant have frequently covered the use of QuickBooks for agribusinesses such as farming, ranching and dairy production. One reason is that I live in an agribusiness state, and am involved with agribusiness.  So, when I saw ‘Figured‘ exhibiting at this past QuickBooks Connect (Vegas 2023), I was delighted that someone had actually developed an app designed for farming (crop production), ranching (livestock production) and dairy (milk production).

I not only conducted an interview with Dave Dodds who was representing Figured at the conference, but I got the opportunity to have a rather in-depth demo of the product by asking a lot of ‘how to’ and ‘what if’ questions in regard to Black Angus cattle ranching.

Fortunately, the folks at Figured took the time to also send us a ‘First Look Questionnaire’ and I’ve given some additional time over to prepare this First Look so as to focus on both agribusiness owners and managers as well as accountants, bookkeepers or ProAdvisors who are interested in developing an agribusiness niche practice with the aid of Figured.

Figured is agribusiness financial management software that is helping farming and ranching organizations across the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom better manage the profitability of their operations.

‘Figured’ for Farmers and Ranchers

Figured is an easy-to-use app for farmers and ranchers that can standardize success on their farm or ranch. It connects the farming operations and production with the financial accounting so they can have the data they need, in the formats they want, to improve their performance and make decisions to keep them on track.

Whether they are crop farmers needing to track all their costs related to maximizing their crop(s), or dairy farmers tracking milk cow related activities to maximize cost-efficient production, or ranchers keeping track of livestock purchases, births, deaths, sales and care in relationship to earnings, Figured is the right software solution.

Figured is perfect for farmers and ranchers. _(Murph)

‘Figured’ for Financial Professionals

Figured is also designed as a farm financial management platform that supports  Agribusiness accounting workflows, from end-of-year reporting to advanced client accounting and advisory services (CAAS), including bench-marking and portfolio modeling. Figured can turn your CAAS practice into an agribusiness niche.

Integrating with cloud accounting software (QuickBooks Online, Xero, etc.) Figured provides farming operations with agribusiness-specific reports and budgeting, forecasting, and production tracking tools to deliver real-time financial insights.

Figured also allows accountants using the platform to deliver high-value advisory services at scale for agriculture clients, regardless of farm operations or size.

‘Figured’ Advantages for Farm Operation Owners and Managers

With Figured, Farm Owners and Managers can:

• Realize a single connected ledger by integrating the app with their cloud accounting software (e.g., QuickBooks Online) to combine financial and farm production data, thereby reducing manual data input and eliminating errors from double entry.  

^{Caption: Figured brings in your QBO (or Xero) data at the transactional level to automatically allocate them to specific farm production centers.}

• Automatically allocate transactions to your entire farming operation, one of many farms,  or individual field(s) on a farm. Figured allows you to allocate indirect income and expenses to any number of crop seasons or production centers.
• Easily manage inventory either when you purchase inventory or as you harvest crops for sale across multiple seasons. Simplifies product asset valuation while providing valuable information on quantities on hand and its current and future profitability.
• Easily track your farm production for dairy, livestock, and crop operations using multiple product trackers so you can record production by herd, field, or crop type.
• Integrate your financial data with farm production data from world-class farm management systems, including John Deere, Agworld, BCMS, or ICBF stock tracking systems^*.
• Create Seasonal-based Accrual production reporting for farming operations, individual farms, and individual fields. Compute your Gross Margins based on your operations at each level.

^{Caption: Figured produces meaningful agri-specific financial and production reporting instantly. You will no longer need Excel to compile data from different sources.}

• Automated report packs: quickly compile, analyze, and report on each operation you track at every level.

^{Caption: Figured provides a wealth of information, including projected opportunities and risks for crucial aspects of any agribusiness up to 10 years into the future.}

• Easily create yearly budgets with up-to-date financial and production data and monitor variance continuously. Then, update budgets on the fly and re-forecast as needed. You can even model the impact different scenarios will have on your farming business up to 10 years into the future (e.g., interest rate/commodity price changes, investments, succession, etc.) using Figured’s Scenario Planning.

^{Caption: Figured allows you to create budgets, forecasts, and annual plans, then compare and contrast those with actual data in real time.}

• Monitor the performance of your entire farming operations portfolio through a dashboard view and identify those farms facing risk or opportunities.

^{Caption: Figured Dashboard gives users a high-level overview of any farm’s performance using agri-specific KPIs.}

‘Figured’ Advantages for Accounting, Bookkeeping and Consulting Professionals

With Figured, Accountants, Bookkeepers, and Business Consultants providing Client Accounting and Advisory Services (CAAS) can:

• Combine financial and farm production data on a single connected ledger, providing a comprehensive, single source of agriculture-specific information and an up-to-date view of each client’s business performance.
• Delve into past and present financial data and budget, forecast, and model scenarios for the future, enabling them to establish, scale, and optimize the CAAS.
• Look beyond individual clients to the entire portfolio of agribusinesses to identify those clients that need the most help, making it possible to deliver that help at scale, achieving more profitable outcomes for their agribusiness clients as well as their own accounting operations.
• Enhance agribusiness advisory services with out-of-the-box agri-reporting and real time financial and production data available at their fingertips. Agribusiness accountants can unlock meaningful financial insights, empowering them to confidently step into trusted advisor opportunities.

^{Caption: Using Figured’s Report Packs, Accountants and Trusted Advisors can schedule and transmit customized and detailed reports to one or multiple clients at the click of a button.}

• Deliver high-value CAAS: Figured empowers a connected approach amongst the farming clients. Immediate access to critical financial insights and the ability to confidently forecast and plan enables advisors to make faster, more informed decisions and offer strategic advice at scale.
• Drive business growth: leveraging the value of their collective agribusiness data, accountants/advisors can easily benchmark client performance to deliver proactive, replicable agribusiness services and optimize their CAAS revenue streams.

Figured offers a How-to Advisory Series on providing CAAS for Agriculture with Figured and QuickBooks Online. So, if you want to expand or modify your Client Accounting and Advisory Services niche into agribusiness, the Figured How-to Series will be most beneficial.

Easily integrate ‘Figured’ with QuickBooks Online or Xero:

Integration is straightforward when you or your clients use a supported QBO or Xero version (listed below). To get started, login into your Figured account and click on the blue + Create a Farm button which will launch Figured’s five step integration wizard. You will easily progress through Farm Setup, Billing, Farm Details, Connecting to your Accounting (QBO or Xero), and Selecting your Accounting File.

^{Caption: Creating your Figured ‘Farm’ is the first step in integrating Figured with either QuickBooks Online or Xero}.

But take your time to ensure you connect to the correct accounting file for the Farm you have setup. Once a Farm has been connected to an Accounting File (QBO or Xero), it cannot be disconnected and reconnected to a different accounting file. Should you happen to connect your Figured Farm to the wrong Accounting File, you must create a new Figured Farm to connect with the correct Accounting File.

Once connected, Figured automatically pulls financial information from your accounting platform, including the chart of accounts and bank account movements, which link with livestock reconciliation and financial reports to update production tracking and farm budgets automatically. Figured also can push livestock and crop sales and purchases directly into your accounting solution, keeping the farm and financial ledgers in balance at all times.

Figured integrates with the following versions of QuickBooks₁ and Xero₂:

• QuickBooks Online Essentials
• QuickBooks Online Plus
• QuickBooks Online Advanced
• Xero’ Early’
• Xero ‘Growing’
• Xero’ Established’
• Xero Cashbook

“Want to find out more about ‘Figured’?”

Figured offers both a ‘Demo’ and a ‘Free Trial’ before you commit to subscribing.

For more information about Figured, see their website. You will also find Figured in the QBO App Store and Xero App Store.

Figured offers a ‘Partner Program’ for Accountants, Bookkeepers, Consultants, and ProAdvisors. Insightful Accountant will provide greater detail on the partner opportunity in one of our Advisor Alliance features very soon.

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Disclosures

^* _{– available agri-specific production software integrations may vary by country of use.}

^{Trade names or references like QuickBooks®}₁^{, Xero®}₂ ^{and Figured® refer to registered or trademarked products or materials held by their respective owners; they are included in the content for informational and educational purposes only.}

_{This is an editorial feature, not sponsored content. No vendor associated with this article has paid Insightful Accountant or the author any form of remuneration to be included within this feature. The article is provided solely for informational and educational purposes.}

_{Note: Registered Trademark ® and other registration symbols (such as those used for copyrighted materials) have been eliminated from the articles within this publication for brevity due to the frequency or abundance with which they would otherwise appear or be repeated. Every attempt is made to credit such trademarks or copyrights within our respective article footnotes and disclosures.}