If you want to have your milk income align with the kgMS in your milk trading statement, then we'd recommend you use the Account Journals tool available in Figured to do that.

It's best to use for users who are on a cash-based subscription in their accounting software and who are unable to raise invoices - meaning their milk income is being cash-coded each month, so the cash/accrual dates are the same.

NOTE: This tool is intended to be used at the end of a financial year; it's not recommended to use monthly - we suggest you use your accounting software's manual journal function if you wish to do monthly journals.

Milk trading statement - before account journals

This is how my milk trading statement looked before using the account journals tool.

My milk production (kgMS) is showing correctly for 2021. However, my milk income on the right-hand side is showing one month out.

I've cash-coded it in my accounting software, so the cash/accrual dates are the same. The account journals tool is how I'm going to fix that up.

Using the Account Journals tool

Account journals can be found under Accounting > Account Journals.

Once in there, you'll select your financial year (in my case, 2021), whether you are adjusting your planning year or financial year, and the account you’re adjusting (Milk Production - Current Year). If you are utilising multi-farm, you will also choose which farm this is happening on.

You'll see your milk income for your selected financial year on the next page. You should see the cash and accrual values sitting side by side.

That's how you know the milk income has been cash-coded. Using Helpers, select One month before cash as typically milk is produced in one month and then paid in the following.

If you wish to, you can also select the Same month or Two months.

When you click an option, it'll update the accrual side of the transactions. You can select Reset accrual if you've made a mistake with your selection.

When you're happy with your accrual values, click Next.

The final step in the process is to confirm the updates to the net accrual balances for the account and post these manual journals to your accounting software. 

Select your contra account, such as Milk income receivables if that's present in your chart of accounts, and once happy with the updated accrual values, you can click Post Manual Journals.

This will send the information to your accounting software, which will sync back into Figured, update the accruals, and pull them back to the correct dates to be reflected correctly in your trading statement.

Milk trading statement - after account journals

After going through the account journals process, my milk trading statement is complete. The kgMS and milk income are aligned perfectly and are ready to be part of my year-end statements.

If you've just started on your accounting software this season and don’t have the prior year's financial information, you can add comparative data by the account journals.

Within the tool, you'll need to do the following:

These journals will then be posted to your accounting software, which will update our milk trading statement with comparative data.

Check out our YouTube video tutorial here.