The Figured Benchmark Report is an exclusive report for Figured Insights users, helping you compare dairy farm performance against the FY25 actuals from across Figured farms.
What’s Included?
New Zealand Dairy farms across 5 ownership types: Farm Owner, Farm Owner with Share Milker, Farm Owner with Contract Milker, Share Milker, Contract Milker.
Benchmark Groups are also grouped by region, region groups and supplier.
Identifies the average of several metrics, expense categories; and average of the Top 25% of each of these based on farms with the highest Operating Surplus per kgMS.
Data covers Profit & Loss income & expense categories, on an accrual or cash basis.
Reliable data from farms meeting strict criteria (active in Figured, 60%+ milk income, 9+ months of data).
This is currently for to 31 May 2025 balance dates, however an update to add more dynamic rolling months on the roadmap.
This report helps you benchmark client farms against the industry, identify performance gaps, and provide data-driven financial advice.
Benchmarking Report - Supporting Information
This article outlines the process and data used in benchmarking, providing a structured comparison of farm performance. It includes:
The available benchmark groups.
How data was cleaned and prepared.
What is included or excluded in each financial category.
By following a standardised approach, this report ensures consistency and reliability, allowing you to compare key financial metrics across different farm operations.
Benchmark Groups
The benchmarking report categorises farms into various groups based on region, ownership structure, and supplier. The Top 25% group represents the most financially efficient farms, ranked by Operating Surplus per kgMS.
Important Notes on Benchmark Groups:
Some financial categories have been excluded from certain benchmark groups. This happens when there are too few farms in that category to generate a reliable average.
The Top 25% is calculated consistently across all metrics within the benchmark group - it always includes the same farms within the benchmark group, regardless of which financial category is analysed.
A list of available Benchmark groups can be found in Insights under the Regional Benchmarking tab
Category Definitions
To make data easier to compare, we have used Figured Standard Categorisation and used a custom report structure. This differs slightly from Figured’s standard reporting, as some rarer categories used by a minority of farms are excluded due to small sample sizes. The goal is to make these benchmarks as meaningful and comparable as possible.
Table of Category Definitions
Table of Category Definitions
Benchmark Report "Categories" | Customer Facing Notes |
Milk Gross Profit | Dairy Income (category) less Dairy Direct Costs (category) |
Net Livestock Sales | Livestock Income (category) less Livestock Direct Costs (Category) |
Other Gross Profit | All Operating Income categories less all Direct Cost categories excl. Dairy & Livestock |
Animal Health | Category |
Breeding | Category |
Calf Rearing | Category |
Home Grown Feed Costs | Category |
Grazing | Category |
Supplements & Concentrates | Category |
Fertiliser | Category |
Irrigation | Category |
Weed & Pest | Category |
Pasture Renewal | Category |
Cropping | Category |
Contracting Expenses | Category |
Effluent | Category |
Electricity | Category |
Farm Working | Category |
Freight | Category |
Repairs & Maintenance | Category |
Shed Expenses | Category |
Staff Costs | Category |
Vehicle Expenses | Category |
Administration | Category |
Advisory | Category |
Health & Safety | Category |
Insurance | Category |
Levies | Category |
Rates | Category |
Operating Lease | Category |
Other Operating Expenses | Group of Categories: Welfare, Kid Rearing, Environmental, Forestry, Horse Expenses, Horticulture Expenses, Other Animal, Other Feed, Other Pasture, Other Operations, Other Overheads, Shearing Expenses, Viticulture Expenses, Winter Grazing, Grazing - Long Term, Grazing - Short Term, + any operating expense not already included |
Non Operating Income | Group of Categories: Investment Income, Off Farm Income, Other Non Operating Income |
Interest | Category |
Depreciation | Category |
Tax | Category |
Profit Distributions | Category |
Other Non Operating Expenses | Group of Categories: Non Operating Lease, Other Non Operating, Off Farm Expenses |
Data Cleansing & Preparation
To ensure accuracy, farms included in the benchmarking process must meet strict data quality controls:
Located in New Zealand.
Have at least 9 months of kgMS data.
Generate at least 60% of revenue from milk income.
Are actively managed in Figured and Xero (e.g., recent logins, tax returns, or data syncs).
Show realistic milk income per kgMS based on ownership structure.
Have operating costs within a reasonable range relative to income.
Goat and sheep dairy operations have been excluded to keep the focus on cow dairy farms.
Timeframe Covered:
The 2025 benchmarking report includes actuals to May 2025, as at 8 September 2025.
Account Categorisation:
Figured’s auto-categorisation feature achieves a 80-85% accuracy when an accounting system is first connected to a Figured file. If the file is maintained/managed, the accuracy of categories is likely to be higher. All data you see on the Benchmark report is based on Figured's Standard Categorisation NOT the Farm's categorisation
Other production data:
Sub region groupings (based on address), milking platform size and peak cow data was too sparse to be used unfortunately. We are actively engaging in ways to get more customers entering this data, such as requiring some basic farm data completion before accessing any benchmark report. This will ensure that we can bring in more production data points leading to more in depth analysis and comparisons in future.
FAQs
Feedback
We would love to hear from you - what you like about the benchmarking report or what you would like improved. Please use the green chat bubble in the app or email info@figured.com with the subject line: Benchmarking Feedback.