If you're new to Figured, or you're just needing a refresher, this guide's for you.

Looking for a check list of what to do? Check out our Farm Manager cheat sheet. 

You'll need the below before we get started:

   
In 11 steps you'll have your Farm Manager file setup and ready to use -
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On your main Figured dashboard (my.figured.com) you'll see a green button that says Create a Farm. Click that and fill in any farm details you're asked for like a name, or a production type, and then connect it to your accounting software.

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Step 2: Setup your bank feeds

Figured will pull through your bank accounts from your accounting software. You now need to select the correct type of account and nominate the primary bank account.

It's important to note that any liabilities like a Farmlands account, or a credit card, should never be set as a bank account. This will affect your bank account balance in your reports and will give an inaccurate view of your current cash position.

NOTE: We recommend you have these accounts set as liabilities within your accounting software too so that the financial reports in each app reflect one another.

You can also adjust these settings once the farm has been created through Settings > Chart of Accounts > Bank.

Please note that once you've set your default bank account you should not change it. If you need to change your default bank account for any reason please contact the Customer Service team.

A production tracker on Figured is used to track any production that may need to be tracked on your farm - if you're a dairy farmer you'll need a dairy cattle tracker, and a milk tracker. Whereas if you're a sheep and beef farmer, then you'll need a beef cattle tracker, sheep tracker, and a corresponding wool tracker.

You can add a production tracker while in the production tab by using Create New Tracker in the top right.

From there you'll select a tracker type, give it a name, and set your preferred account mapping.

NOTE: In the case of non-cropping / dairy trackers, "single" purchase and sale accounts means you will have one sales and one purchase account for all stock classes. "Individual" purchase and sale accounts means you will need one for each stock class - read more here

Set your standard payment terms which will determine the default cash / accrual dates for any transactions, configure stock weights if you prefer otherwise keep the defaults, map your accounts, and enter opening livestock quantities.

REMEMBER: Disable any unused stock classes using Manage enabled stock classes. Your opening quantities will generally be your previous years opening balance.

Check out our in-depth articles on the help centre that explain in more detail how to create and setup production trackers on Figured - livestock, milk, wool, and cropping.

 
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Unless your farm is brand new, you've probably got a couple of years of production data available. This is also where you can utilise your trading statements if you've got those on hand.

For livestock and wool, you can use the annual view in the tracker to quickly enter historical livestock movements (births, deaths, sales, and so on). The annual view can be accessed from any livestock tracker in the header section shown below.

Once in there, you'll just need to click on a transaction type under each stock class and enter the movements that have occurred in the previous years. Figured will let you know if any data is unreconciled with your accounting software, as indicated by the yellow triangle for the MA Cows stock class below.

If you have a milk tracker, or a cropping tracker, you'll just need to head into the previous financial year and enter the production data accordingly.

Milk tracker:

In your milk tracker, the financial values are automatically pulled in from your accounting software (in red) - the only thing you need to enter is the milk price (if it differs from the company milk prices) and the production kgMS.

​NOTE: The example above is a New Zealand Fonterra Milk Tracker - Milk trackers in other markets may look slightly different!
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With your production trackers set up and configured for use, your next step is to build out your production forecasts/plan.

Just like when building out your comparative actual data - you'll use similar methods to build out a production forecast/plan.

For livestock / wool trackers, you'll use the monthly view to quickly build out any forecast transactions. You can also use the detailed view if you want to add further notes or details on transaction/payment dates.

As shown below in this monthly view you can choose the month you want to enter a forecast in e.g. purchase of 15 MA Cows in October. Once entered this will pull into your planning grid.

For cropping trackers, you'll enter these from the main crop dashboard using + Add Transaction. This opens up a pop up that uses the date selected on the main page so ensure you are in the correct date before hitting + Add Transaction.

For your milk tracker, you'll just need to select the forecast view using the dropdown global date selector and update your milk prices & production accordingly.

​NOTE: The example above is a New Zealand Fonterra Milk Tracker - Milk trackers in other markets may look slightly different!
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Once your production trackers have their historical (comparative) data in, you'll need to head into your valuation settings which can be found in the adviser tab.

Each tracker will have its own settings and they will all need a unique set of accounts (value on hand, valuation movement, and revaluation reserve where applicable) for valuing them. 

Map up your accounts, choose your selected valuation scheme, and update the NSC custom groups (if you're in NZ and use NSC as a valuation scheme). Once done you can hit save.
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After you've configured your production trackers' valuation settings, you can move onto valuing your previous years livestock (which is why in Step 4 you entered that comparative data).

Head into your valuations under the adviser tab, and select End of Year Valuation.

Change the financial year to the previous year, and select Update View. You'll then be able to click into each valuation scheme and update allocation where applicable.

You can use your trading statements to make this part easier and copy across what has already been done. Once done, you can hit the green button that says Complete Valuation. Your comparative production has now been valued - and you're ready for when end of year valuations come around this year!

 
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This is where you'll be able to categorise your accounts to a range of category options that align up with the account type (i.e. revenue accounts have a pool of revenue categories) which will display these accounts under subheadings in your planning grid and reports.

You're also able to categorise an account to your production trackers which will be useful when generating trading statements.

You can also update the payment period which will be used for cash / accrual purposes in your budgeting, and you can update the preferred view of the account - summary, detailed, or hidden. This page auto saves each time you make a change.

REMEMBER: It's good to set payment periods now, as creating a budget first and setting payment periods later means your existing budget won't be affected.

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You've already created your production tracker forecasts through the trackers themselves, and this information is pulling through to the planning grid - what you'll be doing now is entering your other farm expenses / income forecasts directly in the planning grid.

REMEMBER: All production related accounts are not able to be edited in the planning tab, these must be updated in the trackers themselves.

In the planning grid, your forecasts are live and you can utilise snapshots to save information each time you re-forecast - no more locked budgets. If you want more details on our workflow transition from budgets check out our rolling plan introductory video here.

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In the example above, we have our Actuals set to November, so we are using actuals for the first 5 months of the year, and budgeting for the remaining 7 months - as with other areas of Figured, green represents actual information, and yellow represents our forecast information.

Actuals will not be editable as they always come from your preferred accounting software, but we can edit our forecasts in here by clicking on the relevant cell and typing in the figures, as well as using the budgeting tools (copy/spread/adjust by %) along the bottom.

We have some helpful import tools to make setting up your forecasts easier - if you have actual data in the previous financial year, we can import last years actuals to form the base for our plan. We can also import from a snapshot, so you can use any stored snapshot from any year to build a plan as well.

Once we're happy with our forecast information, we set our budget/annual plans by using the snapshot function to capture that data and store it - we can choose to store the snapshot away for reporting/comparison at a later date, and/or to set it as our Annual Plan, effectively locking it in as our current budget. Find out more about Snapshots here.
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Figured is a collaborative tool and we encourage all members of the farming team to be on board.

If you wish to add a single user to the farm, you can do so under Settings > People, and from there you'll be able to enter a users email address and specify the permissions you wish them to have on the farm.

The invited person will get an invitation to either login to an existing account, or register a new one and then they'll have access to the farm.

If you wish to add a firm to your farm, whether it's your accountants' firm, your bank, or you're looking to invite the rest of your advisory team, you can do so under Settings > Organisation Access.

Much the same as inviting a personal user, but in this case you can invite an entire organisation to have access to your farm.

All accountants & advisors as well as banks on Figured are available to add on this page. Simply search for the name of the organisation and specify the permissions you wish the organisation to have to your farm.

   
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With the farm setup and the team on board, the final step is to ensure the billing has been activated for the farm which will allow for continuous access to the farm and its data.
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Personal billing:

If you are a farmer, or you are personally taking on the billing, you will first need to update your personal billing details which is available under Profile (bottom left) > Billing & Subscriptions.

Using the steps provided, you'll need to enter your billing address as well as choose whether you wish to setup payment by bank account (direct debit) or credit / debit card (direct credit).

Once your payment method has been updated, head back to the farm and go into Settings > Billing and nominate yourself as the bill payer.
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​Organisation billing:

If you're part of an accountants' firm or an advisory firm and the firm will be taking on the billing, then you'll need to setup the organisation billing first and then nominate your firm as the bill payer.

First up you'll want to setup organisation billing. You must have billing access to complete this step.

To do this, head to your Figured dashboard > Your Organisation > Billing and fill in the steps that follow. You'll need to enter your billing address as well as choose whether you wish to setup payment by bank account (direct debit) or credit / debit card (direct credit).

Once your payment method has been updated, head back to the farm and go into Settings > Billing and nominate your firm as the bill payer.

NOTE: You must be a member of the organisation to assign the billing to it first.

If you'd like your client to take on the billing, have them login to the farm and assign the billing to their account using the Personal billing steps outlined above.
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You can dive in and generate some reports, harvest some wheat, record some heifer sales, or re-forecast for the weather - if you need a hand, drop the team a message via the green bubble anytime.