Two December workshops will help Nebraska farmers and ranchers read the financial documents their operations run on, and use them to make better decisions.
“Understanding Financial Documents” will be held Dec. 2 in O’Neill at the Holt County Annex Building, 128 N. 6th St., and Dec. 3 in Fairbury at the Jefferson County 4-H Building, 56885 PWF Road. Both sessions run from 9 a.m. to noon and are free to attend. Nebraska Extension and the Nebraska Rural Response Hotline are hosting.
The workshops were developed by Dave Haupt, a financial analyst with the Center for Agricultural Profitability at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Dave Goeller, a consultant with the Nebraska Rural Response Hotline. Goeller is a retired Nebraska Extension educator who spent his career working with farm families on transition planning. Both will lead the sessions.
The workshops start with the balance sheet, a snapshot of what an operation owns and what it owes on a given day, and how those two figures determine net worth. Sessions also walk through cash flow statements and income statements, showing producers how to project income and expenses and then track them against actual results through the year.
Attendees will learn to calculate and interpret the financial ratios that lenders and managers use to measure solvency, liquidity, repayment capacity and profitability. Haupt and Goeller will also cover trend analysis, comparing those numbers across several years to see whether an operation is building equity and liquidity or moving the other direction.
The workshops close with a session on goal setting for both the business and the family, and why communication between the two matters. That includes how management teams build consensus, divide responsibilities and work through the conflicts and setbacks that come with running a farm or ranch together.
Register by calling the Nebraska Rural Response Hotline at 800-464-0258 to reserve a spot.
More financial management resources from the Center for Agricultural Profitability are available at https://cap.unl.edu/finance. The Rural Response Hotline’s website is https://farmhotline.com.
