ANALYZE THIS

FINPACK is a financial planning and analysis software that has been used by more than 100,000 farmers and ranchers during the past 10 years.

“FINPACK helps producers analyze their financial situation and project cash flows for the future,” says Dale Nordquist, associate director, University of Minnesota Center For Farm Financial Management. “It is not an accounting system, but it helps producers put their accounting records to work by creating and maintaining balance sheets, financial trends, cash-flow plans and long-range plans. The tools within FINPACK help producers evaluate their financial situation, explore alternatives and make informed decisions about the future direction of their farms.”

Paul Gorman, farm business management instructor at South Central College, Mankato, MN, encourages operators to use FINPACK.

“It's a suite of applications that allows you to plot all revenues by month and expenses by month then project whether farm operating loan will get paid down that month,” he says.

“Finpack also projects grain inventories and livestock and feed inventories. The historic database allows operators to look at the last four years of data to get average corn yield to budget for the year ahead. There's a lot of power in there,” he says.

FINPACK features include:

• Balance sheets
• Business analysis (FINAN)
• Monthly cash-flow plans (FINFLO)
• Annual cash-flow plans (annual plan)
• Long-range “what if” plans (FINLRB)
• Historic trend reports

Cost for FINPACK is $395 for a personal version that doesn't expire. For more information, go to www.finpack.org.