Adrienne and Evan Baigent moved into dairying at Tapawera decades ago, when few farms had a computer, let alone software built for farmers. Today they've sold the dairy farm, but they're far from retired, and Adrienne still runs the books.
“I originally operated a 32-column cash book which I wrote up by hand and then balanced and, to put it kindly, reconciling was a nightmare. If only a small amount out, I'd still have to trawl back through every entry until I found the problem and fix it. I still remember the tears reconciling caused!”
Adrienne has used Farm Focus since its earliest days, back when it was CRS and their accountant was teaching her to code on a DOS program.
“We looked around at several other applications and settled on CRS because they were as good as anything available in the marketplace.”
Their farm business has changed a lot since then, and so has the software.
Moving to the current Farm Focus wasn't love at first sight.
“I have to admit I did not enjoy Farm Focus when I first moved across. I was so used to what I knew that I almost resented the new layout… change can be a scary thing!”
It didn't take long for that to turn around. Adrienne now calls Farm Focus her best friend.
The biggest win for Adrienne is not doing the same job twice.
“I really enjoy the new streamlined processes. That's the best bit for me. Enter data once and job done! No more looking for invoices and receipts. Once our information is in the system it's automatically synced with our bank information which is a real time saver.”
At one stage she was running three sets of farm books at once: the wind-up of the dairy farm and two lifestyle blocks. Without bank feeds doing the heavy lifting, that would have been a big time commitment.
Coding is another plus. Adrienne's accountant trained her up on coding back when they first got into dairy and were running a DOS program, and their relationship goes way back.
“With Focus I can choose my own codes and change these if needed. Makes so much sense because you know what goes where from the start and it's much easier to remember your own code names.”
Succession is something Adrienne believes every farming family should talk about openly, so everyone understands what the future holds.
“We had it easy really as we have three daughters, none of whom were interested in dairying. We talked about a number of options with them before we sold our dairy farm and at that time neither of us wanted to move into town.”
Instead, they bought a 45 ha lifestyle block and built a house on it.
“We were not ready to simply stop so we started trading dry-stock and still love it.”
They also lease a nearby block, where one of their daughters and her husband now farm in their own right, using Farm Focus as a planning tool.
Adrienne noticed her daughter picked it up even faster than she did.
“I was used to doing things a certain way and the change in process was a challenge right at the start, whereas my daughter had no such expectations and she just flew ahead from day one. Sometimes there's a big advantage in not knowing another way of doing things!”
For Adrienne, there's no going back.
“Going back to the old way would be such a backwards move now.”
