Gary Massicks is an agribusiness consultant with BakerAg, based in Feilding. His clients are spread across most of the lower North Island, mainly sheep and beef businesses, and many are family farms running more than one property. With almost 20 years as a farm consultant, Gary’s approach is simple: make a plan, report against it, and base decisions on the numbers.
“How do you achieve confidence… by having a plan and reporting against that plan! This provides solid evidence the business is adhering to the plan that’s in place to ensure success.”
Gary enjoys working with family farming businesses, where there’s always more he can do to help them reach their goals. For him, the more complex the business, the better. Budgeting, planning, decision making and reporting are at the centre of that work.
“Budgeting, planning, decision making, and reporting are crucial and this is where I see Focus as a key financial tool. Focus reporting provides hard evidence that a farms business plans are solid which is especially important right now when more information is being sought to underpin decision making by a range of suppliers.”
A plan only works if you track it. Gary says Farm Focus lets farmers plan well in advance and then stay on track, because monitoring shows when the plan needs to change.
“Monitoring will signal where changes may need to be made by the business well before this becomes an issue for the bank for example.”
“With Focus I also have an overview so am able to identify possible issues early on rather than playing catch up.”
Planning in Farm Focus also means looking ahead. With draft scenarios, a consultant and their client can test a decision, such as buying fewer rams or selling stock earlier, and see what it means for cashflow before they commit. The working plan then compares what actually happens with the budget as the season goes on.
Many of Gary’s clients run large businesses spread over several farms. Management tags are his favourite way to keep them in one picture.
“Management tags bind often complex businesses together. I have a number of large-scale businesses where farmers manage multiple properties, multiple stock types across a wide geographical area and having one set of accounts is a real positive.”
“I really like this functionality. If your client is running an operation with more than one property for example, how could anyone know what’s happening … where changes could be made?”
Today Gary works in around 20 client Farm Focus files, from a 90 ha dairy block to stations of more than 1,000 ha. Each client has their own file and secure login, so he sees the same live numbers as the farmer, wherever they farm.
For Gary, Farm Focus is as much a tool for sharing as for monitoring. When the farmer, the consultant and others such as the bank are working from the same plan and the same reports, communication is better and the whole business is more confident.
Every Farm Focus customer gets free onboarding and phone support from a team that knows farming, in New Zealand and Australia. Consultants and advisers can also manage all their client farms from one dashboard with Focus Workspaces.
